Badges and Licensing

Badges and Licensing

by Gavin Henrick -
Number of replies: 1
Picture of Plugin developers

I recently did a blog post about images / files usage in E-learning ( http://www.somerandomthoughts.com/blog/2013/07/19/copyright-licensing-and-files-for-use-in-e-learning/ ) where i discuss the rights required for badges.

According to OpenBadges Terms of use “As an Issuer, you hereby grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty free license to use badges (including all the content and code in them) pushed to us by Earners from you in connection with the Mozilla Badge Backpack."

This requirement makes total sense as they and other backpacks / display organisations would need to be able to display the images globally.

So how are people ensuring that they are making badges for which they are in a position that they can transfer these rights to others ?

Are you making / commissioning your own?

Are you buying royalty free images?

Those implementing badges already or about to - have you started train your staff to be aware of these issues?

Just wondering what other peoples views are on this topic.

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In reply to Gavin Henrick

Re: Badges and Licensing

by Randy Thornton -
Picture of Documentation writers

Gavin,

It's clear the issuer has the legal responsibility to have the rights to the images they are issuing. Any trademark or copyright infringement would be the issuer's problem, not Mozilla's.

One thing I'd suggest right away is that the "badge issuer" email should be carefully considered. I'd suggest creating a distinct one for this purpose at the site level and seriously consider whether to tell teachers at the course level that they can use their own email or not as Issuer.

Next, since there is no method yet of revocation, I'd suggest telling course badge issuers to use expiration dates, especially for test badges.

Until there's a way to have a sitewide collection of badges to pull from, a good practice would be to put all "official" images somewhere for teachers to use as blanks.

Many schools have some sort of official policy already on copyrighted material use by faculty. The language probably covers images used in badges already, but it might be good to make that explicit.

 

Randy

 

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