Open and Learning: Copyright, Creative Commons and Obstacles

I eagerly celebrated that my spring semester course was public under the laws of Creative Commons. I read the details of the license and chose specifically attribution and non-commercial, meaning that I was willing to let anyone use the course and modify it (make derivatives) according to their need. I was willing to share - a lesson we are constantly teaching our children, and then I hit an obstacle. Though I am willing to share, I load content onto my page from other thinkers and teachers, for which I have acquired permission, yet their work is copyrighted material distributed to me for [formal] educational purposes.

Copyright- Creative Commons- Fair Use- Public Domain

Therefore, my creative commons license is in violation of the borrowed copyrighted material. Copyright trumps creative commons, which I support, and creative commons holders must respect works that do not adopt open-policy. I have now removed my course from the Creative Commons domain, yet I have kept it public, albeit now with very limited access. This is the joy of learning on the topic of openness in education - we are not fully open in our learning or our sharing.

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