Open Innovation and the Creation of Commons

Timothy Vollmer, June 21st, 2016

In March we hosted the second Institute for Open Leadership, and in our summary of the event we mentioned that the Institute fellows would be taking turns to write about their open policy projects. Below is a guest post by IOL Fellow Katja Mayer, a postdoctoral researcher in Science, Technology and Society at the University of Vienna.

IOL2 at work by Cable Green, CC BY 2.0

As a sociologist of science, I am interested in how scientific research, technological innovation, and society are linked together. I was always fascinated by the open source movement, and this fascination grew into a strong advocacy when I started to use free and open source software myself to collaborate with fellow scientists. When I first heard about the open science movement several years ago, I was immediately convinced that it not only makes an interesting object of research (I’m currently working on open research data practices), but also that I would like to help to spread open science practices to my communities. In addition to integrating open science related topics and methods into my teaching, I joined collective efforts to push for open science in national and European science and research policies. I am an active member of the open science workgroup of Open Knowledge Austria, and became a member of the Open Access Network Austria as a member of the steering group for implementing a national open access strategy.

Being able to join the Institute for Open Leadership in March 2016 boosted both my professional development and my confidence in working on a transition to open science. The wonderful feedback I got from this group of inspirational individuals from all over the world still resonates, and continually helps me to shape my vision for the project that I’ll start in September: Exploring best practice examples of Open Innovation and the creation of Commons.

IOL2 Fellows by bella_velo, CC BY 2.0

The idea for this project was developed in Cape Town as a reaction to European policy rhetoric at the time appropriating terms such as “open science” and “open innovation”. We heard pronouncements like, “Europe is not productive enough. In Europe we are not succeeding in transforming research into innovation. Our knowledge is commercialized elsewhere.” These and similar descriptions of Europe’s problematic standing with regard to innovation form the main narratives in policy strategy documents that suggest the solution lies in the “open”. In other words, open innovation and open science should help to create jobs, spur economic growth, and make Europe competitive in terms of the commercialization of knowledge production. What was so alarming in this rhetorical policy move was its monopolization of the term “open” and its one-eyed description of knowledge circulation and sharing. It is one-eyed because its focus rests on a specific economic theory of open innovation, rather than the diverse and longstanding types of openness already practiced by countless people around the globe.

It’s a worthwhile idea that we should enable broad access to knowledge by fostering a stronger culture of entrepreneurship that can lead to the development of new products and services. But this approach lacks an understanding of the potential interplay of traditional and alternative markets, and new and unusual forms of value creation beyond the typical exploitation of intellectual property rights. Also, this framework for “openness” remains vague in its description of the relationship between science and business, and in how collaboration could result in forms of value capture that benefits all relevant stakeholders, especially those who funded the research. Open licenses and open policies are only rarely mentioned. When they are, it’s only in the context of best practices of others such as the Gates Foundation (see i.e. Moedas 2016)

Cape Town present for IOL2 Fellows by tvol, CC BY 2.0

The objective of my open policy project is to crowdsource the collection of best practices of the creation of common goods and shared resources—beyond the one-eyed economic vision currently used to describe open innovation. I wish to investigate how such projects and models have created new markets and new opportunities. By end of September 2016 I will launch a website with a form to input basic information and media of open projects that would widen our understanding of what is possible in support of open innovation. Besides a database where such best practices are stored, I hope to create an interactive diagram with the help of other IOL participants. The diagram will depict selected open projects in relation to each other and across core characteristics of open innovation and the open movement. This way, politicians, administrators, and scientists can have a good sense of the existing open innovation ecosystem today. If you are interested in collaborating, please send me a short email at [email protected].

“New knowledge is created through global collaborations involving thousands of people from across the world and from all walks of life.” – Commissioner Carlos Moedas, May 2015

Envisioning an interactive diagram as a tool for understanding the potential of the open innovation movement results from my wish to make it more coherently visible in teaching. To counter a uniform narrative of open innovation, it’s important to show the manifold dimensions of the open movement. Furthermore, I am particularly interested in the multiplicity of dimensions of openness, including which forms of openness are realized depending on the kind and scope of resources, projects, or works.

In his 2003 book Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology, Henry Chesbrough defined “open innovation” as innovation transcending the boundaries of the organization conducting it and hence as motor of productivity and growth. His notion of openness argues against the characterization that innovation is a linear process. Instead, open innovation introduces new forms of cross-sector and cross-organizational collaboration in knowledge production and design processes. (Note: We still see a linear innovation model today because of current measurement methods and statistical indicators. See Godin, 2006 for more).

