<style>.embed-container { position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; } .embed-container iframe, .embed-container object, .embed-container embed { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; }

 

Welcome to episode 15 of Open Culture VOICES! VOICES is a vlog series of short interviews with open GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) experts from around the world. The Open Culture Program at Creative Commons aims to promote better sharing of cultural heritage in GLAMs collections. With Open Culture VOICES, we’re thrilled to bring you various perspectives from dozens of experts speaking in many different languages on what it’s like to open up heritage content online. In this episode, Rebecca Giblin, an ARC Future Fellow and Professor at Melbourne Law School, and the Director of the Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia. Her work sits at the intersection of law and culture, focusing on creators’ rights, access to knowledge and culture, technology regulation and copyright.

Rebecca responds to the following questions: 

1. What are the main benefits of open GLAM?
2. What are the barriers?
3. Could you share something someone else told you that opened up your eyes and mind about open GLAM?
4. Do you have a personal message to those hesitating to open up collections?

Closed captions are available for this video, you can turn them on by clicking the CC icon at the bottom of the video. A red line will appear under the icon when closed captions have been enabled. Closed captions may be affected by Internet connectivity — if you experience a lag, we recommend watching the videos directly on YouTube.

Episodes will be released twice a week until June 2022. Missed episode 14 of our Open Culture VOICES series? Catch up here >>

The post Episode 15: Open Culture VOICES – Rebecca Giblin appeared first on Creative Commons.

CC welcomes the adoption of this comprehensive report by the AIDA special committee with strong, cross-party support. 

On Tuesday, the European Parliament’s (EU) Special Committee on Artificial Intelligence in a Digital Age (AIDA) adopted its final recommendations for a Roadmap, laying the groundwork through 2030.

This Roadmap concludes that artificial intelligence (AI) has enormous technological potential and should be used to benefit humans. Creative Commons commends the EP on its thorough, preparatory work undertaken over the past 18 months by the AIDA special committee and which culminated in this detailed and thoughtful report.

 AI already plays a big part in our lives and as technological innovation continues to develop at pace, the importance of AI is only likely to increase.

MEPs identified policy options that could unlock AI’s potential in health, the environment, and climate change, to help combat pandemics and global hunger, and enhance people’s quality of life through personalized medicine.

AI, if combined with the necessary support infrastructure, education, and training could increase capital and labor productivity, innovation, sustainable growth, and job creation.

CC recognizes that developments in AI present a host of opportunities to address global challenges through better sharing in the digital world. While these opportunities are likely to stimulate innovation and accelerate digital transformation, they also raise questions in copyright, especially regarding the use of data to train AI and the copyright treatment of AI-generated outputs.

 In the Roadmap, paragraph 116 mentions a need to “clarify whether AI will be able to hold intellectual property rights in itself.” CC believes that there should be no copyright on AI-generated content in the absence of human creative choices.  AI systems are not authors, cannot have human rights, and cannot be held liable for their actions as the law currently stands, so AI should not be able to hold copyright in itself. 

AI-training uses of creative content should not be considered infringing. They should not implicate an exercise of a copyright exclusive right, but if so, they should be considered fair use or allowed under an exception. 

Beyond copyright, CC is aware that several issues affecting better sharing and related to ethics, privacy and data protection need to be better understood to bring clarity to the rapidly evolving role that AI is playing in society and to ensure sharing ultimately benefits the public. 

CC will continue to holistically explore issues at the intersection of AI and copyright to support better sharing of copyright content in the public interest.

Once adopted by the plenary in May, we hope it will serve as a solid basis for ensuring the EU’s nascent legislative framework (AI Act) provides a robust regulatory regime that supports better sharing.

 We look forward to continuing to work with EU legislators and policymakers over the coming months to create a framework for AI that fosters creativity and innovation and upholds the public interest, underpinned by the EU’s values and principles of freedom of speech, non-discrimination and the rule of law’.

To know more about AI, copyright and CC licenses, visit our FAQ page.

The post CC welcomes adoption of AIDA appeared first on Creative Commons.

Last Friday, United States (US) senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced the “Strengthening Measures to Advance Rights Technologies (SMART) Copyright Act of 2022.”

Their bill proposes to have the US Copyright Office mandate that all websites accepting user-uploaded material implement technologies to automatically filter that content. We’ve long believed that these kinds of mandates are overbroad, speech-limiting, and bad for both creators and reusers. (We’re joined in this view by others such as Techdirt, Public Knowledge, and EFF, who have already stated their opposition.)

But one part of this attempt stands out to us: the list of “myths” Sen. Tillis released to accompany the bill. In particular, Tillis lists the concern that it is a “filtering mandate that will chill free speech and harm users” as a myth instead of a true danger to free expression–and he cites the existence of CC’s metadata as support for his position. 

Creative Commons is strongly opposed to mandatory content filtering measures. And we particularly object to having our work and our name used to imply support for a measure that undermines free expression which CC seeks to protect.

