Today Vice President Biden announced a comprehensive plan for his Cancer Moonshot initiative, which seeks to achieve a decade’s worth of progress on cancer research in five years.

As an invited participant in the Moonshot, we commend the Vice President’s radical approach to solving this crucial issue. In April, Biden referenced Ryan Merkley’s viral article in Wired, citing a need for better collaboration and the sharing of cancer data. Today’s announcement underscores the initiative’s commitment to open data, open access, and research. The “audacious, creative, and disruptive approaches” to innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and information sharing through crowdsourcing are a direct result of the advocacy work from the open community.

The Cancer Moonshot report acknowledges existing challenges to making progress against cancer, including “a lack of open access and rapid sharing of research data and results.” Biden’s report recognizes the need for open collaboration, open access to research and data, and the need for education and incentives to change existing models.

In June, we made four recommendations to the Cancer Moonshot to accelerate the speed and probability for new cancer treatments and cures:

1. Make open access the default for cancer research articles and data.
2. Take embargo periods on research articles and data to zero.
3. Build and reward a culture of sharing and collaboration.
4. Share cancer education and training materials as open educational resources.

As Biden writes, the Moonshot seeks to “unlock scientific advances through open publication,” including the creation of a Genomic Data Commons, which has already accumulated 32,000 patients in a few months. The Genomic Data Commons holds great potential for a more open data landscape and the number of people served has already proven its efficacy.

At today’s presentation, Vice President Biden reiterated the importance of access to information about cancer for researchers, doctors, patients, and families. Further, he said that cancer has now reached an “inflection point,” and that the research and treatment system needs to be reimagined for the 21st century.

It is crucial that this transformation involves reforms that truly support free, immediate open access to publicly-funded cancer research and data. We believe that open sharing and collaboration can begin to address many of the inefficiencies in the existing research and dissemination cycle that the report addresses and seeks to solve.

As the Moonshot Initiative continues, we look forward to joining the many voices involved in order to ensure that we reach our shared goal: Eliminating cancer within our lifetime.

The post Help us make a giant leap against cancer: Biden presents five-year Cancer Moonshot plan appeared first on Creative Commons.

Last month the European Commission released its proposed changes to copyright in the EU. Unfortunately, the proposal fails to deliver on the promise for a modern copyright law in Europe.

In an ideal world, the Directive would have provided for progressive policy changes to serve the goals of a unified digital marketplace across Europe. It would have jumpstarted economic activity, championed innovative digital technologies and services, and protected consumers and access to information. It would have expanded opportunities for European businesses, cultural heritage institutions, educators, and the research community.

The Commission’s plan does little to advance these goals, instead making the European copyright framework more complex and unfit for the digital age. With the proposal from the Commission on the table, the legislative focus shifts to the EU Member States, the European Parliament, and the Council of the European Union. Several Member States are currently engaged in brief national-level public consultations in response to the Commission’s proposition.

Creative Commons published a letter that outlines the primary areas of concern, discusses potential policy solutions, and offers continued support to Member States as they solicit public input that will inform the forthcoming legislative proceedings.

Over 30 of our international affiliate teams and associated organizations are signatories to the letter. We are working with CC affiliates across Europe to provide feedback and ideas to the ongoing consultations.

Let’s work together to improve the Commission’s disappointing proposal. Now is the time for Europe to redouble its efforts to make positive changes to copyright that will benefit all stakeholders, including creators, users, and the public interest.

Creative Commons Letter to European Member States on Commission Copyright Proposal [PDF]

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Screwdriver And Wrench by To Uyen, CC BY 3.0 US
Copyright by Marek Polakovic, CC BY 3.0 US

The post EU Member States Should Push To Improve Commission’s Disappointing Copyright Proposal appeared first on Creative Commons.

As the producers of the world’s first open movie project, Ton Rosendaal and his team at the Blender Institute “work open” in every aspect of their production, from code to licensing to distribution. Blender, the free and open source 3D creation suite, supports makers of all stripes, from independent artists to small businesses.

A more in-depth profile of the Blender Institute will be released in the forthcoming book Made with Creative Commons.

How did this film come together? What were its origins?

At the Blender Institute studio, we’ve been making CC BY-licensed films since 2007. The first short films we made were mostly crowdfunded via the pre-sale of DVDs that offered the film itself, along with all of the assets and software that someone would need to remake the entire film. This was a huge success… we’ve always used our productions—and the revenues we derive from them—to improve Blender, our open source 3D creation tool.

