Patent and copyright policies; requires Secretaries of Administration and Technology to establish. (HB1941)

Waldo J., tracking this bill in Photosynthesis, notes:

Releasing copyrighted state materials under the Creative Commons licensing system? Yes, yes, yes. A thousand times yes. Very impressive.

Mark Burnet writes:

This was started as a resolution for the VA DOE based on the Capetown Declaration

http://www.capetowndeclaration.org/read-the-declaration

Resolution

Establish a policy of the use of the Creative Commons License by public education institutions with respect to publicly available education content resources and assessments.

WHEREAS, the Commonwealth of Virginia expends public funds to create educational materials for use by the Public School Systems of Virginia; and

WHEREAS, the use of these materials are released to the public for improvement of student learning and assessment; and

WHEREAS, these materials may have broader educational use to the betterment of the citizens of the Commonwealth; and

WHEREAS, citizens should have the freedom to use, customize, improve and redistribute educational resources for the public good without undue constraint, and

WHEREAS, educators worldwide are developing a vast pool of educational resources for distribution and on the Internet, open and free for all to use;

now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED that materials created for and copyrighted to the Educational Agencies of the Commonwealth of Virginia be licensed, at such time as they can be made publicly available, under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike 3.0 United States license or placed in the Public Domain. Taxpayer-funded educational resources should be open educational resources and educational resource repositories should actively include and highlight open educational resources within their collections.

Ian Burnet writes:

I love this bill. It is such an improvement over the old policy in every way. I really hope this one goes through.