Today, a broader conceptual framework for open innovation is embedded in an integrated approach to openness. It is a vital element of the open movement and should not be taken out of this context.

Graphic by Katja Mayer, CC BY 4.0

Open innovation is transcending the boundaries of traditional knowledge production and fosters cross-fertilization of knowledge. It can serve both as a trigger for change towards openness and a cross-connector of multiple segments of the open movement.

In an ideal interpretation of open innovation, we would follow the Open Definition, which means that anyone can freely access, use, modify, and share the content for any purpose (while preserving provenance and openness). But in practice, openness—in its many shades—cannot be reduced to a singular definition. However, we can emphasize its main characteristics:

The open movement rests on common principles such as sharing and collaboration, transparency and participation, quality improvement and enhancement of positive societal impact by co-created shared values. Its core focus is on the actors and communities of openness, their skills and their mind-sets, and their abilities to openly innovate. Without an open ecosystem comprising important elements such as open policies and open licenses, open education, open source, open standards, and open science, open innovation would not be possible. Although it can create and shape markets, fostering the diversity of open business models, open innovation is offering more than just economic impact: it has the potential for structural change in open societies (which goes far beyond the idea of rapid adoption of new technologies).

Similarly, the open science movement is based on the idea that scientific knowledge of all kinds should be openly shared as early as is practical in the research process. The future of scholarly communication – as envisioned by the Vienna Principles – is based on open access to scientific publications and research data. Even more radically, it calls for the participation of all relevant stakeholders in research design and evaluation. Open scientific methodology enables new forms of participation and interaction in order to build and maintain sustainable eco-systems for co-creation. In an innovation context, emphasis should not only be put on the traditional commercialization of research outcomes. Open innovation in science should enable new public spheres, the creation of common goods, and other benefits enabled by an information commons—as explored by Ostrom in her 1990 book Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action.

Open science and the knowledge commons are already highly impacting innovation in society through the development of initiatives such as the Human Genome Project. Collective efforts to study the Zika virus or the US presidential call for an open cancer research initiative will foster new forms of open knowledge production and dissemination, as will any science policy with a strong mandate for open access and open research data. I think it will be of utmost importance to make the case for multiple knowledge markets—where open knowledge practices and commercialization can work in tandem for the benefit of rights holders and the broader public. Therefore, policy urgently needs to address open licensing models. Open innovation should strive to achieve the synergy of commercial and alternative markets, and support new, participatory forms of knowledge production and dissemination. By collecting past and present best practices (and also failures) from the open movement, I hope we can come to a better understanding about open innovation in service of a collaborative and productive commons in the future.

Please join us in our effort to make the open innovation and open science multiple more visible by collecting infos on best practices. If you are interested please send a short notice to [email protected] and you will receive updates about the project kickoff in September.

Katja Mayer
http://homepage.univie.ac.at/katja.mayer 
Twitter: @katja_mat

Further reading:

Fecher, B., & Friesike, S. (2014). Open science: one term, five schools of thought. In Opening science (pp. 17-47). Springer International Publishing. http://book.openingscience.org/basics_background/open_science_one_term_five_schools_of_thought.html

Chesbrough, H. (2003). Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology. Harvard Business School Press.

Godin, B. (2006). The Linear model of innovation the historical construction of an analytical framework. Science, Technology & Human Values, 31(6), 639-667.

Mayer, K. (2015). Open Science Policy Briefing. ERA Austria  http://era.gv.at/object/document/2279

Mayer, K. (2015). From Science 2.0 to Open Science: Turning rhetoric into action? STCSN-eLetter, 3(1). http://stcsn.ieee.net/e-letter/stcsn-e-letter-vol-3-no-1/from-science-2-0-to-open-science

Nielsen, M. (2011). Doing science in the open. http://michaelnielsen.org

Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge University Press.

Have a look at the diagram by the P2P foundation: https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Everything_Open_and_Free_Mindmap

Spotlight on Gage Skidmore, political photographer

Jennie Rose Halperin, June 17th, 2016

Gage Skidmore is a photographer and freelance graphic designer living in Phoenix, Arizona whose high-quality photos of politicians and pop culture have been featured in diverse publications including The Atlantic, MSNBC, Fox News, and The World. The ubiquity of Skidmore’s photos are a testament to his extraordinary success through open licensing.

