ALISON: What do you think the VET sector should be doing to ensure that we both contribute to and harness this growing understanding of eBusiness? How, as a sector, can we best equip ourselves for what you describe as a `new wave of activity'"?

And for the individual VET practitioner. What message would you like to give us? (In terms of what we should be thinking about and learning/doing to crest the `wave' rather than be swamped by it).

ROGER: I'll answer both of these together. But the scene is changing fast, and first I need to provide some background on where we've been, and what's currently going on.

Educators have always had a great deal of scope to leverage off what other people have already done.

If an educator wants to use what copyright law calls 'a substantial part' of a work, then a copyright licence (sometimes called 'a permission') needs to be acquired first. In practice, 'a substantial part' generally means a chapter from a book, or one-tenth of a paper, or something quite crucial to the work such as a key equation or formula or the diagram around which the whole work is built.

Educational institutions can claim a 'statutory licence' to copy materials. But the Act doesn't say how much such a licence costs. During recent years, a scheme has been in operation under Part VB of the Copyright Act. The 'collecting agencies' like CAL that gather royalties on behalf of authors review the copying undertaken by many educational institutions, and charge an annual fee for it. That has turned out to be a very expensive exercise; so educational administrators are looking for better ways of doing business!

If an educator wants to use something less than 'a substantial part', they have automatic permission to do so, under the so-called 'fair dealing' provisions in sections 40 and 41 of the Copyright Act.

Another important constraint is the need to avoid plagiarism. This is the incorporation of material in such a manner that the reader may interpret it as being the original work of the educator. This problem can be overcome by making clear that the material came from elsewhere, and by providing citations to the works from which it was taken.

So, until recently, educators have needed to know a little bit about copyright and plagiarism, follow some guidelines, and perform some administrative tasks; but they enjoyed considerable freedom to get on and use the materials they needed.

Unfortunately that freedom is under serious threat. Large corporations that control music and film-recordings, and some software companies (especially Microsoft) have lobbied the U.S. Administration and Congress for substantial extensions to their rights. Not only has the Congress granted their wishes, but it has also recently imposed those same terms on the Australian government, through the so-called Free Trade Agreement.

This would greatly increase the incentives for all copyright-owners to use the law, and technology, to protect their works; and to charge higher prices for them. Quite soon, educators may find it much harder to locate and preview material, and more expensive to license it.

Naturally, many people are resisting that tendency. The positive thing that can be done is to institutionalise sharing. Everyone who originates materials should declare that they are the copyright-owner; but should then make the material available under fairly liberal conditions. That's the meaning of 'open content licensing'.

It's important to realise, though, that 'open' isn't the same as 'gratis'. A copyright-owner might charge a considerable amount of money (espcially for something that cost a lot to produce), or a small amount of money, or just the costs of the media and delivery, or nothing at all. All of these might be 'open content', provided that the materials are readily available, for prices that are affordable.

That's been a long, preliminary journey, I'm sorry! But now I can answer the question: "How [can the VET] sector ... best equip ourselves for what you describe as a `new wave of activity?".

Firstly, we all need to stay informed about developments.

Secondly, we should communicate to the Government and the Parliament the vital importance of open and reasonably-priced access to materials needed for educational purposes.

Thirdly, we all need to contribute to the pool of 'open content' by asserting copyright in what we produce, and then making it available under reasonable terms.

That might seem to be difficult; but it isn't. Some years ago, an initiative called AEShareNet was launched. It runs a large catalogue, which is focussed primarily on materials relevant to learning and teaching in the VET sector.

In addition to a catalogue, it makes available a number of copyright licences , which can be easily applied to the works that we produce. (The one that suits me personally, as a substantial author and publisher of educational materials, is the FfE - Free for Education licence).

Now 'I would say this, wouldn't I?', because I'm the chair of the Ministerial company that runs the AEShareNet service.

The fourth thing I would say is that we all need to register our materials in the AEShareNet catalogue, and pick the appropriate licence-type, and make them available under a reasonably liberal 'open content' licence.

And of course fifthly, we should all use that catalogue as one of the first places where we look for materials to use in the courses we teach.

ALISON: What might eBusiness look like and be doing by, say, 2010? Will Open Business models be mainstreamed?

ROGER: Many organisations' business models will have assimilated the messages in my paper. (But not necessarily from me. These ideas are 'in the air', and other people are writing about it, and others are getting on and doing it).

