Creative Commons Offers Flexible Copyright Licenses for
Creative Works http://creativecommons.org/

While the Foundation's investment has resulted in significant positive momentum in the open content field, challenging financial, technological, legal, cultural, and language barriers must still be addressed.  A number of open content projects to address these barriers are under way.  They are creating the infrastructure to facilitate the use of openly available materials by novice as well as technically sophisticated institutions. However, this infrastructure is still in its infancy, and yet-unknown roadblocks may hinder progress.

For example, in the area of intellectual property rights we have supported Creative Commons to provide both leadership in this field and a easy to use way to license content so that it can be openly used.  http://creativecommons.org/

Another key area is the development of easy-to-use tools to help users to produce and reuse openly accessible content.   Developing nations, in particular, express a keen interest to contribute to open educational resources, both by creating new materials and by adapting content as appropriate to diverse cultural and linguistic settings.

A third challenge is commonly labeled the digital divide.  We are particularly interested in ways of insuring that people in the developing world have regular and reliable access to the kinds of OER materials that require broadband internet service. 

A fourth core issue is the sustainability of open educational content collections; who finances the development of open content materials, and later, who maintains the content, are ever-present issues.   The Hewlett Foundation is interested in creative approaches to address these barriers to the use and re-use of open content.

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