The 22-year-old started taking photos in 2009 during Rand Paul’s Senate campaign, uploading all of his photos under a CC BY-SA license. Since then, he has accumulated over 1 million photo credits and 1.2 million views on his page. In addition to political photography, Skidmore has been the official photographer for a variety of events and publications, uploading over 45,000 photos to his Flickr account.

Skidmore answered questions over email from CC’s Eric Steuer, discussing his success as a photographer, passion for politics, and how the CC license fuels his work.

What was the first photo you made of a politician? What were the circumstances surrounding that shot?

The first ever political event I attended was an event in Louisville, Kentucky in November 2009, when I attended a healthcare town hall being hosted by the U.S. Senate campaign of then-ophthalmologist Rand Paul. I was a big supporter of his dad, Ron Paul, in his 2008 campaign, and at the time I lived in Indiana, so I was only a couple hours from Kentucky. Over the course of that year I decided to start documenting his campaign, mostly as a supporter, and attended a couple events a month. I uploaded all of these photos onto Flickr under a Creative Commons license for people to use.

Rand Paul at Volunteer Phone Bank, Manchester, NH, Photo by Gage Skidmore CC-BY-SA 2.0

How many political photos have you published since then? What is your typical process for getting these shots?

I’m not entirely sure on the exact amount. The two main things that I cover are politics and pop culture conventions like Comic Con. I’ve uploaded close to 45,000 photos, and most of them are probably politics related.

When did you decide to start using CC licenses to make your photos available to the world? And why did you make this decision?

I saw Creative Commons as a vehicle to help get my photos disseminated easily very early on. Through my involvement with projects like the Wikimedia Commons, I learned about Creative Commons licensing, and chose the license that I thought best fit my desire for my photos to be used in the proper manner. Attribution was very important to me, and still is.

Hillary Clinton with supporters, Photo by Gage Skidmore CC-BY-SA 2.0

Since then, your photos have been used in a variety of ways. Do you notice that they’re mostly used by media outlets? What other ways have you noticed people using your work?

My photos have been used by a lot of different websites, news sites, and sites like Wikipedia, and I’m very happy to see this. I really enjoy seeing my photos being used, especially if they comply with the CC-BY-SA license and attribute me.

Do people typically contact you to let you know they’ve used your work? Have there been any particularly interesting conversations (or stories or even commissions?) that have come out making your work available to the world?

I’ve had people email me just to make sure that I am attributed properly, or to ask permission to use my photos. I was involved with documenting the 2016 campaign, so I did have interactions with some of the campaigns who wanted to use my photos while also abiding by the photo license.
One misconception that a lot of people have asked me about is in regards to the main photo on Donald Trump’s website. It is one of my photos, and his campaign actually attributed me at the bottom of his website. Many people assumed from this that I was a supporter of his, or worked for him in some way, neither of which is true. The Trump campaign simply found my photo, used it on their website, and attributed me for my work.

Donald Trump Campaign Website Banner, Photo by Gage Skidmore CC-BY-SA 2.0

At CC, we’re specifically interested in how creators contribute to a culture of sharing and gratitude by making their work available under CC. What’s been your experience as someone who puts a lot of high value work out there under CC licenses? Do you find that people are grateful for your contributions?

I’ve had a great amount of positive reception from people thanking me for providing quality images of certain people over the years under a Creative Commons license. Wikimedia Commons is one such community that I believe truly embraces its contributors and tries to create a library of images that are Creative Commons or public domain. I’m very much glad to be a participant in this project.

Has the approach you employ helped create any opportunities that might not have been available to you otherwise?

Since I started I’ve had people recognize my name and actually get in contact with me to offer photography gigs, mostly in the Phoenix area where I live now. Getting my name out there helped people get a sense of my work, and that has translated into a lot of paid opportunities to be an official photographer for various events. Some of these include the Arizona Chamber of Commerce, Western Journalism, Conservative Review, Reason Magazine, the Mises Institute, Campaign for Liberty, the Iowa GOP, several different centers at Arizona State University, and some freelance work that has allowed me to photograph people like the President of the United States.

I’m always excited to see what presents itself day by day, and it really all goes back to my involvement with Creative Commons that first allowed me to get my name out there and break into a field that is constantly changing and evolving.

