An open internet is crucial for all creators, thinkers, and makers on the web

As expected, yesterday the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted along party lines to repeal the 2015 Open Internet Order that ensured net neutrality in the United States. Without net neutrality, broadband providers like Comcast and Verizon will have free reign to block or discriminate against content or applications that are carried over their networks.

In the preceding weeks, there was a huge outpouring across the web and in the streets in support of net neutrality. Creative Commons has always supported network neutrality. We joined thousands of organisations calling on everyone to make their voice heard to the FCC and Congress.

Though this vote feels dire, the fight to protect the open internet isn’t over. Even with yesterday’s vote, there are still ways through Congress or the courts that could restore net neutrality in the U.S.

A free and open internet is an essential utility of everyday life and Creative Commons licensing is only one factor in a healthy open internet ecosystem. A strong digital commons requires universal access to basic digital infrastructure, and enforceable rules that promote fair competition and freedom of information.

The FCC vote yesterday was a step in the wrong direction, and clearly antithetical to the wishes of the public. We stand in solidarity with countless internet users, creators, teachers, startups, and information-seekers who can only thrive with strong net neutrality protections. We’ll continue the fight for the open internet for all.

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In June we shared our community plan to implement the new CC Network Strategy, showing the benefits of a new international structure with an enhanced Chapter model, working together at a global scale with the Network Platforms, and a new governance structure to support the network.

The Creative Commons network has always been one of the critical pieces of the success of the CC licenses. At the outset, CC was mostly a legal project trying to reach a global audience of users and creators. Years later, our community required new ways of working together, with projects and advocacy and education playing a bigger role, and enhanced means of communication and collaboration as central to the community. The new Network Strategy, written collaboratively by community members, was the primary outcome of a process for change and adaptation begun at the CC Summit in Seoul, in October, 2015.

Implementing the strategy properly, with all the needed infrastructure, has been a big task. While the first network grew organically over many years, this one is being designed deliberately on concrete timelines. It has involved our web dev staff, legal review, communications, and lots of work from the Advisory Group team. It has been more complex than anyone thought, but we’re proud of what we’ve done to bring it together. We want to get it right for all of you, and we think we’ve done significant work that will serve the network well, and avoid problems in the future.

What we have done:

• We created a suite of documentation for the Network Strategy transition.
  • A Guide for vouching applicants. This document provides guidance about what to take into account at the moment of deciding to vouch for someone to join the Network
  • A Guide for approving new members. This guides members of the Membership Council regarding criteria for approving already vouched applicants.
  • Chapter Standards and Guidelines. This document provides a more detailed explanation of how Chapters should organize, indicating standards, responsibilities, membership, and examples of what else a Chapter can do.
  • An updated Charter. Minor updates, but we improved the language of policies and established a better way to make future changes. We also created an official version available on the CC website.
• We built a brand-new network website and member application and management infrastructure. We have implemented BuddyPress as a backend to manage members and their applications, and we have been creating brand new plugins to support the entire process of application, vouching and approval within the website. This has been a massive project for design and development. We expect this to be the “door” for people who want to be connected with the CC community in any capacity (including membership). So, we are creating ways to make people feel welcomed and driving them to different ways to be engaged with CC.
• We massively updated Terms of services and Privacy Policies. This was an intended consequence of the new Strategy. We created brand new ToS for the Network website and also radically changed our entire Privacy Policy, not just to comply with the requirements of the whole memberships/vouching system, but also to update it after some years of use.

All of this work is vital, but it has required us to stretch our original timelines. We will now open up memberships a bit later, and will as a result also extend the time before the first GNC meeting to allow chapters to form, meet, and select their representatives. What we are doing here is massive and will significantly grow the network. We’re grateful for all your work and energy. We want to do everything right, and we prefer to launch with everything in place and to be ready to communicate to the world what we are doing, inviting all to be part of this process.

What’s next:

• We are shifting the timelines. We are finishing the design and backend of the Network website by mid-December. We start communicating more broadly in December and early January, and will open membership on January 15th. The window for the first Chapter meeting will be in March 2018.
• The first Global Network Council meeting will be after the Summit — it will not be during the summit, as we had initially imagined. We will use the Summit to advance the core work of Network Platforms and Working Groups, which are open to everyone, for community discussions and chapter meetups, and to engage new members. We will also use the Summit to advance into conversations about governance and the Network. We plan to have the first GNC meeting by May/June 2018.

The Global Summit will celebrate the CC Network and the affiliate teams that built the CC community we have today. It will be a great moment to celebrate what we achieved during all these years and what brings us together, as we move into the future. We expect this Summit to be a place to share ideas and strategies to improve -and fight for- the commons at a global scale.

The new timeline means we will have more time to prepare for this big change – more time to talk with your local peers, host more meetings and conferences, and maintain better and more impactful projects. From now to the Summit, we will continue supporting activities around the globe with our Activities Fund. We encourage you to keep advocating for openness in your communities and to consider joining the network as soon as we are “open” for members.

 

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Act now to stop the FCC from rolling back fundamental protections for the open internet!

