It’s almost over. The year that shall not be named will soon end with a collective sigh and a half-hearted wave from humanity. However, before we stumble into what one can only hope will be a less disastrous year, we’re determined to spread some joy and share our gratitude.

We’re grateful for every image, video, song, book, and article that millions of you continue to share using a CC license or public domain mark. 2 billion and counting! From 3D models of spacecraft to vital public health information. During this festive season especially, we’re grateful for the countless photographs of pets in holiday-themed outfits, like these pictures of our favorite pugs on Flickr! 

More importantly, we’re grateful for the tireless efforts of the open community, our donors, and our staff to create a more open and inclusive world. 

What you helped us achieve

Promoting and facilitating open access in collaboration with members of the open community felt more important than ever this year. The urgent need for scientific research and data on COVID-19, open educational resources for students forced to stay home, open-source medical hardware due to PPE shortages, and more motivated us to carry onward.

That context makes this year’s accomplishments and “big wins” at Creative Commons uniquely meaningful, and we’re excited to share just a few of them with you below. If pugs in holiday outfits don’t spark joy in your heart, then hopefully these will! 

This year, Creative Commons…

Collaborated with the Smithsonian on Smithsonian Open Access, releasing 2.8 million images and data into the public domain using Creative Commons Zero! This announcement in February came after years of collaborative efforts from CC staff including Director of Open Education Cable Green, General Counsel Diane Peters, and CC GLAM platform lead Evelin Heidel.

Submitted statements to WIPO on artificial intelligence (AI) and intellectual property (IP) explaining why we’re against copyright protection for AI-generated output. 

Completed research on sharing Indigenous cultural heritage online, advocating that GLAMs should acknowledge that access and reuse restrictions might be justified in certain situations. 

Collaborated with the European Fashion Heritage Foundation and the Onassis Foundation on the 2020 symposium exploring issues regarding the tensions between digitizing fashion cultural heritage and remaining mindful and respectful of cultural rights and values.

Helped create and lead the Open COVID Pledge, resulting in over 30 Pledgors, including Founding Adopters Facebook, Amazon, Intel, IBM, Microsoft, and more, effectively unlocking hundreds of thousands of patents to the public to help combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Take the Pledge!

Presented in front of the Mexican Senate addressing copyright exceptions and limitations, GLAMs, and the fundamental rights of access to knowledge and culture. Read the written statement here.

Welcomed three new chapters to the CC Global Network (CC Peru, CC Austria, and CC Czech Republic) and supported 32 projects across 20 countries—from Argentina and Bangladesh to Uruguay and Venezuela—through the Community Activities Fund, totaling $30,000 USD! 

Held the first-ever virtual CC Global Summit, which included over 1300 participants, 200 presenters, and 170 sessions across 60 countries. We also introduced a new session, a global land acknowledgement, where we examined ideas of colonialism, power dynamics, and our own biases. Look back at this year’s CC Summit here!

Joined the UNESCO OER Dynamic Coalition and the Network of Open Organizations, who are both working to help national governments and institutions implement the UNESCO Recommendation on OER. More information here and here.

Participated in open education campaigns and initiatives, including the Free the Textbook Campaign and Translate a Story. We also joined the UNESCO Global Education Coalition, an international response to ensure the continuity of education for all learners during and after COVID-19.

Completed the second year of CC Certificate scholarships, enabling 28 new CC Global Network members from 25 countries to take the CC Certificate. We also graduated hundreds of new CC Certificate participants—by the end of 2020, there will be over 800 graduates from 50 countries! Register for January or June 2021 courses here.

Launched the new CC Open Source Community Team initiative, a team of volunteers to help us develop and maintain our open source projects and community. Learn more here and here!

Completed four open source internship programs with 13 interns total from Turkey, Nigeria, Brazil, India, Australia, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and Malaysia. Thanks to their help, we’ve been able to launch the CC Legal Database, the new CC Open Source website, the CC Linked Commons, and much more!