Bernie and Jane Sanders, Photo by Gage Skidmore CC by SA 2.0

New Chilean law would make it harder for authors to freely share audiovisual works

Timothy Vollmer, June 16th, 2016

2° Feria Tecnológica Audiovisual DuocUC by il_tommy, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

In May we learned that Chile’s Chamber of Deputies approved an amendment to a bill that would create a new, unwaivable right of remuneration for authors of audiovisual works. The law would apply to all audiovisual works, even those published under open licenses. This would mean that audio and video creators are supposed to be compensated even if they do not wish to receive royalties. Creative Commons and CC Chile are concerned that the bill could create unnecessary complexity for authors who want to share their works under CC licenses.

Of course authors should be able to be paid for their work. But with over 1 billion CC licensed works on the web, we also know that many authors simply want to share their creativity freely under open terms to benefit the public. For example, educators and scholarly researchers create and share works primarily to advance education and to contribute to their field of study—not necessarily for financial remuneration.

All CC licensors permit their works to used for at least non-commercial purposes. When an author applies a Creative Commons licenses to her work, she grants to the public a worldwide, royalty-free license to use the work under certain terms. The license text specifically states, “To the extent possible, the Licensor waives any right to collect royalties from You for the exercise of the Licensed Rights, whether directly or through a collecting society under any voluntary or waivable statutory or compulsory licensing scheme. In all other cases the Licensor expressly reserves any right to collect such royalties.”

Creative Commons and CC Chile sent a letter [English] [Spanish] to the Senate Education and Culture Committee stating our opposition to the legislation. We respectfully requested that the Senate vote against the bill, or offer an amendment so that authors may continue to share audiovisual works under Creative Commons licenses without imposing an additional burden such as having to agree to an unwaivable right for remuneration.

The bill is moving through the senate committee, and you can take action now to tell Chilean lawmakers to keep open licensing options for video creators. 

• Chilean Lawmakers: Don’t Kill Open Licensing! [English]
• Legisladores chilenos: ¡No acaben con el licenciamiento abierto de obras audiovisuales! [Spanish] 

Redefining Open: MOOCs and Online Courseware in the Age of Creative Commons and Wikipedia

Eric Steuer, June 15th, 2016

The guest post below was written by Peter B. Kaufman of Intelligent Television.

—

When the Open Courseware movement first started – its Big Bang probably took place in mid-June 2001, when Mellon Foundation president William G. Bowen, Hewlett Foundation’s president Paul Brest, and MIT president Charles M. Vest announced the initiative at MIT – our understanding of rights and licensing and the full range of our opportunities for accessing and sharing knowledge was more primitive than it is today. We didn’t yet know truly how to share knowledge online, nor did we know how to permit, license, and further facilitate the use, reuse, and remix of our content. It would be two years before Creative Commons licenses, also launched in 2001, would grace a million works. And it would be five years before Wikipedia, also founded in 2001, would publish its millionth English-language article.

Today, almost 15 years later, a new order of magnitude is required to calculate the extent of the commons. Wikipedia and its sister projects have seen more than 2.6 billion edits to date; now the online, open encyclopedia gains over 10 edits per second – 20,000 articles per month worldwide – and English Wikipedia alone averages 800 new articles posted per day. Creative Commons has more than a billion licenses in circulation. CC-licensed works were, according to CC, viewed online 136 billion times last year alone, and the growth in the use of this content worldwide, while still challenging to track, appears to be commensurate.

So how is it that today’s edition of open courseware – massive open online courses – don’t really intersect with the commons? Today there are thousands of hours of academy-produced video online – together representing the investment of tens of millions of dollars by universities and other cultural and educational institutions in online educational media. And, since 2001, major philanthropic foundations – Ford, Gates, Hewlett – and U.S. federal government agencies have accelerated open licensing mandates for their grantees. Yet most of the open courses and open courseware projects that universities are producing to date, and most of the ones that they are producing today, are far from truly open: far from being able to be welcomed by the keepers of the commons into the legally shareable universe, far from being licensed in ways that make them free. Open Courseware launched at MIT, where Richard Stallman, the visionary of free software and oft-cited inspiration behind Wikipedia and CC, keeps his office, yet most MOOCs, like most university video, lie outside the commons, and are destined to stay outside unless we do something.

