All of the MP3 lessons on our Praxis LanguagePod’s are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. We originally did this to make it as easy as possible for students and teachers to use the product; instead of having to clear copyrights before use, teachers only need to attribute the lesson to us and then are free to use the lesson in their classes.
Creative Commons has just launched a database of case studies and we have added our LanguagePod’s to the list, e.g. ChinesePod.
A while back silicon.com asked me: “Do you get annoyed that people rip your material off? “
I don’t really see it as ‘ripping us off’ and my answer now is the same as it was back in 2006:
No. We encourage people to use our Creative Commons-licensed podcasts as it assists us with our product development and helps push our brand into the community.
Frankly, we haven’t done a particularly good job of promoting this aspect of our service, but there still have been a few unique applications.
Back in 2006, Sam Brown tried to mashup ChinesePod with hypnosis.
His introduction to the service:
http://www.sambrown.co.uk/chinesepod/dow…
One big potential application of this licensing regime is the possibility of reforming university language labs. It seems a little ridiculous to me that after more than a decade since the Internet was introduced, students are still forced to schedule a time in a computer lab and then have to physically travel there. They are not able to consume the learning materials at home or on-the-go because of licensing restrictions by the publishers of the learning materials. This is not ‘learning on your terms’ and I hope we can play a role in putting an end to this practice. The OpenCourseWare Consortium is leading the way in this regard and hopefully we can help them out with their language learning materials.