Hosted webinars on important topics like copyright, OpenGLAM, open access, and many more in partnership with other actors, like Europeana, the Museum Computer Network (summaries here, here, here, and here), and the UNESCO-Bangkok/Memory of the World Committee Asia Pacific (details here).

Into 2021 we go, older and bolder

Finally, we’re grateful for the opportunity to celebrate 20 years of Creative Commons in 2021 by embarking on a new era with a bolder organizational strategy that matches the challenges and opportunities ahead. While we will continue to face the difficulties that come with change, we’re excited for this new chapter and we hope you’ll support us by:

• Becoming a donor
• Signing up for the CC monthly newsletter
• Using a CC license or public domain mark!
• Joining the CC Global Network 
• Contributing to CC Open Source

Every action you take to create a more open and inclusive world is a precious gift to us—and we thank you for it.

: Featured image is a remix of this 19th-century beer advertisement (CC0) shared by the Smithsonian Design Museum.

The post Spreading Joy and Giving Gratitude: A Toast to This Year’s Silver Linings appeared first on Creative Commons.

After introducing the CC Italy Chapter to you in July, the CC Netherlands Chapter in August, CC Bangladesh Chapter in September, CC Tanzania Chapter in October, and the CC India Chapter in November, we are now traveling to Latin America to introduce the CC Mexico Chapter! 

The Creative Commons Global Network (CCGN) consists of 46 CC Country Chapters spread across the globe. They’re the home for a community of advocates, activists, educators, artists, lawyers, and users who share CC’s vision and values. They implement and strengthen open access policies, copyright reform, open education, and open culture in the communities in which they live.

To help showcase their work, we’re excited to continue our blog series and social media initiative: CC Network Fridays. At least one Friday a month, we’re traveling around the world through our blog and on Twitter (using #CCNetworkFridays) to a different CC Chapter, introducing their teams, discussing their work, and celebrating their commitment to open! 

Say hello to CC Mexico!

The CC Mexico Chapter was formed in 2018. Check out this video by CC Mexico featuring original music, “La cumbia de los comunes” (“The commons cumbia”) published under CC BY-SA. Its Chapter Lead is Ivan Martinez and its representative to the CC Global Network Council is Irene Soria. They are a group of activists, artists, musicians, academics, political scientists, hackers, editors, and lawyers who have fought battles in favor of free culture for many years, and who gathered to bring CC Mexico back to life in 2018.  For this post, we spoke to Irene who told us a bit more about the Chapter’s work. She responded in both English and Spanish! 

CC México: Somos un grupo de personas activistas, artistas, músicas, académicas, científicas sociales, hackers y personas abogadas, que hemos enfrentado batallas a favor de la Cultura Libre en México durante varios años. Nos juntamos en julio del 2018 para traer a la vida un nuevo y mejorado capítulo de Creative Commons México. Por cierto, ¿ya viste nuestro video?, tiene música original, “La cumbia de los comunes.”

---

CC: What open movement work is your Chapter actively involved in? What would you like to achieve with your work?

CC Mexico: We are actually working on three topics mainly: 

• Advocating for CC licenses through talks, workshops and discussion groups; 
• Joining coalitions defending the Internet and opposing recent local unfair and disproportional copyright reforms, by taking part or leading talks and forums about their negative impact on education and authors; 
• Changing the way big players in Mexico relate to copyright, especially regarding Open Education and Open GLAM.

We urgently advocate for the need for access to educational and cultural materials in the Mexican context. We are contributing to changes in public institutions, such as the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the Secretariat of Culture in Mexico City. Both of these institutions adopted CC licenses in a massive way thanks to our advice. We want to encourage more institutions—particularly those funded by public means—to adopt CC licensing and change their ways of managing copyright. We want to improve Mexican copyright law and promote a better environment for creativity, freedom, free licenses, and public domain. (We have even linked to support from Creative Commons when exposing these topics to the Mexican Senate).