The “Redefining Open” Project, part of a larger advocacy initiative on opening educational video that Intelligent Television is leading with core support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, explores why MOOCs are not open as the open in their name might suggest and puts forth suggestions about what might be done to help. Over the next three months the project will review the licensing frameworks for open courseware to date; analyze the rights anatomy of educational video; describe the state of educational media production and distribution in 2016; and address how production, distribution, archiving, and preservation processes might be changed to achieve greater openness and greater return on investment for many of the institutions funding MOOC development today. In October 2016 the project will present a series of next steps for MOOC producers to realize the promise that the founders of Open Courseware first envisioned 15 years ago.

About the author

Peter B. Kaufman is founder and executive producer of Intelligent Television in New York and former associate director of the Columbia University Center for Teaching and Learning. He served as conference co-chair of LEARNING WITH MOOCS II and is the author of, among other works, “Video on Wikipedia and the Open Web: A Guide for Cultural and Educational Institutions” for the Ford Foundation, The New Enlightenment: The Promise of Film and Video in the Digital Age, and, also with the support of the Hewlett Foundation, The Columbia Manual of Video Style.

Tell the European Commission to #FixCopyright

Timothy Vollmer, June 13th, 2016

This post was remixed from the blog of the Communia Association, whose content is dedicated to the public domain.

Through the Communia Association, Creative Commons and several CC Europe affiliates have responded to the copyright reform consultations of the European Commission. Currently, the Commission is asking for feedback on the “role of publishers in the copyright value chain” and on “freedom of panorama”. The window for providing responses ends on June 15. Communia has already submitted its detailed response. We think the Commission should stop the harmful link tax and support commonsense sharing of publicly viewable cultural works.

It’s important that the Commission hears from you! Be sure to submit your responses to the survey by 15 June. There is a guide to assist you in answering the questions at http://youcan.fixcopyright.eu/.

Ancillary copyright = Link tax

The Commission is considering introducing a new right which would permit content publishers to extract fees from search engines for incorporating short snippets of—or even linking to—news articles. This is why the measure is called a “link tax.”  

Adopting new rights for publishers above and beyond the extensive rights they already enjoy under copyright law would be dangerous and counterproductive. Spain and Germany have already experimented with similar versions of the link tax, and neither resulted in increased revenues for publishers. Instead, it likely decreased the visibility (and by extension, revenues) of their content—exactly the opposite of what was intended.

Not only is a link tax bad for business, it would undermine the intention of authors who wish to share without additional strings attached, such as creators who want to share works under Creative Commons licenses.

Adopting a new neighboring right for publishers would harm journalists who rely on information-gathering and reporting tools like news aggregators, services like Google Alerts, and social media. It would have significant negative consequences for researchers and educational institutions by adding an unnecessary layer of rights that will make it more difficult for educators and researchers to understand how they can use content as part of their education and research activities.

Finally, the adoption of a link tax would create additional barriers for users and online information-seekers. Many users that rely on curated news aggregators like Google News, or even RSS readers or other apps that reproduce snippets of content from news articles. If an additional right for publishers is established, users would find that these existing news products and services will likely be disrupted, their prices increased, or even discontinued altogether (as we’ve seen in Spain with Google News). Popular social networking apps and websites used by hundreds of millions of people could be negatively affected too.

Freedom of Panorama: Commonsense rules for sharing culture

Freedom of panorama refers to the legal right to take and share photos, video, and images of architecture, sculptures and other works which are located in a public place. The sharing of photos taken in public places is an example of an everyday activity that should not be regulated by copyright. We know that the lack of harmonization around the freedom of panorama has negatively affected users who wish to share images of public architecture and sculpture on sites like Wikipedia. We support the adoption of a broad right for freedom of panorama, and it should apply to both commercial and noncommercial uses of images of architecture, sculpture, and other objects in public spaces. The exception should be mandatory across the EU, and should cover both online and offline uses.

Make your voice heard!

Time is running out to tell the Commission to do the right thing: No additional rights for publishers; protect and expand freedom of panorama. Be sure to check out http://youcan.fixcopyright.eu/ and submit your responses by June 15.

CC Australia Supports Commission Recommendations for User-friendly Copyright Reform

Timothy Vollmer, June 9th, 2016

This post was contributed by Stuart Efstathis for Creative Commons Australia.

