Wot, no Wikipedia?
It goes to illustrate just how much smaller the world has become that legislation currently going through US Congress can impact on learners in the UK – and wherever people can connect to the Internet. And love it or loathe it, the user-generated online encyclopaedia Wikipedia – which is now regularly used by millions as a first-stop-shop for information – has today decided to close access to all of its English-language pages for 24 hours. This is as part of the debate happening across the world about copyright and access to materials, which has major implications for adult learners now that so much information and learning activities are accessed online.
Wikipedia’s protest is against the proposed legislation in the US which aims to stop illegal downloading and streaming of movies and TV shows, which many believe could also result in altering the Internet’s ability to provide a platform for free speech.
Rights-holders are reported to have been stunned at the way that their material has been so easily copied and freely used across the Internet and are mobilising to protect their interests. In the meantime the culture of online sharing for free has grown to the point that its advocates have made a political stand, and across Europe Pirate parties have gained modest but noticeable electoral success.
Of course those who make their living through the creation of content – be it text, music, video or audio – need to be paid for their work in the same way as farmers are paid for carrots and potatoes. The lines seem to get easily blurred, however, as professionally-created material increasingly sits alongside the growing body of user-generated content, which is created and, mostly, shared for free.
What does all this mean for adult learning though? Three things.
1. There is rarely a good reason why publicly-funded electronic learning materials should not be shared freely with learners elsewhere. Happily, the Open Educational Resource movement is gaining traction and increasingly materials are being shared using Creative Commons or Open Government licensing.
2. Rights holders should be protected, but not at the cost of easy access. Where there are legitimate reasons to charge for access to content, pricing needs to be affordable and payment methods simple and clear.
3. The tools and online spaces where some of the contested content sits – for example YouTube – have additional value for learners. They provide the medium for learners to post their own content as part of their learning and to share it with others. We really can’t afford to jeopardise the viability of these sharing spaces.
Communication tools and the ways that we access information are changing rapidly, including the ways that we learn. Having good access to information as well as to the spaces to share and discuss are important issues for adult learners and NIACE is engaged in the debate, which we are taking forward this Friday at our seminar called Open Educational Practice – making best use of free resources.
Thanks, Alastair
This is a very thoughtful post which I think moves the discussion forward. All three points are important, but in a specifically ACL context I particularly like the third one. The importance of the web as a sharing set of spaces not only underlines its importance for learners, but should also I think give us some optimism for the future of the web, as those spaces are increasingly effectively used. This process is happening pretty rapidly as things stand, but we also need to continue to entice and encourage educators into those spaces to make sure not only that we get the best from them, but also that they continue to be openly available. Onwards and upwards….
Thanks for your optimistic ‘onwards and upwards’ comments about sharing spaces Paul. I agree that the is movement towards sharing but it is slow and patchy. At the NIACE Open Educational Practices seminar last Friday we really had a great mix of people – some who knew what content to find , how to use adapt it – others less so.
However, NIACE has long been very interested in the scope of OERs as self study material for independent learners. Here I think the vision has yet to be turned into reality at any kind of scale.
This debate will run and run.
Two days after the 24-hour closure of Wikipedia I attended the NIACE seminar on ‘Open Educational Practice: making best use of free resources’.
It struck me that (as you imply, Alastair) both these events reflect the same big issue: our assumptions about the legal and commercial framework for owning and sharing knowledge (as well as music and images) have remained more or less the same for about 200 years; but now these legal and commercial assumptions are being challenged big-time. There are, I believe, three reasons for this challenge:
1 the ease with which knowledge, music and images can be converted into digital form
2 the Internet – which makes the distribution of such digital information inexpensive and straightforward
3 a growing suspicion that the legal and commercial ‘IPR’ framework is no longer fit for purpose; in the language of the ‘Occupy’ movement, it is seen to benefit the 1% rather than the 99%; you say, Alastair, that ‘pricing needs to be affordable and payment methods simple and clear’ but many people do not seem to feel that this is the case.
A further thought: I wonder if we need to divide Open Educational Resources (OER) into two categories:
OER 1.0: resources that an individual has been paid (often but not always as part of a contract of employment) to create, and where the organisation or funding body paying them decides (for ethical, political or marketing reasons) to make the resources freely available,
OER 2.0: the creator of the resources is not contracted to produce the resources but just does it because they wish to, and they are happy (again for ethical, political or marketing reasons) to make the material available freely. A lot of the valuable learning material on YouTube is an example of this, as well as individuals creating and editing Wikipedia articles.
Friday’s seminar provided evidence that practitioners really value both OER 1.0 and OER 2.0. If OER 2.0 continues to develop then I think you are absolutely right Alastair to say that the whole debate about copyright and access has major implications for adult learners.