CC México: En el capítulo CC hemos trabajado en el uso de licencias CC en la UNAM, la universidad más grande de Latinoamérica, de igual forma, hemos ofrecido múltiples charlas en diferentes espacios para hablar de la reforma de la ley de derechos de autor en México y cómo eso nos afecta. También hemos realizado vínculos con CC Global para hablar de estos temas en el Senado de la República. También formamos parte de coaliciones como Salvemos Internet y Ni censura ni candados, que buscan oponerse a modificaciones en la ley que vulneran los derechos digitales en México.

CC: What exciting project has your Chapter engaged in recently?

CC Mexico: We were just awarded a Creative Commons grant to develop a publication on author’s rights and proportional copyright from a regional point-of-view. Spoiler alert: gender, remixing, and traditional knowledge is involved!

UNAM (Mexico’s National University) has officially adopted CC licensing at their repositories—and we provided advisory for this process. This is the BIGGEST university in Latin America! Cool isn’t it?

We are supporting the Mexico-based @ultracinema_mx festival’s CC-licenced films category. This is a beautiful community of authors resampling, reusing, archiving, cataloguing, tracking and producing films in Latin America. 

CC México: Hemos ganado el gran de CC global para realizar una publicación acerca del derecho de autor proporcional y hablar desde diferentes voces, como una forma de entender la propiedad intelectual. También, le hemos dado seguimiento a la implementación de las licencias CC en la UNAM e hicimos vínculos con el festival de Cine de Reapropiación, Ultra Cinema, y desde el año próximo, tendrán una categoría de premiación exclusiva de obras que tengan licenciamiento CC.

CC: What do you find inspiring and rewarding about your work in the open movement?

CC Mexico: Contact with people and communities such as artists, filmmakers, librarians, archivists, NGOs and others looking for our advice is both inspiring and rewarding. Knowing that artists, some even supported by Mexican government grants, have chosen CC licensing is pretty inspiring.

CC México: El contacto que hemos tenido con la gente y algunas comunidades, sentir que algunos espacios de artistas y cineastas nos buscan para saber más del tema, o que nos comparten su trabajo, es muy gratificante. También saber que hay artistas CC que apoyan el movimiento y han sido apoyados con becas de fomento a la creación.

CC: What are your plans for the future? 

CC Mexico: We would like to build a bigger team, a volunteer network and CC workgroups throughout the country; especially among communities not commonly included at the Creative Commons mission.

CC México: Nos gustaría construir un equipo más grande; armar y coordinar un grupo de voluntarios a lo largo de todo el país, especialmente entre comunidades que no siempre han sido incluídas en las comunidades internacionales de Creative Commons.

CC: What projects in your country are using CC licenses that you’d like to highlight? (Please provide their Twitter handles if you have them.)

CC Mexico: Projects opting-in CC licencing in Mexico are quite diverse:

• From Mexico City government cultural affairs office @CulturaCiudadMx, (https://www.flickr.com/photos/culturacdmx/albums) 
• The Institute for Research on University and Education, UNAM, online publications:  @IISUE_UNAM
• CC photographer @eneas 
• A feminist academic magazine:  @DebateFeminista
• Mexican rock band: @holabelafonte
• On Latam: Center for Advanced Latin American Studies @CalasCenter http://www.calas.lat/sites/default/files/garcia_canclini.ciudadanos_reemplazados_por_algoritmos.pdf 
• Not only on Mexico and Latam, also projects on Africa: “Making a Feminist Internet Movement building in a digital age in Africa” https://genderit.org/resources/report-making-feminist-internet-movement-building-digital-age-africa
• We also advised Academia Mexicana de la Lengua @AMLengua to include CC licensing for their digital library publications.

