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" Actually, we are strengthening our ownership of our work by putting a license on it even though we are giving it away freely. This not only protects the OERs we create, but also would strengthen the non-OER content we create. By choosing to give away some of what we create we are showing an active protection of the copyrights we do have (rights being important here)."

"students using the openly licensed material were able to more efficiently internalize and remember the information conveyed. Students also rated the quality of the print version of the OER higher than the commercial equivalent, although the digital version received a lower ranking. The authors acknowledge that "the open textbook (in its first edition) and the commercial textbook (in its tenth) are written by different authors with differences in the breadth and depth of content coverage, organization, and writing style" and that a text's quality leans on several other factors besides the nature of its copyright."

"panOpen and Learnosity announced today that they have partnered to integrate the full suite of Learnosity's assessment and homework capabilities into panOpen's Open Educational Resources-based learning platform. The first of its kind, this partnership creates a resource that preserves the low cost and flexibility of open content while offering advanced digital tools that have previously been reserved for commercially copyrighted content."

"Finding copyright free (public domain) and free to use cartoons (open licensed) can be difficult and the reuse of cartoons in online resources without the necessary permissions is a tricky legal area depending on the facts and circumstances of the case. Here you will find a collection of free to use cartoons that have been licensed in terms of Creative Commons licenses - to visit each cartoonist's site, click on their cartoons shown below. Please do adhere to the terms of use specified by each author."

The bills would create an online library of digital textbooks for the 50 most widely-taken lower division courses at the University of California, California State University and the state's community colleges. The project would get under way when state or private funding becomes available. The digital texts would be "open-source," which means they are not copyrighted the same way traditional texts are, making them much less expensive. The texts are primarily available online; students can typically buy a print-out for around $20, about one-tenth the cost of many traditional textbooks.

""Textbooks are expensive," noted Peter Tsigaris, professor of economics at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia. "And almost all the information is available online. If something else exists that is almost a perfect substitute, and is much cheaper, why would you buy something that is a lot more expensive and outdated?" The tipping point for Tsigaris came two years ago when he determined that available online material was "just as good" as any textbook. He experimented with the idea, using resources such as MOOC content in place of a required text. "MOOCs help organize the information for you," said Tsigaris. "For the students' textbook, I use the Saylor Organization, which is based on the Creative Commons [license], and you can take the material without any copyright issues. Plus I added the Khan Academy to my lectures, and PowerPoint slides, so the students had quite a bit of information.""

Simply put, yes. Yes they can. And should!

Creative Commons licenses are the standard for sharing free content online for individual creators, governments, foundations, and academics. CC licenses have changed the way the internet works, providing a core function to some of the largest content platforms on the web. The result is greater access to knowledge and culture for everyone, everywhere.