Net neutrality is under attack…again. On the day before the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai released a draft plan that would repeal net neutrality in the United States. Net neutrality is the principle that internet service providers (ISPs) should treat all online data the same, and not discriminate or charge different amounts for different audiences. Pai’s proposal—if passed—would completely repeal the 2015 rules set by the previous administration’s FCC. This means that internet service providers “will be free to experiment with fast and slow lanes, prioritize their own traffic, and block apps and services.” ISPs would be required to disclose when they are engaging in these types of activities. The FCC will vote on the proposal on 14 December.

In July we joined hundreds of organisations, thousands of online communities, and millions of internet users in calling on the FCC to protect net neutrality. We wrote:

There are over 1 billion CC-licensed works online, shared freely with anyone with access to the internet. The majority of these works are hosted on content platforms such as Wikipedia, YouTube, Internet Archive, Flickr, and Vimeo. What if you couldn’t access your favorite works because your ISP wants you to see instead content they’re getting paid to promote? What if the video that you created and uploaded online is slowed so others can’t watch it? We know that Creative Commons licensing is only one factor in a healthy open internet ecosystem. A strong digital commons requires universal access to basic digital infrastructure, and enforceable rules that promote fair competition and freedom of information.

The repeal of net neutrality rules in the United States would deal a massive blow to fundamental consumer protections, creativity and innovation, and information sharing online.

The threat to the open internet could not be more dire. Make your voice heard in support of net neutrality. Message and call Congress and attend an in-person protest on December 7.

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Yesterday we learned that the Tribunal de Bogotá—the Colombian appellate court—has affirmed the lower court’s acquittal of Diego Gómez.

Gómez is a scientist from Colombia who has been criminally prosecuted for the last three years for sharing an academic paper online. When Diego was a student in conservation biology in Colombia, he had poor access to many of the resources and databases that would help him conduct his research. He found and shared an academic paper online so that others could read and learn from it. Gómez didn’t get permission to reshare the article, and subsequently was prosecuted for copyright infringement. He faced up to eight years in prison, along with a substantial monetary fine.

In May 2017 Gómez was acquitted of criminal charges. But within days of the ruling, the article author’s lawyer appealed the decision, meaning that even after several years of criminal proceedings, Diego’s case continued to the appellate court.

Yesterday’s decision confirms the lower court’s ruling.

A global campaign—Compartir no es Delito (Sharing is not a Crime)—has been supporting Diego since 2014. The action was spearheaded by Colombian digital rights organisation Fundación Karisma.

Instead of prosecuting students for sharing knowledge, governments and communities should be encouraging the free exchange of scientific information by reinforcing positive norms around scholarship and collaboration, promoting open access to research, and eliminating out of control copyright remedies that serve no reasonable public interest purpose. Furthermore, we should encourage our governments to boost national legislation that promotes the release of public funded research results as open access.

You can read more about Diego’s case here, and learn about open access here.

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The “journey to open” looks different for all of us. For some, it’s the realization that we can access, modify and share educational resources for free; for others it’s about fundamentally changing the way we think about student learning, pedagogy, and ownership and control of the resources we use in schools, colleges and universities. For many of us, the choice to go open is a reflection of our principles, politics and values.

My journey to open was an actual journey. When I started as the Director of eLearning for the Washington State Community Colleges, I toured the state listening to students’ stories about their journeys to a degree and a better life. In my travels, I discovered that many students had to make difficult decisions related to the cost of their education. Students told me were forced to decide between buying a textbook and taking one more class, paying for their child’s doctor’s appointment, or fixing a broken car. The students I met were falling behind because of the high cost of textbooks; they asked me “how can I succeed in my class if I can’t afford the required resources?” I made it my mission to change how we use public funds to build, license, maintain and share educational resources to ensure equal opportunity for all students, no matter their economic situation.

Education is a fundamental human right and essential for the exercise of all other human rights. Because we can share digital open educational resources (OER) for near $0, I believe we have a moral and ethical obligation to do so.

Will you chip in at $5 per month to ensure all students have the opportunity to learn?

As a taxpayer, I expect my government to ensure all publicly funded educational resources be openly licensed. People around the world expect the same – the public should have open access to the educational and research resources it funds.

This year, Creative Commons helped:

• Bangladesh national government draft an open licensing policy
• European Union Erasmus+ program update to its open licensing policy
• US Department of Education adopt an open license rule
• Global Book Alliance integrate open licensing policies into its funding proposals
• 30 national ministries of education adopt the 2017 Ljubljana OER Action Plan at the 2nd World OER Congress
• UN Environment Program draft an open licensing policy on research and educational resources.
• US State Department publish its Open Licensing Playbook for Federal Agencies
• The Commonwealth publish an “OER Policy Brief” for its ministers of education.

Only $5 per month will help us ensure that all publicly funded educational resources are publicly accessible.

At CC, we’re leading the charge for Open Education together with our mighty group of 62015+ CC Open Education Platform members. We’re growing the number of open education leaders globally through training, mentorship and projects. For us, that means mainstreaming open education content, practices and policies, working with governments to make all publicly funded education resources openly licensed, co-leading the open education movement, and creating new production and procurement models that scale OER adoption.

I’m passionate about changing the education landscape – can you contribute?

Governments, public education institutions, educators and students need to fight for universal, inclusive and equitable education opportunities for all.

Help us lead the charge.

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