Image by Sierra_Graphic, CC0

The Australian Productivity Commission has recommended important changes to Australian copyright law that support content creators and users in the digital age. On 29 April 2016, the Commission released a Draft Report on reforms to Australia’s intellectual property laws based on the principles of effectiveness, efficiency, adaptability and accountability. Creative Commons Australia strongly supports the passage of the Copyright Amendment (Disability and Other Measures) Bill 2016, as recommended by the Commission. That Bill will introduce extensions to copyright safe harbours and simplify the existing statutory license provisions. We also support the Commission’s draft recommendation to introduce a fair use exception into Australian law.

The Commission’s Recommendations

The Productivity Commission concluded that “Australia’s IP system is out of kilter, favouring rights holders over users and does not align with how people use IP in the modern era”. The Draft Report contained a number of useful recommendations that would make Australia’s outdated copyright laws relevant in the digital age:

• Australia should introduce a fair use exception to copyright. Fair use should replace the current fair dealing exceptions and ensure copyright laws regulate “only those instances of infringement that would undermine the ordinary exploitation of a work at the time of the infringement”;
• Under current Australian law, copyright in unpublished works lasts forever. This should be removed, allowing full use of orphan and out of print works;
• Circumvention of technologies designed to control geographic markets for digital content should not be unlawful. The law requires clarification;
• All publications funded by State and Federal governments, directly or through university funding, should be free to access through an open access repository within 12 months of publication; and
• Copyright safe harbours should be expanded to include all online service providers without an expansion of liability for copyright authorisation.

Creative Commons Australia’s Submissions

Creative Commons Australia made submissions in response on 3 June 2016, supporting many of the Productivity Commission’s recommendations. CCAU’s submissions were guided by three key principles: to ensure access to and use of content is not unnecessarily restricted; that creation and innovation is encouraged; and that open access and open licensing is supported.

Fair Use

Australia needs a fair use exception to address the needs of consumers and creators of content in a digital market. Consumers and creators need support for new expression, which necessarily builds upon existing knowledge, culture, and expression. CCAU fully supports the implementation of the replacement of fair dealing with a fair use exception. Fair use is a flexible exception more suited to the digital age and is likely to align better with consumer and creator expectations for reasonable content use. Fair use encourages the use of content for innovative purposes, reflecting the primary objective of copyright. The Australian Law Reform Commission has issued an extensive report recommending the introduction of fair use and the Productivity Commission has supported this.

Copyright Term and international law reform

Australian copyright law has steadily increased its focus on protecting rights holders over the last two decades. The Productivity Commission suggests that this is reflected in the recent extension of copyright terms from life of the author plus 50 years, to life plus 70 years. The Commission notes that this move imposed a significant cost on consumers with no corresponding public benefit. The difficulty in reforming this area is due to an overlapping web of international agreements that entrench the minimum term of copyright protection (including the Berne Convention, TRIPS, the Australian-US Free Trade Agreement, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement). As a result, Australia does not have the ability to independently determine the appropriate extents of our national copyright law. CCAU recommends a start to the difficult process of disentangling intellectual property laws from international agreements that do not advance national interests.

Unpublished Works

CCAU supports the recommendations of the Productivity Commission removing the perpetual copyright protection afforded to unpublished works under Australian law. A significant amount of Australian cultural heritage remains unjustifiably locked up in unpublished work. This content cannot be digitised, archived, preserved, or reused. This can be rectified by the passage of the Copyright Amendment (Disability and Other Measures) Bill 2016.

Geo-Blocking and the ‘Australia Tax’

Australian consumers experience higher prices, long delays, and a lack of competition in digital content distribution markets. This is known as the ‘Australian Tax’. Under current law, it is not always clear whether Australians have the right to circumvent geoblocking technology to access media goods and services sold in other markets. CCAU recommends that Australian law be clarified in this regard, and supports an amendment to the Copyright Act to include exemptions for all types of media, in the encouragement of a competitive digital market in Australia.

Open Access

CCAU supports open access to articles, research and data. Open access improves research efficiency, provides assurance of greater scientific integrity, and reduces the overall costs of research infrastructure. For information to be useful, rights to re-use this content need to be clearly detailed through the use of open licensing. This can be achieved through the use of Creative Commons licensing.

Safe Harbours

Australian creators are currently disadvantaged by safe harbour exceptions that are too narrow to allow distribution of content in the digital market. Safe harbours provide the legal certainty required for content hosts to distribute creator content. Enacting laws which promote legal access and broader use of copyright content is also the most effective way to reduce infringing activity. CCAU supports the extension of safe harbours to all online service providers.

