Week4-Copyright Laws

At the outset it must be noted that the entire subject matter presented is a vast one the subtleties of which cannot be digested in a mere four hours. That said, the readings presented a geographical perspective of the historical background that resulted in the contemporary status of Copyright as we know it. I was impressed by the presentation by Lawrence Lessig, whose impassioned plea compared well with that of Richard Baraniuk , of “Connections” fame. Yet I was surprised at the intensity of the debate between the free as opposed to the proprietary software school.
Mr. Lessic correctly describes a situation where copyright law has evolved from a plane where it once monopolized the publication of creative works to an environment of complete freedom to the present retrenchment, where even copying and the creation of derivative works are regulated. This portrait is dominated by a system lawyers and legislators whose sole purpose is to expand the number of software patents, resulting in the present loss of previously unregulated works in the public domain or those subject to fair use. The objection is that so called “open source” software is not free because developments in technology and the Copyright law itself has improperly expanded to include control over access [freedom to read only at the website], copying and even over derivative works - a situation that is at least similar to the dreaded publishing monopolies made obselete by Donaldson v. Beckett and its progeny. Mr. Lessic urges limits on the power of the Past to control future creativity and advocates all out war against legal and legislative controls over creativity. He reasons that an environment of “free culture” will lead to the maximum creative impulse and that we must fight for a “transparent creativity”, a free and open sharing of knowledge and for the arrest of the growth of software patents as the latter’s only function is to “exclude future competitors.”
These two have complete openness from a technical, content, social, and bureaucratic (administrative) perspective. OER has openness to the technical, content and social, but is closed to the bureaucratic. What I mean by closed to the bureaucratic is that the assessment and accreditation is still closed. People can access all the open learning content that is available as OER but they still have to go through a bureaucracy to be assessed and accredited. I believe that until we have Open Access Assessment and Open Access Accreditation (OAA) OER will be severely restrained and should be renamed Open Learning Resources (OLR), because education includes assessment and accreditation.