CC licensing is designed to let creators choose to share their work beyond what copyright allows by default–to grant more permissions, not impose more restrictions. And while our license metadata does let reusers know critical information about licensed rights, this metadata exists to convey important information about licensed works, not to restrict their use. Critically, CC licenses were never designed or intended to override the limitations and exceptions to copyright that allow for free expression. 

We believe in giving creators choices about how to share their work, and the importance of respecting those choices. But those rights to choose extend only as far as copyright does. Limitations and exceptions are a crucial feature of a copyright system that truly serves the public, and filter mandates fail to respect them. Because of this, licensing metadata should not be used as a mandatory upload filter–and especially not CC license data. We do not support or endorse the measures in this bill, and we object to having our name used to imply otherwise.

The post CC opposes mandatory copyright filters, as well as using CC to justify them appeared first on Creative Commons.

Creative Commons CEO Catherine Stihler OBE has been elected to the Fellowship of Scotland’s national academy, the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE).

The Fellowship is made up of the greatest thinkers, researchers, and practitioners working in or with Scotland today.

Catherine has been an international champion for openness as a legislator and practitioner for more than 20 years.

In 2020, she was appointed CEO of Creative Commons, the global non-profit organization that helps overcome legal obstacles to the sharing of knowledge and creativity to address the world’s pressing challenges.

Catherine was awarded an OBE by Her Majesty the Queen in recognition of her services to politics in 2019 after two decades as a Member of the European Parliament for Scotland.

Alongside Catherine, this year’s intake includes award-winning Scottish singer, songwriter, and activist Annie Lennox, who has received an Honorary Fellowship.

 Dr Catherine Stihler OBE said:
“It’s an honor to have been elected as a Fellow of the RSE, joining so many talented and inspirational people who have helped shape our world. The RSE is a globally-recognized organization that works to address the greatest challenges facing humanity and the planet, and informs policy and practice through in-depth examination and expert knowledge.

At Creative Commons we believe in better sharing so that we can advance universal access to knowledge and culture, and foster creativity, innovation, and collaboration for a brighter future. Our goals align perfectly with the RSE, and I look forward to collaborating with the Fellowship to address the biggest issues of the day.”

The RSE’s 2022 intake of Fellows includes 80 names from the arts, business, public service and civil society as well as academia from Scotland and beyond.

They will be joining the RSE’s current Fellowship of around 1,700 Fellows.

Dr Annie Lennox OBE said:
“My hope has always been to create a positive influence and contribution towards lasting transformative change.”

Others named as Fellows of the RSE this year include Professor Mark Logan, co-founder of Ipso-Facto where he is an investment and start-up adviser, Theresa Shearer, CEO of ENABLE Group and an influential Scottish third sector leader, and Professor Marc Turner, director at the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service and Professor of Cellular Therapy at the University of Edinburgh.

---

About Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) Fellowship of Scotland’s national academy:

The RSE, using the expertise of its Fellows, creates a unique impact by:

• Inspiring and supporting talent through a wide-ranging programme of research grants and awards.
• Engaging the public across Scotland on key contemporary issues through its outreach programme RSE@ and a wide-ranging programme of public events.
• Providing impartial advice and expertise to inform policy and practice through in-depth examination of major issues and providing expert comment on topical matters.
• Promoting Scotland’s interests overseas through building relationships with sister academies across the world and facilitating research collaborations.

The post Creative Commons CEO honored as RSE Fellow appeared first on Creative Commons.

A new blueprint on open access to digital cultural heritage collections in the United Kingdom (UK) has been hailed as a significant opportunity to prevent historical works from being “locked down” behind copyright walls.

Recommendations in the report, “A Culture of Copyright, A scoping study on open access to digital cultural heritage collections in the UK” was commissioned by the Towards a National Collection programme (TaNC) and should soon be adopted by the UK’s galleries, libraries, archives and museums (the GLAM sector).

The study concludes there is no consensus in the sector on what open access means, or should mean, and policies across the country vary widely.
The UK’s institutions hold an immense amount of cultural heritage in trust for the public and in stewarding these collections, GLAMs can make use of new technologies and CC licenses and tools to open access to collections online to enable wider public participation. But several institutions still engage in the mistaken practice of claiming copyright over faithful digital reproductions of works.

While the situation is legally clear in the United States and settled at the EU level, where no new rights can arise in reproductions of works of visual art that are in the public domain, it has not been resolved in the UK.
The new report recommends that no new rights should be able to arise in non-original reproduction media generated around public domain works in the UK.

Brigitte Vézina, director of policy for open culture and GLAM with Creative Commons, said:

“GLAMs’ open sharing of public domain heritage content can unlock limitless creativity. When public domain works are widely shared by GLAMs, anyone can reuse them and build upon them to create something new and unexpected. Open access to cultural heritage holds the promise of many benefits for GLAMs themselves, including increased global visibility, new and greater audiences, and enhanced relevance in today’s digital society. This report shows that we must prevent historical works from being locked down and seize the opportunity to deliver open access so that we can advance universal access to and sharing of knowledge and culture, thus fostering creativity, innovation, and collaboration for a brighter future.”

The post Blueprint on open access to UK’s digital cultural heritage collections welcomed appeared first on Creative Commons.