Council of the European Union calls for full open access to scientific research by 2020

Timothy Vollmer, May 27th, 2016

Science! by Alexandro Lacadena, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

A few weeks ago we wrote about how the European Union is pushing ahead its support for open access to EU-funded scientific research and data. Today at the meeting of the Competitiveness Council of the European Union, the Council reinforced the commitment to making all scientific articles and data openly accessible and reusable by 2020. In its communication, the Council offered several conclusions on the transition towards an open science system:

• ACKNOWLEDGES that open science has the potential to increase the quality, impact and benefits of science and to accelerate advancement of knowledge by making it more reliable, more efficient and accurate, better understandable by society and responsive to societal challenges, and has the potential to enable growth and innovation through reuse of scientific results by all stakeholders at all levels of society, and ultimately contribute to growth and competitiveness of Europe;

• INVITES the Commission and the Member States to explore legal possibilities for measures in this respect and promote the use of licensing models, such as Creative Commons, for scientific publications and research data sets;

• WELCOMES open access to scientific publications as the option by default for publishing the results of publicly funded research;

• AGREES to further promote the mainstreaming of open access to scientific publications by continuing to support a transition to immediate open access as the default by 2020;

• ENCOURAGES the Member States, the Commission and stakeholders to set optimal reuse of research data as the point of departure, whilst recognising the needs for different access regimes because of Intellectual Property Rights, personal data protection and confidentiality, security concerns, as well as global economic competitiveness and other legitimate interests.

You can read the rest of the conclusions here. Crucially, the Council said that “open access to scientific publications” will be interpreted as being aligned to the definition laid out in the Budapest Open Access Initiative: free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.

Uruguayan rights holders seek to roll back progressive copyright reform

Timothy Vollmer, May 27th, 2016

Law, by Woody Hibbard, CC BY 2.0

Uruguay is in the process of updating its copyright law, and in April a bill was preliminarily approved in the Senate. The law introduces changes that would benefit students, librarians, researchers, and the general public by legalizing commonplace digital practices, adding orphan works exceptions, and removing criminal penalties for minor copyright infringements. University students were the original proponents of the limitations and exceptions bill.

But after its initial approval, collecting societies and publishers created a stir in the media to roll back the bill. And yesterday, a document was released that outlines the views of the author’s collecting society (AGADU), the organization representing book publishers (CUL), and the university students (FEUU).

According to CC Uruguay, these organizations have come to an “agreement” that would remove or modify many of the positive portions of the bill. The changes would have far-reaching negative consequences for users, educational institutions, libraries, and the public. They include:

• Eliminating the exception that permits copying for personal use. This could make illegal everyday practices such as making personal backups or format-shifting legally-acquired content.

• Retaining the possibility for criminal penalties for minor infringements. This could mean that users that are technically infringing but who do not create any financial harm to the author could still be liable for monetary damages of up to 45,000 US Dollars, or even imprisonment. This could include harmless, widespread social practices like downloading files without intent to distribute or profit from them. However, it should be noted that the existing Senate bill recommends that such matters be handled via civil—not criminal—law.

• Drastically limiting the scope of exceptions and limitations for education. Their recommendations seek to eliminate the ability for teachers to make translations or adaptations of copyrighted works within their educational institutions. For those uses that are permitted, they want to restrict the scope of the exemption to cover only reproducing short portions (up to 30 pages) of textbooks and “educational materials”. And the organizations say that only public educational entities should be able to take advantage of the copyright exception. Private and community educational institutions would be excluded. However, the current Senate bill is more supportive of exceptions and limitations for education. It permits both translations and adaptations of copyrighted works within educational institutions. It also does not discriminate against private and community institutions. Furthermore, the Senate version does not limit reproductions to only “educational materials”. This is important in order to take into account the wide variety of resources that are necessary for instruction in higher education today, but which might not fit with a traditional definition of “educational.” For example, music students need access to musical works, and many other subject areas need to be able access and use fragments of literary, scientific, and philosophical works. Finally, the Senate bill does not impose an arbitrary page limit for how much of a copyrighted work may be reproduced. Instead, it allows for greater flexibility in how much may be used; if there is a dispute, a judge will be able to assess whether the use was reasonable—taking into account the specific context of the educational use.