CC México: Los proyectos que han optado por las licencias CC en México son muy diversos: La Secretaría de Cultura del gobierno de la Ciudad de México, el Instituto para la Investigación de la Universidad y la Educación, en la UNAM, algunos fotógrafos mexicanos como Rodrigo González, alias @eneas, la banda de rock mexicana Belafote. En Latinoamérica, el Centro de Estudios Avanzados en América Latina. Y también hemos hecho algunos enlaces con proyectos en otros continentes, como el realizado por APC, el informe: “Making a Feminist Internet Movement building in a digital age in Africa.” 

CC: Anything else you want to share?

CC Mexico: 

• We translated the book “Made with Creative Commons” into Spanish. Available here. 
• Our presentation video!
• “The Creative Commons Caravan” with the “Stand-up comedy of Copyright” A very funny stand up comedy, when the CC MX lawyer, Salvador Alcántar, on stage, and our musician José Serralde, will tell you about some fundamentals about copyright and intellectual property; It will answer your doubts, questions, and above all, it will seek to surprise you with the best jokes, coming from the humor of traditional models of management, profit and circulation of creative works. You can see it here. 

CC México:

• Hicimos la traducción al español del libro: “Hecho con Creative Commons”, lo puedes conseguir aquí.
• También, llevamos a cabo la “Caravana Creative Commos,” donde incluímos “El Stand-up de los Derechos de Autor”. Una plática al estilo del stand-up, donde un abogado en el escenario, con un micrófono, nos contó sobre algunos fundamentos de derecho autoral y propiedad intelectual. Respondió las dudas, preguntas, y sobre todo, buscó sorprendernos con los mejores chascarrillos, provenientes del humorismo de los modelos tradicionales de gestión, lucro y circulación de las obras creativas.

Thank you to the CC Mexico team, especially Irene for contributing to the CC Network Fridays feature, and for all of their work in the open community! To see this conversation on Twitter, click here. To become a member of the CCGN, visit our website!

: Featured image has icons by Guilherme Furtado and Vectors Point via Noun Project (CC BY 3.0).

The post Meet CC Mexico, Our Next Feature for CC Network Fridays! appeared first on Creative Commons.

American University Washington College of Law (AUWCL) has received a three-year grant of $3.8 million from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, for its Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property (PIJIP). The project will study changes needed in international copyright policy to ensure equity in the production of and access to research.

“The COVID pandemic has cast a bright light on inequities in the global research system that restrictive copyright laws perpetuate,” said Professor Sean Flynn, director of the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property and the project’s principal investigator. “In many countries, library resources, for example, can only be used ‘on the premises’ of that institution. Use of educational materials is often restricted to use ‘in a classroom.’ Our goal is to promote a system in which every researcher, every student, and every citizen of every country has the ability to engage in modern research activity and enjoy its products, including across borders and utilizing online tools.”

The project will support a network of access to knowledge civil society organizations to form and lead national and regional coalitions of researchers and the institutions that support them. Each coalition will engage in collaborative research projects and facilitate the sharing of research outcomes in their countries and regions. 

Creative Commons will join the Steering Committee, alongside several other organizations, with the goal of driving change in international copyright policy to ensure equity in the production of and access to research.

“We are thrilled to be part of the Arcadia-funded project and contribute to spurring change in international copyright policy,” said CC’s CEO Catherine Stihler. “At Creative Commons, we strive to foster the production, open access and open sharing of research in ways that serve the public interest and we look forward to pursuing this objective in collaboration with other project partners.” 

Read the full press release from the AUWCL here.

The post Creative Commons Joins the American University’s Efforts to Promote the International Right to Research appeared first on Creative Commons.

I’d like to offer a heartfelt thanks to Creative Commons’ longtime General Counsel, Diane Peters, who will be leaving CC at the end of the month to take on new opportunities in 2021. She has served in her staff role at CC since 2008 and as a member of the CC board of directors for many years as its counsel and secretary. Diane has played a key role in nearly every initiative CC has undertaken over the past decade, and the organization will miss her dearly.