There will still be plenty of organisations that adopt narrow, proprietary approaches to their businesses. But in sectors where information and software are important, there will be strong competition based on open content and open source. The companies will be profit-oriented, but will earn their revenue by adding value to open content and open source. Some of the value-add will be in the content or software itself, but a great deal of it will be in services that help people apply the content or source-code to their own particular needs.

ALISON: Your paper appears to be the first to examine open source and open content approaches as a basis for eBusiness models.

Can you briefly outline what is meant by the terms open source and open content approaches?

ROGER: The closed, proprietary approach to software involves owners of the copyright in software using copyright law to prevent their software from being copied, being adapted, or being re-distributed (either in the original or an adapted form). If those actions are permitted at all, then they are likely to be subject to tight limitations and high fees.

The open source software approach works within conventional copyright law, but uses it in order to achieve openness. Ownership of the software is asserted and exercised, but the owner makes it available under relatively very liberal licence terms.

By 'content' I mean works in text, image, sound and video format, and combinations of them, possibly including software as well (as 'learning objects' do). The concept of open content involves the claiming of copyright, and the granting of relatively very liberal copyright licences. Although the concept has long existed, the term is relatively new, and the literature is still emergent.

People tend to think that Larry Lessig invented the idea when he wrote about 'the future of ideas' and the risk of 'a new Dark Ages' in late 2001, and that the organisation that he established, called Creative Commons, is the primary mover. Both Larry and CC are very important contributors; but AEShareNet started earlier, has been running longer, and has got further. (And of course warnings about 'a new Dark Ages' were being given a lot earlier as well).

ALISON: You say that these approaches are gaining recognition as beneficial alternatives to closed proprietary approaches. Can you give some examples of this? Is it possible that both approaches can peacefully co-exist or is a showdown more likely?

ROGER: They certainly can co-exist. The problem is that large, profit-oriented corporations, especially rampant American companies that score very low on the social responsibility scale, are running scared, and trying to squelch the open source and open content movements. It will be to the very serious detriment of education throughout the world, and to the Australian VET sector in particular, if the copyright supremacists win.

A good example of a market segment in which high-cost, proprietary approaches are likely to dominate for a long time is in video productions, including live films, animation, and cross-over genres that use natural scenes but digitally enhance them to a significant degree.

Music has been dominated by major corporations for many decades. But the capital investment needed to run a recording house has dropped a long way, and the costs of disseminating sound are plummeting.

There will continue to be scope for tightly controlled proprietary approaches, because consumers seem to enjoy combined features involving TV shows, web-sites, SMS messaging, and, very soon now, on-line gaming and on-line gambling interleaved with the shows.

But there's now great scope for part-time musicians to reach out to the world, establish a fan-base, and live off the proceeds of live gigs, and sales of T-shirts and CDs containing variations and digital extras not (yet) on the Web.

We live in exciting times, and educators are right in the midst of it, applying a lot of the same techniques as musos, wannabe novelists, entertainers, and on-line game designers.

ALISON:You briefly discuss the fundamental tension that exists between openness and closedness of content and use the expression `Information Wants to be Free'. What do you mean by that?

ROGER:To be fair, someone used the expression a long time before I did. I researched its origins a few years ago, and published the results (naturally, subject to an FfE licence!).

The best short explanation is: "Information Wants To Be Free. Information also wants to be expensive. Information wants to be free because it has become so cheap to distribute, copy, and recombine---too cheap to meter. It wants to be expensive because it can be immeasurably valuable to the recipient. That tension will not go away". (And the originator of the expression said that in 1987!).

Stewart Brand, and other leaders in this area like John Perry Barlow, have been predicting the current fracas for well over a decade. But the large copyright-owning corporations are battleships that requires many years to change direction. (Or, given that we're talking about education, perhaps I should use a different metaphor: they're very slow learners).

ALISON: If open source and open content are highlighting the need for cyberspace economics to be consolidated and, if as you say, what emerges will be very different from rationalist, neo-classical economics is there a risk we will end up with a proliferation of economists?!!

ROGER: I'm sorry to say that we reached that point many years ago. (I've spent a few years in Faculties full of economists. At least they make the historians, philosophers and theologians seem cheerful).

But more seriously, what I want to see is economics and economists that are relevant. In some of my earlier lives, I studied and applied cost accounting. And basic microeconomics does in fact lay a very useful foundation for understanding the behaviour of costs in a wide variety of settings that involve scarcity of raw materials and scarcity of finished goods.

The problem is that 95% of economists don't even understand 'information', let alone 'digital'. Remember the bloody battles as the discipline of political economy fought for and won a life adjacent to 'real', i.e. 'rationalist', economics? We need the same battle right now, so that Departments of Digital Information Economics can emerge, to apply the right models, conduct useful analyses, and provide appropriate advice to our bureaucrats and politicians.