In 2014 we decided to drop this funding model. DVDs didn’t sell well anymore, nor is it very practical to use for data sets. Instead we began uploading everything we made to a website—all the films, all of the sources for them, and 100 hours of training materials we’d made over the past several years. This is what we call the Blender Cloud. For just $10 per month subscribers can get access to everything on the site under CC BY, and we use the subscription revenues to produce new content and film continuously.

Caminandes Llamigos was the third short film we produced thanks to Blender Cloud subscriptions. As usual, the goal with this project was to further improve Blender but also to have a large collection of CC BY content and tutorials to share with users online. People love funny films, and it’s a big inspiration to learn how to make them from the makers directly.

The Caminandes series is based on director Pablo Vazquez’ home country – Patagonia. Pablo loves funny crazy animals as well as short cartoons in the well known American ’50s tradition.

How long did it take to make? What was the process of making it happen?

Writing and storyboarding started in October of last year. Production started in November and lasted 3 months. In February, we spent a month wrapping up the project by producing additional content, including making-of materials, asset downloads, and tutorials.

Why do you choose the specific CC licenses you use for your projects?

We almost exclusively use CC BY and CC 0 for our works. Offering our films and their source materials under a noncommercial license was never something we considered, as doing so makes sharing content with serious artists and professionals impossible or confusing.

Open licenses are essential for sharing our films and their source material. CC BY and CC 0 make the asset collections usable for other projects. Also, for the kinds of training that we want to encourage, it’s essential to give students the right to build on top of our work in order to make new works, share those works, and show them in public.

What do you hope people will do with this film? How do you want them to interact with it?

Sharing is caring! As artists and makers, we want people to share our work so that lots of people see it. Past versions of  Caminandes were copied to the Disney Channel with big success! The Caminandes characters are becoming quite well known now, and people have started using them in unexpected ways. We are happy about this.

That said, looking back at 10 years of sharing animation film under CC, we are surprised that people haven’t been using the assets to create entirely new episodes or versions—and certainly not in the quality and quantity we did. You might think that “giving it all away” would cause you to lose everything because your great artwork now can be duplicated and used by everyone. Instead, we learned something else. Even when you share everything, including all your original sources, it still takes a lot of talent and skill and time and budget to make this sort of work. There’s no value for us in enforcing strict copyright limitations on the work.

The post Blender Institute’s Ton Roosendaal on open licensing and artistic success appeared first on Creative Commons.

This post was written by Natalia Mileszyk and Lisette Kalshoven of COMMUNIA.

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Photo by Saša Krajnc, CC BY 4.0.

Last week at the Creative Commons Europe Meeting in Lisbon, COMMUNIA organised a “School of Rock(ing) Copyright” workshop. Creative Commons affiliates from Poland, the Netherlands, and Portugal joined efforts in sharing knowledge about the current European copyright reform. We examined the political process for updating the copyright rules, and asked for help from other CC Europe affiliates in advocating for positive copyright changes. We were pleased to have around 15 participants from as many EU countries attend the session. Since we’re at a crucial stage within the European legislative process, we were eager to discuss the ins and outs on how we can create a better copyright for Europe.

Why does the CC community care about copyright reform? We all stand for creativity, innovation, access to knowledge, and development. Copyright can both boost or limit these goals, so we are actively involved to make progressive changes to copyright to benefit users, education, and the commons.

What we presented at the workshop

At the ‘school’ we focused on four different areas that people need to know about when engaging in advocacy for copyright reform in Europe. First, we provided a quick overview on ‘Brussels’ and how the different institutions such as the European Commission and Parliament interact. Second, we explained how the legislative process works. The Commission proposal is out, but it’s far from the end of the process! Third, we shared tactics and tips for getting involved in advocacy activities. These often seem obvious, but are very important when interacting with politicians. For example: never ask for anything people can’t give you, and come to the table with clear, concise suggestions. Few politicians have the time to read a 200 page research report, no matter how riveting we think it is! The fourth and last part of our workshop dug into a few key topics within the current copyright reform proposal, including areas such as cultural heritage, education, and research.

Photo by Saša Krajnc, CC BY 4.0.

