CC Newsletter

• There’s been a lot of discussion and debate recently about CC’s NonCommercial and NoDerivatives terms.

• A recent dispute involving Wikimedia demonstrates CC licenses' ability to withstand legal scrutiny.

• If you work with K-12 students in the US (or if you are one), then you’ll want to know about the Engage 2012 student video competition.

• Ten years after the release of the Budapest Open Access Initiative, OA advocates recently released updated recommendations in support of open access around the world, touching on areas including policy, licensing, sustainability, and advocacy.

• After more than two years of hard work, the CC China Mainland 3.0 licenses are ready for use.

• We end on a sad note by remembering Lee Dirks, a strategist at Microsoft Research Connections and friend of the open access movement.

We rely on our supporters to continue our work enabling stories like those above. 

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Creative Commons was built with and is sustained by the generous support of organizations including the Center for the Public Domain, Google, LuLu, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Mozilla Corporation, The Omidyar Network, Red Hat, the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as members of the public (you!).

• We've just posted Draft 2 of Version 4.0 of the CC license suite. Learn what's new in 4.0 and what issues are still being discussed.

• Have you tried CC's new license chooser yet? Jonathan from our web team explains the factors that went into the redesign.

• July was a busy month for CC and the Peer 2 Peer University, as we worked together to lay the groundwork for a School of Open. Find out what we've been up to and what's next.

• Looking for curriculum about CC? Check out CC Aotearoa New Zealand's excellent collection of resources.

• An interesting new research paper explores the role of open licensing in the democratization of music.

• CC community support intern Natalya Berenshteyn writes about her work developing materials to support our international affiliate network.

• In this fascinating interview, CC Korea's DaYe Jung discusses music and copyright law in Korea.

Help Us Build a School of Open

The School of Open is a collaboration between Creative Commons and P2PU (Peer 2 Peer University). Its aim is to provide easily digestible educational exercises, resources, and professional development courses that help individuals and institutions learn about and employ open tools, such as the CC licenses.

Why build a School of Open? Universal access to and participation in research, education, and culture is made possible by openness, but not enough people know what it means or how to take advantage of it. We imagine artists, educators, learners, scientists, archivists, and other creators improving their fields via the use of open tools and materials.

Participate in our upcoming events and find out how you can get involved with the School of Open.

Read more.

Elinor Ostrom
Holger Motzkau 2010 / Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons
CC BY-SA

Honoring Elinor Ostrom

A collective sigh of sadness went around the Creative Commons community last month when we heard that Elinor Ostrom passed away. Elinor is greatly admired for her pioneering studies on the governance of common-pool resources (the Commons) and collective action across the fields of economics, social science, politics and policy.

Her seminal book, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, was published in 1990; however, Elinor’s work on common property began in the 1960s. Her studies showed that “ordinary people are capable of creating rules and institutions that allow for the sustainable and equitable management of shared resources,” and resources held in the commons may reduce potential over-use or under-investment, and so enable sustainability. At the time of publication it debunked the conventional thinking that ‘common-pool’ finite resources required ‘top down’ regulation or private ownership to maximize their utility and prevent depletion.

Read more.

Please Help Us Free Bassel, Open Source Developer and CC Volunteer

On March 15, 2012, Bassel Khartabil was detained in a wave of arrests in the Mazzeh district of Damascus. Since then, his family has received no official explanation for his detention or information regarding his whereabouts. However, his family has recently learned from previous detainees at the security branch of Kafer Sousa, Damascus, that Bassel is being held at this location.

Bassel Khartabil, a Palestinian-born Syrian, 31, is a respected computer engineer specializing in open source software development, the type of contributions the Internet is built upon. He launched his career ten years ago in Syria, working as a technical director for a number of local companies on cultural projects like restoring Palmyra and Forward Syria Magazine.

Bassel Khartabil has been unjustly detained for nearly four months without trial or any legal charges being brought against him.

Read more.

• Last week at the World Open Educational Resources (OER) Congress, UNESCO member states unanimously approved the 2012 Paris OER Declaration. Read Cable’s wrap-up and the full declaration. For more OER news, catch up on the latest in OER from Poland.

• There have been several exciting developments in open data over the past month.

• Governments, academic publishers, and the public are exploring more ways to make research freely accessible.

