This paper outlines a legal mechanism that has been developed, known as open content licensing that provides copyright owners with a facility for sharing their content with the world and thereby establishing a zone or space on the Internet for lawful and seamless access. It is not a mechanism that will be used by everyone, but increasingly throughout the world there is a call for publicly funded knowledge to be released in a manner that allows open access and a level of re-use. Importantly, open content licenses can be represented in machine readable metadata which can allow the technology to understand the legal obligations attaching to a particular document. On the business front, companies like Revver have embraced the notion of open content and used this as the basis for their service or advertising driven business. Ultimately the belief is that if we can harness the great store of information that exists we can tackle problems and provide insights and solutions on a scale greater than we have ever done before.

Keywords

collaborative learning · copyright · Creative Commons · licences · reuse · technology · web 2.0