Who could resist a protocol that promises to bring simplicity and certainty to the copyright conundrum? The Free For Education Mark, FfE, does just this, heralding a new way to manage intellectual property and web content without having to undertake a journey into Sir Humphrey Appleby territory.
Launched nationally in May by AEShareNet, an ebusiness agent for learning materials, the FfE protocol is a major step forward in encouraging good copyright practice and reducing complexity. As well as having liberal terms and enabling wide access, FfE costs nothing to use – a paragon in anyone’s language.
This month Dennis Macnamara, AEShareNet’s Business Development Manager, talked to our reporter, Alison Cutler about FfE. Dennis is intimately acquainted with the VET sector having had a number of incarnations over his 30 year career and is well placed to explain how the FfE Mark will help us to work smarter.
Alison: Dennis, what is the Free for Education (FfE) 
Protocol or Mark?
Dennis: It’s a way of putting a mark on the materials you own that indicates to educational bodies that they can just use those materials without having to ask your permission, without having to worry about complex copyright issues.
Ideally, you would apply the FfE Mark to those materials you own, which might be, say, marketing materials, or maybe reports, that you’re happy for others to use. You’re not trying to make money from them but you want to provide access for educational purposes without necessarily giving it away to everyone.
Alison: How did the Protocol come about?
Dennis: It evolved from work that was done on the Digital Agenda Review and the Copyright Act under the auspices of the Australian Government. This highlighted the fact that people were being charged for downloading web pages, particularly schools, when really there was no intent by the owner to charge or collect monies. Copyright clearance was particularly fuzzy for web pages. Often they would have copyright statements but it was not clear what this entitled you to do.
As well, many people were spending a great deal of time writing letters to organisations asking for permission to use material from their websites, or pages from reports and other printed materials when, in fact, the organisation would have been happy for their materials to have been used. The process was basically wasting time and resources on both sides and it was realised that a protocol like FfE could only make life easier for everybody, both educational bodies and corporations/government bodies alike.
Alison: How does work?
Dennis: It’s very straightforward. There are no costs involved in using the FfE Mark and it can be easily downloaded from our website at http://www.aesharenet.com.au/FfE/. There are examples of how it can be applied on the site; either in the header or footer or under the major headings and the process is made as simple as possible.
What’s worth pointing out is that you can either apply it to everything or you can apply it to selected things, whichever you prefer. For example you could, say, apply FfE to an entire site or specify certain pages. Or you could say these 5 pages are FfE only, depending on the nature of your site or the nature of your materials.
Basically, the Mark can be placed on a web page to cover its content or on a copyright or other legal notice page of a website to cover all or part of the website’s content. Similarly with other electronic formats including CD-ROMs. The text only version might be used, for example, in emails or newsletters and discussions distributed via email.
Alison: So why should we consider using it? What’s so great about it?
Dennis: Let’s look at it from the intellectual property owner’s side first. There are probably three or four big advantages for them. Firstly, it removes the need for them to respond to a whole range of correspondence. Often the request goes to the wrong person, follow-up phone calls are needed. There’s a lot of administrative work, which the FfE Mark removes from the process. Secondly, the FfE still protects their intellectual property because it’s making it very clear that educational bodies can use it but it’s not being given away to everybody necessarily.
The third factor is that it’s good positioning for them, in terms of the public good. It displays good corporate citizenship. Lastly, and importantly, if you can get your materials highlighted in educational resources, that’s good promotion and publicity for you. And if an educational body has to make a choice between the relative ease of FfE material and other stuff they have to ask permission for, it’s likely they’ll opt for the simple way.
From the educational bodies’ point of view, the big attraction is that there’s no need to ask permission. As soon as you see FfE you can actually go ahead and use it, and use all of the material whereas under the Statutory License you can only use 10%. And you won’t get hit for a payment for use either.
Alison: So there are clear advantages for both sides. That leads me to my next question. How is it going so far? Who’s taking advantage of the Mark?
Dennis: Well, it was launched in May so I guess we’ve only been going for 3 months. I suppose, in truth, it won’t really take off until we’ve got enough materials with the FfE Mark and people get used to it and can say “Ah, FfE, I know what that means!”
Everyone we talk to about it on both sides of the fence think it’s a really good idea. In fact, this week AEShareNet’s going to an Australian Marketing Institute seminar to talk about FfE with marketing professionals because it has a particular relevance to them.
We’ve got about half-a-dozen websites marked at the moment and some educational bodies, the RMIT’s Copyright Management Service is one that springs to mind, actively promote our approaches on their websites. Our strategy at the moment is to try and get some really significant websites, such as the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), or a government department, and then others will follow.
One of the issues we encounter is that in order to get a big organisation ‘marked,’ it represents quite a policy shift for them because they’ve already got a complex copyright infrastructure. So we’re usually dealing with about 3 levels of people.
Alison: Only 3 levels?
Dennis: Well, yes! Achieving both policy change and operational change with that level of complexity is bound to be a slow process. Nonetheless, we aim to have 100 websites marked by the end of the year. And that’s only the beginning, I predict. We want to get organisations like DET NSW to use the mark, for example, because they’re a logical spearhead for FfE, as is the Australian Flexible Learning Community!
If we’re going to get take-off, what we really need is for all the people who read this article to go out into their organisations and talk about FfE so that any time they want to acquire a copyright clearance for that organization, they can suggest how much better it would be if the FfE Mark could be applied. There’s only four people in AEShareNet but there are thousands of people out there who can point out the benefits of FfE. We just did an insert on the FfE protocol in the TAFE teachers’ magazine to raise their awareness of its benefits.
Alison: So where can we find out more about ?
Dennis: Pretty much everything you want to know abut FfE, and more including a comprehensive list of Frequently Asked Questions, is available at
http://www.aesharenet.com.au/FfE/
And if you want to talk to me personally, I can be contacted on ph. (02) 9715 8983, email: dennis.macnamara@aesharenet.com.au
Alison: Thank you, Dennis.