• You only have six days left to vote for your favorite Why Open Education Matters video.

• CCHits is a website promoting Creative Commons–licensed music. Meet creator Jon Spriggs and find out why he started CCHits.

• Share your favorite sharing stories with Shareable and you could win $1000 in credit for services like Airbnb and Zipcar.

• Creative Commons Korea hosted an art happening in which composers turned family stories into music. Check out the music and read CC Korea’s English-language coverage.

• Attention musicians: it’s time for the fourth annual Free! Music! Contest. Enter your CC-licensed works and celebrate free music.

Report from "What the World Bank's Open Access Policy Means for Development" panel

The World Bank hosted an event called What the World Bank’s Open Access Policy Means for Development. Participants included Peter Suber from Harvard University, Michael Carroll from American University (Mike is on the Board of Directors at Creative Commons), and Cyril Muller and Adam Wagstaff from the World Bank. The discussion was timely given the Bank’s recently-announced Open Access Policy and Open Knowledge Repository. The World Bank’s Open Access Policy requires that all research outputs and knowledge products published by the Bank be licensed Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY) as a default. The conversation revolved around the impact and potential for World Bank research — and open access in general — for development in countries around the world. For example, how will access and reuse of research under an open access policy create opportunities to solve large global challenges such as climate change and hunger? Read more.

Mike Linksvayer by Joi
CC BY

A big thanks to Mike Linksvayer

Many of you know Mike Linksvayer, the first CTO and then Vice President of Creative Commons. Mike started at Creative Commons back in 2003 (almost a decade ago!), and since then has shepherded CC through a period of great expansion, providing leadership and support for efforts across various initiatives and around the world. He has also been a great help to all of us this past year, during the transition from part-time to full-time CEO. We can not begin to name everything that Mike has done, not only for Creative Commons, but for free and open culture generally, so we’ll just name a few, with the caveat that, if ever there was a jack of all trades, he is Mike Linksvayer. Since 2003, Mike has helped to… Read more.

We now welcome artists to begin working on artwork for the art competition of the Liberated Pixel Cup! Zombies, potions, spaceships, werewolves, whatever! We're looking forward to seeing what contributions you can build to match the style guide. On that note, one of the primary goals of Liberated Pixel Cup was to create a clear style that many people could collaborate on. We're happy to announce that that style guide is released, along with some base assets to build off of and a fun "walkaround" demo that shows how the tiles can fit together. Read more.

• CC Costa Rica represented us at WIPO for the 9th session of the Committee on Development and Intellectual Property (CDIP) and made a statement on the public domain. Read it here.

• COMMUNIA also explores the role of the digital public domain in its final report. For four years, COMMUNIA gathered over 50 members from academia and the CC community to research, promote, and preserve the digital public domain.

• More than 25,000 people signed the U.S. petition to support public access to publicly funded scientific research.

• The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) and UNESCO have published a report documenting government open educational resources (OER) policies.

• CC Sweden designed a fantastic poster explaining Creative Commons and wants you to help translate it to other languages.

• The Walters Museum recently uploaded 19,000 images to Wikimedia under CC BY-SA and in the public domain.

• In education, the Saylor Foundation has expanded its $20,000 open textbook challenge to include the creation of new texts under CC BY. Interested academics may submit a brief statement about their proposed text.

• Lastly, we hosted a successful conference for grantees of the $500 million U.S. Department of Labor's Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Grant Program (TAACCCT) program. Grantees learned how to implement the CC BY license requirement of the grant for their educational materials.

The Liberated Pixel Cup: an epic contest for gaming freedom

We’re pleased to announce the launch of the Liberated Pixel Cup, a free-as-in-freedom game authoring competition being launched in cooperation between Creative Commons, the Free Software Foundation, Mozilla, and OpenGameArt! Liberated Pixel Cup is a two-part competition: make a bunch of awesome free culture licensed artwork, and program a bunch of free software games that use it. Hopefully many cool projects can come out of this… but that will only happen if people like you get involved! Technically the project will run in three phases. Read more.

World Bank announces Open Access Policy and launches Open Knowledge Repository under Creative Commons

The World Bank has announced a new Open Access Policy! Effective July 1, 2012, the Open Access Policy requires that all research outputs and knowledge products published by the Bank be licensed Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY) as a default. As part of the first phase of this policy, the Bank launched a new Open Knowledge Repository with more than 2,000 books, articles, reports and research papers under CC BY. Read more.