What’s in Commission’s proposed Directive on copyright?

You can read the entire proposal here, and read COMMUNIA’s high level analysis about it here.

In short, the Commission’s copyright proposal fails to meet the needs of citizens, educators, and researchers across Europe. Instead of strengthening the information economy, the proposal preserves a status quo defined in the analog age. In the process, it hinders education, research, and cultural expression.

The Commission’s proposal focuses on a wholly different goal: to minimize the impact of the fundamental changes brought about by digital technologies and the internet on legacy business models. Publishers get an ancillary copyright that already has proven itself worthless in practice. Access to most audio-visual content will continue to be hampered by geo-blocking (which the Commission had earlier committed to end), and online platforms might be forced to collaborate with rights holders on censoring content that is shared by users on these platforms. The whole package lacks forward-looking, innovation-friendly measures that embrace digitization as an opportunity for users, creators, businesses, and public institutions in Europe.

During our workshop, we explored three aspects of the proposal in greater detail: 1) text and data mining (with a limited exception that limits research to official institutions), 2) cultural heritage (which does not solve the problem heritage institutions have with making their collections available online), and 3) education (where the proposal overcomplicates the situation, making it even harder for teachers to focus on providing excellent education.

We need more advocates to push for positive change

Creative Commons is committed to advocating for a better copyright across the globe, including Europe. Several affiliates at the School of Rock(ing) Copyright event stepped forward to help advocate for positive change. We need to engage in a variety of tactics, including educating MEPs about what’s at stake, responding to consultations on the copyright reform, and organising events and actions to raise public awareness. We look forward to collaborating even more with our fellow affiliates to make sure we get a copyright reform for Europe that’s fit for the digital age.

What you can do now!

1. Keep up-to-date with the European Copyright Reform process. Follow along with the COMMUNIA blog and twitter, and CC blog and twitter.
2. Take part in the national consultations now being held in many Member States. Check to see the consultation deadline of your national ministry responsible for copyright. Do your best to motivate other organisations to take part in the consultation.
3. Talk to your representatives within your national government, your European Parliament Representatives, and fellow advocates at other organisations. And remember, the most important is to make your voice heard about why this matters to you.
4. Share information with others. Let’s keep each other in the loop about our advocacy activities, meetings, and best arguments. You can also become a member of COMMUNIA (highly recommended!) Let us know.
5. Engage with your local communities. Inform your friends and social groups about what’s at stake. Organise debate nights, salons, and share interesting resources.
6. Think about how you want to engage: for the topics that you love, create a factsheet, organise a meeting, write happy (or angry) tweets to Commissioners.

Making your voice heard is fundamental, the way you do it is up to you. Let us know how we can help!

The post ‘School of Rock(ing) Copyright’ at the CC Europe meeting appeared first on Creative Commons.

Photo by Maarten van den Heuvel on Unsplash, CC0.

Last month the United Nations released a report with recommendations on how to improve innovation and access to health technologies. The panel’s charge called for it to “recommend solutions for remedying the policy incoherence between the justifiable rights of inventors, international human rights law, trade rules and public health in the context of health technologies.”

Of particular interest are the panel’s suggestions for managing intellectual property generated from publicly-funded research. From the report:

Limiting access to academic discoveries can obstruct follow-on innovation and force taxpayers to pay twice for the benefits of publicly-funded research. Strong, enforceable policies on data sharing and data access should be a condition of public grants.

Public funders of research must require that knowledge generated from such research be made freely and widely available through publication in peer-reviewed literature and seek broad, online public access to such research.

Universities and research institutions that receive public funding should adopt policies and approaches that catalyse innovation and create flexible models of collaboration that advance biomedical research and generate knowledge for the benefit of the public.

The recommendations clearly urge funders and universities to implement policies that ensure broad access to research publications and data produced through public grant monies. The policies should include provisions that clearly communicate liberal re-use rights to publications and data (for example by requiring CC BY for published articles and CC0 for datasets). It’s also crucial for the policies to address deposit and hosting options, training for grantees and program officers, and compliance requirements.

One aim of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals is “to achieve universal health coverage and provide access to safe and affordable medicines and vaccines for all.” Improving access to and re-use of publicly-funded scientific and medical research is an important step toward realizing this global goal.

The post United Nations Report Calls for Open Access to Research to Improve Global Health appeared first on Creative Commons.