What are the values that resonate the most for you in the Commons? Transparency? Innovation? Sharing? Gratitude? In today’s polarized political environment, how can we come together to champion values that we share, and make the world a better place?

I’ve repeated three truths to guide CC’s message, and I’d like to share them with you as this year comes to a close:

• Everything is political
• Pick big fights with your enemies, not small fights with your friends
• Collective acts are our collective power

These three concepts guide my work at CC – they’re how we build our communities through organized political action and how we pick our battles, from copyright and policy reform to open access to universal access to research and education.
But CC’s work is not only copyright policy and free content on the internet. Our community is where the real power of CC lives, and this year has shown that our work is only possible in collaboration with our Global Network of lawyers, academics, creators, copyfighters, librarians, educators, and makers of all types, in every sector. We’ve developed a brand new collaborative strategy to unleash that community, and we hope you’ll join us.
To build that momentum, we announced a number of incredible partnerships this year, from our landmark release of over 400,000 images with the Met Museum to the unveiling of #NEWPALMYRA, a tribute to our late friend Bassel Khartabil. In August, we joined with Wikimedia and Mozilla to fund a fellowship in his honor.

The need for collective action has never been greater and our work never more encompassing – that’s why I’m asking you to join us with a donation of any amount.

This year has been a year of record growth in the commons, but it’s also been a record year of growth for our movement. In April, we convened our biggest summit ever in Toronto. In collaboration with a 30 person volunteer program committee, we brought together 400 commoners from around the world, including 100 scholarship recipients. Five brilliant international women delivered memorable keynotes. In a time when good news feels hard to come by, our summit was a moment of hopefulness, gathering people from around the globe to share successes and discuss the future of our movement for equal access to knowledge. This year, we’ll be gathering from April 13-15, 2018, and we’d love to see you there.

Our movement is only growing stronger by the day, but we couldn’t have done it without your support.

I’m filled with gratitude for our community and hope that you step up to join in the next phase of our work, including updating our tools and licenses and launching our CC Certificates program to train librarians, educators, and others on CC, copyright, and open culture. We’ll be announcing new legal tools, new community empowerment programs, and even more partnerships in 2018. We can’t wait to share it all with you.

PS We’ll be launching even more ways to donate monthly to the commons. Only $5 per month will ensure our work continues. Can you join?

Donate now

 

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The Open, Public, Electronic, and Necessary Government Data Act (OPEN Government Data Act) has passed the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill’s text was included as Title II in the Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking Act (H.R. 4174). If ultimately enacted, the bill would require all government data to be made open by default: machine-readable and freely-reusable. Essentially, the legislation would codify the 2013 Executive Order on Making Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information.

According the bill text:

‘open Government data asset’ means a public data asset that is

(A) machine-readable;
(B) available (or could be made available) in an open format;
(C) not encumbered by restrictions that would impede the use or reuse of such asset; and
(D) based on an underlying open standard that is maintained by a standards organization;

[and]

‘open license’ means a legal guarantee that a data asset is made available

(A) at no cost to the public; and
(B) with no restrictions on copying, publishing, distributing, transmitting, citing, or adapting such asset.

Along with the Data Coalition, Sunlight Foundation, and dozens of other organisations, Creative Commons has been supportive of the push to make government data available under open licenses or in the public domain using the CC0 Public Domain Dedication. In an earlier letter, we said this legislation will allow the United States to remain a world leader on open data, ensure the value of this public resource will continue to grow as the government unlocks and creates new data sets, and encourage businesses, nonprofits, and others to invest in innovative tools that make use of open government data.

H.R. 4174 was passed by a unanimous voice vote. Now the Senate will consider its counterpart to the House bill, S. 2046.

The post U.S. Pushes Closer To Making Government Data Open By Default appeared first on Creative Commons.

Today over 70 international copyright experts released the Washington Principles on Copyright Balance in Trade Agreements. The document, endorsed by Creative Commons, urges trade negotiators “to support policies like fair use, safe harbor provisions, and other exceptions and limitations that permit and encourage access to knowledge, flourishing creativity, and innovation.”

The principles were collaboratively drafted at a meeting in Washington, D.C. last month, with input from a wide range of legal academics and public interest organisations from Canada, Mexico, and the United States. The principles are released to coincide with the fifth round of talks of the renegotiation of NAFTA, which takes place this week in Mexico City.

Signers lay out the following copyright principles to ensure consumers’ digital rights:

• Protect and promote copyright balance, including fair use
• Provide technology-enabling exceptions, such as for search engines and text- and data-mining
• Require safe harbor provisions to protect online platforms from users’ infringement
• Ensure legitimate exceptions for anti-circumvention, such as documentary filmmaking, cybersecurity research, and allowing assistive reading technologies for the blind
• Adhere to existing multilateral commitments on copyright term
• Guarantee proportionality and due process in copyright enforcement

In the lead up to the renegotiation of NAFTA, we urged negotiators not to expand the copyright provisions to create new (and likely more onerous) rules than those that already exist in the agreement. We said that if the copyright provisions must be reconsidered, a negotiating objective should at a minimum be to advocate for stronger protections for copyright limitations and exceptions; user rights should be granted a mandatory and enforceable standing alongside the rights of authors.