ALISON: Cyberculture ethos has been characterised as communitarian in nature and clearly different from the assumptions made by most business people.

Is there evidence that both cultures are learning from each other?

ROGER: Consumers are learning, but businesspeople are much slower to catch on.

There's a sign of renewed vigour in the eCommerce world, but many of the business cases are nearly as silly as the dot.coms of the late 1990s. I recently had a look at so-called 'social networking services', which capture people's address-books and then build a business out of them. They're silly (but very dangerous from a privacy viewpoint).

I guess a short answer to the question is that there will always be people who love and live to the dictum that 'greed is good'. Their ethic has no place in it for responsibility to others. They need a tight rein. And the current mania for 'self-regulation' means that they are getting away with murder.

What we all need to do is to recognise those kinds of organisations and individuals, and avoid doing business with them. The majority of the population recognise that you have to temper your profit-motive and co-exist with others. What open source and open content are doing is encouraging people to find a balance between openness and closedness; and to make money, but to make contributions as well.

ALISON: And perhaps the body of theory you are developing is part of this process?

ROGER: I certainly intend it that way. But, quite frankly, the ideas don't need my help: I'm just putting into words what's going on in front of our eyes.

ALISON: You point out that the open source movement has established a reputation for products that have greater integrity and security, largely because they're open to more scrutiny.

Can you give me some examples of this? And also some examples of those markets, to which you also refer, where integrity and quality attract a higher premium? If education is one of these markets, what are the implications for VET?

ROGER: This argument originates in the open source community. It says that 'more eyes' looking at code means that bugs and security vulnerabilities will be found sooner, and fixed sooner.

Proprietary code is looked at by very few eyes. Microsoft possibly has worse programmers than other developers. But even if they're reasonable programmers, their code is not open, and the bugs and insecurities are hidden from public gaze. So criminals and nuisances experiment with Microsoft products, and find out about bugs that way. The first that Redmond knows of a lot of bugs is when the first 'exploit' of the vulnerability has enveloped the planet.

The last few years have shown that keeping code proprietary is irresponsible. When Microsoft is eventually forced to open up, it will be helped by 'white-hat hackers' all over the world, who will flood it with reports of things that need fixing (often with the fix provided gratis as part of the same email!).

A similar argument is being developed in relation to open content, but it's early days yet. One example I have some familiarity with is investigations of plagiarism. It's now very easy for a student (or, indeed, an academic) to find relevant materials and incorporate it into their assignment (or, indeed, their new text-book). But it's also very easy for other people to discover and document the plagiarism; and every teacher (or, indeed, every student in the class) can do the research and catch out the plagiariser.

'More eyes' on content will snare errors in much the same way that it's catching appropriation of other people's work. So it will result in better quality content.

ALISON: It seems to me that there are lots of parallels between evolving eBusiness models, especially those emerging from the open source and content movement, and flexible learning.

What do you think?

ROGER: There seem to be quite a few interpretations of 'flexible learning'. It's like the term 'multi-media' - an attempt to move beyond the first phase (CD-ROMs) and encompass the next few as well (the Web, DVDs, ...).

So I perceive 'flexible learning' to be a broad term, encompassing not just 'eLearning', but also the many kinds of mixed-mode learning and teaching.

It's possible to envisage a strongly proprietary ed environment. Several software-providers certainly tried to achieve it. Some commercial educators keep very tight control over their content.

But let's go back to the early days of university teaching materials on the Web. I did a consultancy for Monash's Commerce and Economics Faculty in 1995-96 (long before MIT and other late-adopters caught up with the digital era). I worked through with them the advantages of open and closed web-sites, and the various ways in which they could 'lock down' the materials.

At first they decided to apply Intranet ideas; but within 18 months they had changed their philosophy, and made it all openly accessible. (Note that open accessibility doesn't mean open slather. You have an implied licence to copy an openly-available web-page for your own use; but not, for example, to incorporate and adapt a substantial part of its content into something you then sell!).

But flexible learning involves re-purposing materials, adapting them to fit to new contexts, and re-formatting them to suit the contexts in which they will be displayed, printed, or (in the case of learning objects) run.

So, yes, I do think that in the flexible learning area it makes most sense for all of us to encourage one another to make our materials available under open content licences, not necessarily gratis, but for fees that are realistic.

And of course I think AEShareNet's set of licence-types offers everything that we need. And I'll offer a prize to anyone who can show that they need an extra one to suit their particular needs!