In March, Creative Commons, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Open Society Institute launched the Why Open Education Matters Video Competition. The goal of the competition is to raise awareness of Open Educational Resources (OER) and solicit short, creative videos that help explain what Open Educational Resources are and how they can be beneficial for teachers, students, and schools everywhere around the world. There’s been lots of interest in the competition, and we wanted to remind you that the deadline to submit your video is June 5, 2012. Read more.

• The Austrian government, Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research, Italian Chamber of Deputies, and Harvard Library released their data using CC tools.

• Nature Publishing Group also released publication data for more than 450,000 articles using CC0.

• Musician Dan Bull released “Sharing is Caring” into the public domain using CC0. The song reached #9 on the UK independent chart.

• CC's CEO, Cathy Casserly, was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Open University for her contributions to open education.

• The Data Journalism Handbook, a collaborative effort to help journalists find and use data for better news reporting led by the Open Knowledge Foundation, was published under a CC BY-SA license.

• We launched the Creative Commons 3.0 Switzerland ported license suite. Huge thanks to the CC Switzerland team for their hard work and dedication in perfecting the Swiss ported licenses.

• We are hosting a workshop on the Learning Resource Metadata Initiative (LRMI) at this year's Content in Context conference as part of the Metadata Lab on educational metadata adoption.

• Lastly, we are seeking a Project Coordinator for Science and Data. Please forward to all qualified and interested folks!

We are pleased to post for public comment the first discussion draft of version 4.0. This draft is the product of an extended (and unprecedented) requirements gathering period involving input from CC affiliates, community and stakeholders. Thanks to all of you who contributed your valuable time and energy in the policy discussions and drafting sessions in support of this draft. We crafted this first draft (v4.0d1) mindful of the overarching design goals first articulated at the 2011 Global Summit:

• Producing a 4.0 suite that addresses pressing challenges of important adopters, including those in countries where localized version of CC licenses have not existed, and never may, for any number of reasons;
• Maximizing interoperability, reducing license proliferation and promoting standardization where possible; and
• Longevity and ease of use.

Read more.

Still from ARTHUR C CLARKE PREDICTS THE INTERNET
provided by Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)
CC BY-SA

Australian Broadcasting Corporation releases archival news footage under CC BY-SA

CC Australia has announced that the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Australia’s largest public broadcaster and news service, has used Wikimedia Commons to release a selection of historically significant television news stories under CC BY-SA. While other news broadcasters are also making material available under CC licenses, what makes this project significant is that the news segments that have been released aren’t obscure archival material or raw footage, but rather polished stories broadcast by some of the ABC’s premier current affairs programs about major events in Australian history. It includes, for example, news reports on the Apollo 11 moon landings, the Azaria Chamberlain case, and the floating of the Australian currency. Not to mention this 1974 footage of Arthur C. Clarke predicting the internet, with uncanny accuracy. Read more.

National Libraries of Spain and Germany, and Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt Museum open up their data using CC0

CC0 has been getting lots of love in the last couple months in the realm of data, specifically GLAM data (GLAM as in Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums). The national libraries of Spain and Germany have released their bibliographic data using the CC0 public domain dedication tool. For those of you who don’t know what that means, it means that the libraries have waived all copyrights to the extent possible in their jurisdictions, placing the data effectively into the public domain. Relatedly, the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt Museum, a major design museum in New York, has released the collection data for 60% of its documented collection into the public domain, also using CC0. Read more.

• We are hiring for a variety of positions, including Regional Project Managers for Africa and the Asia-Pacific, community support interns, Counsel, Communications Manager, and a Senior Accountant. See all of the awesome opportunities to work with Creative Commons!

• We re-launched CC Canada and established a new team for CC Argentina.

• In more CC data news, we are pleased to announce that the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research has developed an open data portal under CC BY.

• The deadline for the Why Open Education Matters video competition is June 5, 2012. Enter now for a chance to be the voice of open education and win $25,000.

• GoodSemester, a new learning platform geared toward academic productivity, enabled note sharing, copying and remixing under CC BY-SA.