Diane led the work to launch the 4.0 versions of CC’s licenses, the CC0 public domain dedication, and CC’s Public Domain Mark—legal tools that have become the gold standard for institutions and individuals wanting to make their copyrighted works freely and openly available for use by anyone in the world. She’s been a critically important figure in supporting and championing CC’s global community, and her leadership of the Open COVID Pledge has been a great demonstration of her innovative thinking. Additionally, her hard work in the GLAM sector has resulted in many major collections of academic materials and cultural works being made openly available to the public—freeing knowledge and culture everywhere for everyone. 

All of us at Creative Commons wish Diane well. We thank her for her service to CC over the past 12 years and are excited for what the future holds for her. The work she’s done at CC has made it much easier for people to share knowledge and creativity with others, and has resulted in a more open and accessible world.

The post Thanking Diane Peters for Her Service to Creative Commons appeared first on Creative Commons.

This is part of a series of posts introducing the projects built by open source contributors mentored by Creative Commons during Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2020 and Outreachy. Mayank Nader was one of those contributors and we are grateful for his work on this project.

---

The CC Search Browser Extension allows users to search, filter, and use images in the Public Domain and under Creative Commons licenses. It is heavily inspired by CC Search but at the same time, it offers an experience that is more personalized and collaborative. One of the primary goals of the extension is to complement the user’s workflow and allow them to concentrate on what’s important.

Recently, there have been many improvements to the CC Search Browser Extension and I’ll go through the significant changes in this post.

• New filters

Previously, the extension only supported filtering the content using license, sources, and use case. Now, the extension also supports filtering by image type, file type, aspect ratio, and image size. This will allow users to be more precise in their queries when searching.

• Browsing by source

The extension now has a dynamically updated “sources” section. This opens an avenue for exploration of all the 40+ sources which are currently available in the CC Catalog. This is advantageous for users who are not familiar with the type of content a particular source provides. They might run into a source that has a huge catalog of high-quality images that they are looking for.

• Search by tags

Most of the images have some tags associated with them, which are now shown in the image-detail section. Image tags will allow users to incrementally make their queries better and more specific.

• Related images

In the image detail section of any particular image, you can now see several recommendations. This will help users find a variety of images that fit their requirements and also explore the images that would not usually show up on the initial pages of the search result.

• Improvement to the bookmarks section

The bookmarks section is an important part of the extension. While searching, if you find images that you might use later you can bookmark and save them in the extension.

The bookmarks section has undergone some crucial improvements which have made it significantly faster. Also, now the extension will be able to hold 300 bookmarks (the old version had a limit of only 50). 

We made sure that the updates to the bookmarks section do not remove any previously saved bookmarks. If a user has some old bookmark files that they are using for sharing or archiving, the extension will still be able to recognize and parse those files.

Comparing the rendering of the bookmarked images in the old version and the new version demonstrates the improvement in performance.

• Improved UI

Updating the UI of the extension was necessary to make space for all of the improvements. All the workflows and features in the old version of the extension have been updated to make the new UI very intuitive. 

• Demonstrating a general use case

As I said in the introduction of this post, rather than complicating the workflow of the user, the extension’s goal is to complement it. The extension makes it easier to add images and their attributions to a blog post in WordPress, for example. After you have searched and bookmarked the images, it’s a matter of a few clicks. You can replicate this on Medium, Blogger, or any modern blogging platform. (Evident here!)

• Installation

The latest version of the extension is available for installation on Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Microsoft Edge. 

If you are already using the extension, then the extension should have auto-updated. If it has not, the instructions to manually update are written under the FAQ tab in the settings page.

Join the community

Come and tell us about your experience on the Creative Commons Slack via the slack channel: #cc-dev-browser-extension.

Also, check out the project on Github. You can contribute in the form of bug reports, feature requests, or code contributions.

The post New Improvements in the CC Search Browser Extension appeared first on Creative Commons.