• Adding severe restrictions on libraries. The recommendations seek to permit public lending only for written works. This would mean that it would restrict the public lending of musical, audiovisual, and photographic works. The Senate bill already legalizes the public lending of software.The coalition suggests that the law should be changed from permitting public lending for nonprofit purposes to to lending “whose activities do not directly or indirectly involve any commercial purpose”. This change could further restricting the ability for libraries to lend materials.Furthermore, reproductions of copyrighted works made by libraries at the request of a user would also be subject to the arbitrary 30-page limit. Finally, the Senate bill allows libraries to make a copy of a work for replacement purposes when the work is no longer available at a reasonable market price. The group of organizations suggesting the changes wants to eliminate this provision.

• Enacting restrictions on freedom of panorama. The Senate bill legalizes a broad freedom of panorama—which means that anyone is permitted to draw, photograph, film, or create 3D models of architectural works, monuments, and works of arts exhibited permanently in public places. However, the coalition wants to restrict freedom of panorama for only non-commercial uses. This would mean that photographers, filmmakers, or artists who want to market their own works containing public monuments and architecture would be violating the law if they didn’t get permission from the rightsholder in the underlying work.

CC Uruguay believes that the recommended changes would be harmful for users, educational institutions, libraries, and the public. The changes would eliminate two of the most important protections in the Senate reform bill: the decriminalization of non-commercial infringement, and personal-use copying. The changes would also severely restrict other exceptions and limitations to copyright, including those for education, library lending, and freedom of panorama.

Their document recommends scaling back most of the user-friendly provisions in the bill, cuts other items that were drafted by the Council of Copyright in the Ministry of Education and Culture—and which already received unanimous political support by all parties in the Senate.

CC Uruguay thinks that Senate policymakers should view these recommended changes as only one voice among many stakeholders. Decisionmakers must also take into account the diversity of voices from educational institutions, libraries, and civil society organizations. The laws regulating access to creativity and culture should support the needs and interests of the public, and should be reached through a broad and democratic debate among all stakeholders.

Controversy: A Recap of the copyright issues surrounding Prince’s estate

Jennie Rose Halperin, May 23rd, 2016

Prince performing in Brussels during the Hit N Run Tour in 1986, CC-by-2.0

Today at Copyright On!, Britton Payne discussed the unique copyright situation surrounding Prince’s estate. This potentially long and bitter battle could shape the future of music copyright to come. Prince fought a number of legendary copyright battles, which makes this current fight over the ownership of his works particularly interesting.
As Payne writes, “Prince was a tireless advocate of his rights as an artist, using copyright law to control and protect his artistic footprint, even when it seemed like it would cost him more than it would gain. For different reasons, it appears that more contentious exploration of copyright law will continue to be part of his legacy.”

Prince reworked his contract with Warner Brothers in 2014 to regain access to his early back catalog, which resets the clock on this law. However, every year more of Prince’s back catalog will be up for termination of transfer law, which means that his estate can gain ownership of an increasing number of works, and by extension, control the money that continues to pour in from his most popular titles.

#happybdaybassel

Jennie Rose Halperin, May 22nd, 2016

Bassel Khartabil, CC by 2.0

On May 22nd, more than four years after his detention and six months after his disappearance, Bassel Khartabil (Arabic: باسل خرطبيل‎) will turn 35 years old. Bassel’s imprisonment by the Assad regime is a brutal human rights violation and the continued lack of answers about his fate is a hindrance to the fight for free information in the Middle East and beyond. While Creative Commons has been actively involved in the Free Bassel Campaign since the beginning, Bassel’s rumored death sentence makes today’s call to action particularly pressing.

As Lawrence Lessig wrote in 2012, “We distract ourselves with a million other things, but distraction doesn’t change reality: thousands have died; thousands more are being held; tyranny still lives.”

Bassel Khartabil is a Palestinian-Syrian Free Software and Free Culture activist and project lead for Creative Commons Syria. Bassel’s work on Mozilla Firefox, Wikipedia, Fabricatorz, and other open culture projects with his research company Aiki Labs has been credited by the European Parliament with “opening up the Internet in Syria and vastly extending online access and knowledge to the Syrian people.” Shortly after his detention, Bassel was named one of the top 100 global thinkers by Foreign Policy for “insisting, against all odds, on a peaceful Syrian revolution.”

This weekend, we’re joining with his friends around the world to continue to demand his immediate return to life as a free global citizen.

Take action at the Free Bassel campaign website.