• In related open educational resources (OER) news, the OER university will provide free learning with formal academic credit — thanks to Creative Commons!

• Lastly, we urge you to check out our revised CC education page, and contribute to the OER policy registry we are working hard to create. This registry will be a place for policymakers and open advocates to easily share and update OER legislation, OER institutional policies, and supporting OER policy resources.

Why Open Education Matters Video Competition! by Creative Commons, U.S. Department of Education, and Open Society Foundations

Creative Commons, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Open Society Foundations announce the launch of the Why Open Education Matters Video Competition. The competition will award cash prizes for the best short videos that explain the use and promise of free, high-quality open educational resources and describe the benefits and opportunities these materials create for teachers, students and schools.  Video submissions are accepted until June 5, 2012 and winners will be announced July 18, 2012. Cash prizes include $25,000 (first), $5,000 (second), and $1,000 (Public Choice Award). Judges include prominent artists and education experts, including Davis Guggenheim, Nina Paley, James Franco, and many others. Learn more.

$500 million available in Wave 2 of U.S. Department of Labor grant program for community colleges

The U.S. Department of Labor has released a Solicitation for Grant Applications (SGA) for Wave 2 of the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Grant Program (TAACCCT). Wave 2 makes available an additional $500 million to “eligible institutions of higher education… with funds to expand and improve their ability to deliver education and career training programs that can be completed in two years or less…” As with the first wave of funding, all educational materials created from grant funds must be released under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. For Wave 2, the CC BY license must also be applied to modifications made to pre-existing, grantee-owned content using grant funds. Read more.

Creative Commons and Open Education Week

Creative Commons and its affiliates are participating in Open Education Week! a week-long series of global events on and offline to to raise awareness of the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement and its impact on universal access to education. 90 organizations are contributing by hosting workshops, conferences, evening events, and online webinars. The first events started March 1, but the official week is March 5 through March 10. It’s not too late for you to join. Learn more.

• The next CC Salon London — Open Educational Resources: Policies for Promotion — is Thursday, March 29! The event is free and open to the public but registration is required. Learn more.

• The U.S. Washington State Senate passed an OER Bill for K-12 education! HB 2337 will help eliminate high textbook costs for one million students. Learn more.

• The Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt Museum dedicated its data collection to the public domain using our CC0 public domain dedication tool.

• The German Aerospace Center (DLR) also adopted CC by incorporating CC licenses, including CC Attribution, for its photos and media.

• CC community member, Makerblock, has developed a new WordPress plugin that makes it easier for you to add CC licenses to your website and blog.

• We launched the new Creative Commons 3.0 Ireland suite of licenses.

• Lastly, we urge you to act now to support public access to federally funded research by supporting the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) which would, "require federal agencies to provide the public with online access to articles reporting on the results of the United States’ $60 billion in publicly funded research no later than six months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal." Learn more.

Happy New Year! We head into 2012 with exciting new CC developments from all over the world.

CC Kazakhstan and CC Rwanda

At the end of 2011, we announced two new CC Affiliates from Kazakhstan and Rwanda. Led by Rauan Kenzhekhanuly and including Almas Nurbakytov, Nartay Ashim and Balashov Talgat, the Kazakhstan team is supported by Wikibilim, a non-profit organisation which also operates as the local representative of Wikimedia. The Rwanda team, led by Jacques Murinda and including Fred Byabagabo and Prosper Birama, is working in conjunction with the Open Learning Exchange (OLE), an NGO supported by the Rwandan Ministry of Education, which aims to provide universal access to basic education by 2015. We welcome both these teams to our Affiliate Network, and look forward to working with them as they develop the CC community in their regions. This brings the total number of official CC Affiliates to 72, the highest level since the project launched in 2002. Read more.

Ugandan 3.0 Licenses now open for public discussion

Many of you already know that we have begun working on the next version of licenses, the 4.0 suite. Even while this process has begun, we are finishing a few remaining, important 3.0 ports. One of these is the Uganda 3.0 license suite, which we are pleased to announce is now open for public discussion. This is particularly noteworthy, as the Ugandan license suite is only the second tailored suite from the Sub-Saharan Africa region to reach the public discussion stage (after South Africa). These new licenses will be useful to many Anglophone African countries that share similar copyright laws and legal histories. We welcome all those who are interested to view the Uganda BY-NC-SA draft and contribute their comments this month. Read more.

