[Reposted from CC-USA, Link (CC-BY)] Senators Dick Durbin and Al Franken today introduced the Affordable College Textbook Act, which directs the Secretary of Education to fund the creation of college textbooks and materials to be made available under open licenses. The licenses will allow students and educators to “access, reproduce, publicly perform, publicly display, adapt, distribute, and otherwise use the work and adaptations of the work for any purpose, conditioned only on the requirement that attribution be given to authors as designated.” The full text of the bill is here.
Creative Commons U.S.A. Director Michael Carroll issued the following statement:
Senator Durbin should be congratulated for his leadership. This bill seizes the opportunity to make high quality textbooks affordable and reusable by paying once for their production and permitting free copying, updating, and adaptation with the requirement of an open license.
Creative Commons (CC) is a nonprofit organization that designs user-friendly copyright licenses which provide a simple, standardized way to give the public permission to share and use your creative work. Its license are used by authors, artists, and other creators worldwide. Creative Commons U.S.A. is a volunteer affiliate housed American University Washington College of Law’s Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property (PIJIP), which works on CC related issues specific to the United States, including state efforts to expand the use of Open Educational Resources. It will also work on matters related to the interaction of the CC license suite with doctrines in US law, such as fair use.
