Clip Art and OER

[Simon Thomson]

I have a burning question - what are the licensing arrangements for Microsoft clip art and OER use.
From what I have read of the license it appears that clips art is not permitted to be "distributed" and in a sense I assume that sharing an open educational resource would constitute "distribution"?

I also then considered that clip art was available as part of the office install so in fact most people would already have access to the clip art materials and to access the word/powerpoint file with the clip art in so would in theory have a license to use the clip art anyway! (an assumption on my part maybe because those users with Open Office would not necessarily have a license to use clip art!)

I am aware that there are alterntaives to microsoft clips art such as openclipart.org but do I really need to get staff to change all of their current word/powerpoint docs which contain Microsoft clipart and swap it out for open clip art!!!

Oh dear - I don't fancy telling them that one!