Re: Educational purpose

I haven't followed the entire thread, but found what I read interesting...  So, a Few thoughts below.

Perhaps there is a claim and a predicate.  Ie: educational use + definition;(taxcode,act,common law, custom definition); and probably important also, is "choice of law", which is the region for which the definition is interpreted (and if necessary, which jurisdiction, et.al) 

Have "choice of law" as a separate determining factor that aids with the interpretation of these other definitions...

The thought is that the legal definition does change, law is not static.  Where the cost of litigation is high, and the cause has no commercial merit, it can take quite sometime for "common sense to prevail", just because, it's not prioritised.

Eg:
I think in Aus, perhaps still - or perhaps it was recently fixed, but there was a law that said if a man rocks upto a pub that has accommodation, with a horse, the place must provide accommodation for the man and his horse... I searched for a reference to that, couldn't find it, but found some others: http://ultimatehorsesite.com/fun/strangelaws.html

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_referendum,_1967_(Aboriginals). Perhaps another example of where common-sense took a while to process...

So, effective support might also notate the definition context, such as the uri for " UK section 35[1] of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988" as listed below, or even the link for the copyright clause of the U.S. Constitution.  

Overall,

The variables seems to be the concept, and the definition of that concept

Sent from my iPad

> On 10 Apr 2015, at 9:08 pm, Mo McRoberts <Mo.McRoberts@bbc.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On  2015-Apr-09, at 13:15, Renato Iannella <ri@semanticidentity.com> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>> On 7 Apr 2015, at 11:02 pm, Mo McRoberts <mo.mcroberts@bbc.co.uk> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Interjecting briefly: the issue with all of these is that they’re really
>>> poorly-defined, legally-speaking, and even when one can arrive at a
>>> definition, the definition varies quite significantly by jurisdiction, so
>>> it’s really difficult to specify what ‘educational use’ means.
>> 
>> True - and it is not *our* role to provide legally-binding contractual terms per jurisdiction ;-)
>> Communities-of-use will provide that level of assurance (together with their local jurisdiction-based laws).
> 
> I agree - however, as the recent review of the actions has shown, it is quite important for the terms to match legal definitions, and that’s really difficult where nobody can agree upon what a legal definition actually is.
> 
Taxation definitions may suffice...yet isn't that a choice of interpretation/definition?  If the precedent does not exist otherwise, one might assume, that apart from paying lawyers to create or debate a definition, the defensible position may be based on what precedent exists upon an economic principle.  Yet even then, an array of different definitions exist for a common-sense term...

Eg: tax law doesn't work for all functions as, perhaps a raw example, "parent", my provide as an example. 

Ie: parent/child for tax/social security purposes, yet in reality, the child doesn't know who that person defined as parent, is, or had any contact with them, well, that's not the common-sense definition of parent which denotes personal responsibility and harbouring / supporting pragmatically, the child's development to fullest potential on an every moment basis.....
(One might hope.)


> For example, there is a specific definition of educational institutions which is used in the specification of exceptions to copyright law (sometimes with blanket licensing schemes, sometimes not). These definitions, although quite broad, don’t necessary align with “educational use”, and certainly aren’t completely aligned across the EU, let alone the rest of the world.
> 
> In many cases, the definition one might need to express is defined by rights agreements, and is a lot more specific than a generic term like this — and it’s even easier if there’s a blanket licensing scheme which users must be a member of to qualify (at which point, you just need to agree a URI for the *scheme*, and define an Offer which is available to members of the group whose URI is that scheme).
> 
> For example, in the UK section 35[1] of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 states that it’s not infringement of copyright for educational institutions to retain and present broadcast programmes for educational purposes of that establishment, either on-premises or via a secure network. It also states that if a licensing scheme exists which covers these uses, then it’s only a valid exception if the institution is participating in the scheme. Such a scheme, unsurprisingly, does exist[2].
> 
> Given that, I can use ODRL to state that the programme is available to members of that scheme, and reflect the uses permitted by law. If there were other comparable schemes across the EU, I could put that data in too (as they’re essentially distinct offers).
> 
> However, what I probably wouldn’t bother doing is defining what "the educational purposes of that establishment” actually are - because in that situation it can be suitably inferred (at least to the point of satisfying most sensible lawyers) from the definition of the establishments in the first place, which is defined in the Act[3], but actually just references such exciting pieces of literature as the Education Act 1996[4].
> 
> It is certainly true that one can state “for educational use” (or even “for educational non-commercial use”) and be reasonably confident that many people would interpret that consistently with your intentions. The problems lie in the lack of overlaps in that particular venn diagram; because it’s poorly-specified, there will inevitably be disagreements over the definition if the assets are sufficiently popular, and this is compounded significantly where the offer crosses national borders. As things stand, people can’t even agree on whether having banner ads to help pay hosting costs violates the term “non-commercial”, and I can’t help but think that “educational use” is much, much more difficult to pin down.
> 
Non-commercial -- wouldn't that be defined as non-profit? Again, tax law does provide some mechanics around non-profit, however, the traceability of components is also important, as something may transition between non-profit and for-profit markets, and/or have the flexibility to do so...

Ie: child find/gets image for school website project on a Creative Commons styled, non-profit license.

Business person finds website product and uses image for commercial purpose.

Rdf in Creative Commons could allow for the traceability of the license, and therefore offer an alternative somehow?

I imagine odrl extending these concepts further..


> Given that, I’d be really wary of *ODRL* defining a term representing either of these, unless we define it in a very particular way and make it clear that other people are welcome to define alternative terms which meet their own needs and use those instead. Personally, I’d *just* do that latter part, and steer well clear of getting embroiled in the specifics.
> 
> This approach also has the advantage of promoting extensibility over sheer openness; historically a number of vocabularies ended up being “forked” as a means to extensibility even when the forked version was substantially identical to the (still-evolving) original - large standards bodies being particularly bad offenders in this realm — which does kind of serve to defeat the purpose of namespace-driven extensibility somewhat. Taking this tack allows domain-expert pockets of the community to reach non-conflicting consensus and ODRL itself can just document these various extensions (so, best of both worlds).
> 
> The upshot being that if Europeana wants to define what “educational use” might mean as far as they’re concerned, then other people might adopt that, or they might not, and ODRL can just point to it (indeed, a wiki page listing various ODRL-extension vocabs over time would be quite nice). Of course, some of these may also be collected together into identifiable profiles, but need not necessarily be.
> 
> M.
> 
> [1] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/section/35
> 
> [2] http://www.era.org.uk
> 
> [3] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/48/section/174
> 
> [4] http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1996/56/section/4
> 
> --
> Mo McRoberts - Chief Technical Architect - Archives & Digital Public Space,
> Zone 2.12, BBC Scotland, 40 Pacific Quay, Glasgow G51 1DA.
> 
> Inside the BBC? My movements this week: http://neva.li/where-is-mo
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