Intellectual property
This page discusses intellectual property management issues in relation to teaching and learning resources, describes emerging technical standards
and lists recommended standards to be used. See also the Recommended standards on Intellectual property.
- Why is intellectual property management important?
- What are the advantages for interoperability?
- What is happening?
- Development of rights expression languages
Why is intellectual property management important?
There is now widespread recognition by policy makers and leading edge practitioners that solving the thorny problems surrounding copyright are prerequisites to the widespread and sustainable implementation of e-learning. At the same time, anecdotal evidence suggests these issues are poorly understood or totally ignored by many VET practitioners.
Intellectual property rights management is a broad term that describes an organisation’s processes for managing rights creation, licencing and usage, whether the content is digital or not. This is sometimes confused with digital rights management (DRM). DRM may be a part of this process and refers to the use of digital technology to implement rights management.
DRM is sometimes seen as a method of enforcing an organisation’s licencing conditions through automation. In its absence, enforcement is based on making usage conditions clear and explicit and providing a basis for possible legal action if they are breached.
The licences offered by copyright owners need to address a range of issues. Is a fee or royalty required, and how is it to be collected? Are there limitations on where and for how long the content may be used? How can it be distributed? How is the embedded copyright of third party contributors to the content provided for? Can the material be altered? Who holds copyright of any enhancements made to the content?
The moral rights of contributors to the content also need to be considered, even if they do not hold copyright. How will the many people involved in content creation be acknowledged? How are they rewarded?
Copyright is an area where extremes of political views are common but are often cloaked in technical language. Idealists make a political virtue of the difficulty of controlling access to information in the digital world and see this a triumph for grass roots democracy. On the other hand, commercial interest are aiming for technological solutions that will allow copyright owners to control access to text, music and other digital resources and extract payment for every use - often to extremes which ignore existing public-good benefits and the existing rights of purchasers of creative works.
The education and training community has complex and conflicting roles in this debate. Education and training is an increasingly commercial undertaking, at the same time as having a strong culture of public-good and sharing. Individual training organisations are under pressure to act as commercial organisations and get maximum benefit from their own intellectual property, as well as seeking to get access on beneficial terms to intellectual property arising elsewhere in the education and training system and from external commercial sources.
While the full implementation of digital rights management in education and training is contentious and certainly some time off, it is important that basic information about the copyright conditions attached to learning resources is clearly expressed and made available as part of the resource discovery process.
What are the advantages for interoperability?
Interoperability in relation to intellectual property management can operate at several levels:
- Simple and consistent licensing arrangements across all VET sector owners of learning materials can make it easier for teachers and content developers to understand and make decisions about selection of learning materials by knowing what costs are involved and in what ways they can legally use and modify materials. This in turn allows learning materials to be more readily adapted and reused.
- Expression of these licensing conditions in standard metadata elements will make it easier for users to discover and select material based on copyright conditions (eg search only for material that is available free of charge).
- Complete expression of intellectual property conditions in a digital rights expression language (see below) would allow automatic implementation of copyright restrictions and would, for example, allow a learning management system to access a repository of learning objects, track usage, restrict access to those authorised to use material, and manage permissions and payments for use of material.
The last option is by far the most complicated and there is a great deal of experimentation and development work in this area.
What is happening?
AEShareNet is a collaborative system to streamline the licensing of intellectual property so that Australian training materials are developed, shared and adapted efficiently. The AEShareNet website offers services to the public and members including a large searchable database of training materials.
It provides a brokered service for licences where money needs to change hands, or where special conditions may need to be negotiated. Read more about these Mediated licences at http://www.aesharenet.com.au/corebusiness/#Mediated.
AEShareNet also provides a range of Instant Licences. Products marked with these Licence Marks do not attact a licence fee and permission for use under the relevant conditions is automatic and available to anyone (provided the product is legitimately aquired). As such they are particularly suited to digital repositories and other resources provided electronically. For more information see http://www.aesharenet.com.au/coreBusiness/#Instant.
The VET Learning Object Repository Network makes use of the AEShareNet Instant Licences. The Advanced Search allows searching by licence type.
The 2003 Framework for Rights Enabled Learning Object Exchange Trial project conducted a trial to determine a framework and descriptions for Digital Rights Management (DRM) of Learning Objects (LOs) and trialled rights management within a Learning Object Exchange. The trial involved analysis of current licensing agreements both overseas and in Australia.
Development of rights expression languages
Internationally there are a number of attempts to develop a digital rights expression language, which would be used to control access to digital content, as well as for other purposes. The two leading contenders are XrML (a proprietary system developed by Xerox and supported by Microsoft) and ODRL (for which much of the development work was done in Australia by IPR Systems). Both of these initiatives are seeking endorsement as formal standards although XrML is based on patents held by ContentGuard.
The IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee (LTSC) has a workgroup on Digital Rights Expression Languages and is currently gathering requirements that a standardised DREL must meet to support learning, education, and training. It is considering both XrML and ODRL
Work by the Australian Flexible Learning Framework project Framework for Rights Enabled Learning Object Exchange Trial identified difficulties in translating VET sector licensing frameworks (as represented by AEShareNet licence profiles) into ODRL.