But no one (or more accurately, no one from any public interest or consumer rights organisation) knows what’s in the agreement. NAFTA, like TPP and other trade agreements before it, is being negotiated completely in the dark.

It’s safe to assume that copyright and other intellectual property rights will continue to be included in bilateral and multilateral trade negotiations, so it’s imperative that the negotiations be radically reformed to make the proceedings transparent, inclusive and accountable. We believe it is unacceptable that binding rules on intellectual property, access to medicines, and a variety of other trade-related sectors will be reworked within a process that is inaccessible and often hostile to input from members of the public.

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The Create Refresh campaign is a new project to highlight the concerns of creators regarding the EU’s proposed changes to copyright law. Supporting organisations include Creative Commons, Kennisland, La Quadrature du Net, and others. Create Refresh is “calling on creators to be part of a movement to defend their right to create. [The] ultimate aim is to inspire a new solution for digital copyright that protects all creators and their careers.”

The initiative focuses on Article 13 of the European Commission’s copyright proposal, which would require all online services that permit user-generated uploads to install filters that can automatically detect, flag, and censor copyrighted material before the content even hits the web. The provision would apply to websites such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Flickr, and even noncommercial sites like Wikipedia.

Such a problematic requirement could be in conflict with other fundamental rights enshrined in existing EU law, such as the provision in the E-Commerce Directive that prohibits general monitoring obligations for internet platforms. Second, the content filtering mechanism would likely be unable to take into account other user rights, such as current limitations and exceptions to copyright. The proposal fails to establish rules that protect the ability of EU citizens to use copyright-protected works in transformative ways—such as video remixes. Or, as OpenMedia puts it, “automated systems are incapable of making sophisticated judgements and will inevitably err on the side of censoring creativity and speech that is perfectly legal.”

In the next few months the remaining European Parliament committees responsible for the reform will hold their votes on potential amendments to the Commission’s original plan. This includes the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE), and the Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI). In addition, the Council of the European Union—essentially, the EU Member State governments led by the Estonian Presidency—has been floating proposed changes. 

Create Refresh comes to the same conclusion as CC and dozens of other civil society organisations calling for a progressive copyright that protects both users and the public interest in the digital environment: Article 13 should be removed from the proposal.

Creators interested in contributing to the campaign can apply for a small grant to develop videos, artwork, or other creative works relating to Article 13 and freedom of expression. Check out Create Refresh on their website, Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

The post <em>Create Refresh</em> Campaign: Stop the EU Copyright Censorship Machine appeared first on Creative Commons.

Civil society organisations including Creative Commons helped deliver a win against the restrictive IP terms of the TPP, which were developed secret and would have locked down content and restricted user rights.

For the last five years the Creative Commons community has been organising against the restrictive copyright provisions put forth in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). We’ve written letters demanding increased transparency, contributed to public events such as the Rock Against the TPP concerts, and drafted an analysis of the copyright-related aspects of the TPP. In that document we said, “there is no logical reason to increase the term of copyright: an extension would create a tiny private benefit at a great cost to the public.”

According to a statement released Saturday, the ministers of the remaining countries negotiating the TPP have “agreed on the core elements” of the deal. Of particular interest are about 20 “suspended provisions” outlined in an annex to the ministerial statement. Most of the provisions in the chapter on intellectual property have been “suspended,” meaning they likely will be excluded from future negotiations. This includes the proposed 20 year increase in copyright term and the introduction of criminal penalties for circumventing technological protection measures.

Ryan Merkley, CEO of Creative Commons, said, “The suspension of the IP section of TPP is a huge win for the public, delivered in large part because of activists around the world who opposed the secret agreement. They exposed the terms and ensured there were national debates and public debate.”

The U.S. has been out of the picture since January 2017, when President Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement three days into his administration. Since that time, the name of the trade pact has been changed from TPP to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). The gigantic agreement still contains sweeping provisions regarding environmental regulation, pharmaceutical procurement, labor standards, food safety, and many other things. For nearly the last decade, it has been developed and negotiated completely in secret.

The news about the CPTPP comes during an active time of trade agreement talks, particularly in light of the re-negotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), now being “modernized” by Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Concerning those talks, we argued, “the NAFTA provisions having to do with copyright would do more harm than good if there’s not a significant shift in the balance in favor of the rights for users and the public to reflect the reality of today’s digital users.” A fundamental flaw with CPTPP, NAFTA, and nearly all other trade agreement negotiations is that they are entirely opaque to the population governed by them. In a letter to NAFTA negotiators, we demanded reforms to make the proceedings more transparent, inclusive and accountable. It is unacceptable that binding rules on intellectual property, access to medicines, and a variety of other trade-related sectors will be reworked within a process that is inaccessible and often hostile to input from members of the public.

All trade negotiations should be made through procedures that are transparent to the public and which include all stakeholders. Increased transparency and meaningful public participation will lead to better outcomes.

The negotiations of the CPTPP seem far from over, and it’s important to note that the provisions mentioned in the annex are only suspended, not removed entirely. Civil society organisations and consumer watchdog groups should continue to monitor the negotiations. But for now, the freezing of the worst parts of the IP chapter is a breath of fresh air in the otherwise dark, dank cave of trade policymaking.

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