With the exception of CC0, the Creative Commons licenses are only for granting permissions to use non-software works. The worlds of software and engineering have additional concerns outside of the scope of what is addressed by the CC licenses. 3D printing is a new medium which encompasses both the creative domains of culture and engineering, and often 3D printed works do not fall neatly into either category. The purpose of the following article is to explore the similarities between the community that has grown around 3D printing and that of the commons which CC strives to empower. A later article will explore problems with adopting CC in the 3D printing community. Read the article here.

• Our campaign is still going on through January 15. If you haven't donated yet, now's your chance! (Thanks a million to those of you who have. We could not continue to exist without you.)

• The Creative Commons Board of Directors held its year-end annual board meeting on December 9, 2011.

• One week later, CC celebrated the 9th birthday of its license suite.

• We are still protesting SOPA and PIPA. You can, too.

• You can also apply for a 2012 Google Policy Fellowship with us. Deadline to apply is February 3, 2012.

• Or you can apply to be the CC Director of Strategic Partnerships! And be responsible for building and executing a comprehensive fundraising strategy.

• CC’s Russian affiliate Institute of the Information Society (IIS), in collaboration with the UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies, organized an international seminar and expert meeting last month in Moscow.

• Lastly, we'd like to give a shout-out to some recent developments at Mozilla: the release of Mozilla Public License 2.0 and a great publication called, Learning, Freedom & the Web, based on Mozilla’s eponymous festival in Barcelona last year, published under CC BY-SA.

Public Discussion Launches for Version 4.0 of the CC Licenses

We are pleased to announce the beginning of the public discussion process that we expect to result in version 4.0 of the Creative Commons license suite. The 4.0 discussions held at the 2011 Global Summit confirmed for CC the need to commence the 4.0 discussion process now if we wish to consider issues relevant to important would-be adopters in a timely manner. As explained following legal sessions at the Summit, version 3.0 is working (and will continue to work) really well for many adopters, but the reality is different for others. Read more.

Stop [U.S.] American censorship of the Internet

The SOPA and Protect IP bills threaten every site on Internet, but would especially harm the commons. While standard public licenses like CC have lowered the costs and risks of legal sharing and collaboration, SOPA and Protect IP would drastically increase both the costs and risks of providing platforms for sharing and collaboration. Sites ranging from individual blogs to massive community projects such as Wikipedia to open education repositories to Flickr and YouTube could be in jeopardy if a single possibly infringing item causes an entire domain to be taken down. Read more.

We are thrilled to relay Wired.com’s announcement that from now on all Wired.com staff-produced photos will be released under a CC Attribution-Noncommercial license (CC BY-NC)! Wired.com’s Editor in Chief Evan Hansen says, “Creative Commons turns ten years old next year, and the simple idea of releasing content with “some rights reserved” has revolutionized online sharing and fueled a thriving remix culture. At Wired.com, we’ve benefited from CC-licensed photos for years — thank you sharers! Now we’re going to start sharing ourselves.” Read more.

• The Creative Commons Annual Campaign is in its urgent stages. If you haven't already given, donate $50 or more now and receive a limited edition "I Love to Share" t-shirt!

• A Kickstarted project immediately following the nuclear disaster in Japan, Safecast is a global sensor network that has shared more than 1.25 million radiation data points under the CC0 public domain dedication.

• In related data news, Europeana has published its Licensing Framework, which supports re-use of data and content through CC legal tools (CC0, the Public Domain Mark, and CC BY-SA), providing guidelines for their appropriate applications.

• The German UNESCO Commission released a practical guideline to open content licenses, featuring the CC license suite as its primary example.

• A recent study by the Australian National Data Service found that the benefits of free and unrestricted public sector information (PSI) outweighed costs.

• The first Spanish CC movie (in Catalàn) premiered in Spanish cinema. Check out "Interferències" under CC BY-NC-SA.

• Creative Commons was at WIPO, represented by CC Costa Rica at the 8th Session of the Committee on Development and Intellectual Property (CDIP) of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

• Lastly, this is just a friendly reminder that the White House wants your input on Public Access to Data and Publications by January 2, 2012.