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.

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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.

“lightning” by duane.schoon is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The CC Open Education Platform is hosting a series of open education “lightning talks” in which open education practitioners will discuss their work (7 minutes) and take questions (2 minutes) in a supportive space. Everyone is welcome. Join us!

All talks will take place in this Jitsi room. Dial-in (backup): +1.512.647.1431  PIN: 1489 6238 59#

In this first round of talks, 25 members of the CC Open Education Platform will present their work over three sessions.

Tuesday, 8 December: 8:00am – 9:30am (PST – Los Angeles time)

• Sue Jones: Cognitively Accessible Math OER
• David Wiley: Sustaining and Improving OER
• Chris Morrison & Jane Secker: How openness helped us address the challenge of copyright and online teaching at a time of crisis
• Nathan Smith: Starting a local consortium to increase collaboration around OER
• Yasin Dahi: Learnful: An open platform for OER authoring and collaboration in Canada
• Christer Gundersen: Crowdsourcing translation of early grade reading resources at scale
• TJ Bliss: Open Education in Idaho Higher Education
• Grif Peterson: Increasing equity with OER through learning circles

Friday, 11 December: 7:30am – 9:00am (PST – Los Angeles time)

• Judith Sebesta: Texas Learn OER
• André Rocha: Fabschools
• Suma Parahakaran: Educating for Human Values and Ethics in Schools
• Yogesh K S: Wikimedia and MediaWiki in Open Education
• Stephen Downes: A Personal Learning Platform
• Hugh McGuire: Where can I find Pressbooks books? Why, the Pressbooks Directory
• Omshivaprakash: Digital archiving to build OER for local languages
• Nate Angell: Open Learning Experience Bingo

Thursday, 17 December: 8:00am – 9:30am (PST – Los Angeles time)

• Roxanne Russell: Part you, part text, part machine, all learning
• Fernando Daguanno: OER are not always textbooks
• Meri McCoy-Thompson: We Are Resilient
• Werner Westermann: Offline OER to mitigate learning loss
• Sarah Hutton: Open from the Start: Strategies for Integrating OER and Open Pedagogical Practice Into First-Year and General Programs at UMass Amherst
• Lance Eaton: The Public Dollar: Finding & Flipping the Value of the Commons
• Rajeeb Dutta: Hello Santali
• Dan McGuire: Geogebra + Illustrative Mathematics + your LMS = Great Teaching and Learning

The post 24 x Open Education Lightning Talks appeared first on Creative Commons.

We at Creative Commons (CC) have long disagreed with the use of digital rights management (DRM) and technological protection measures (TPMs) in the open environment. We believe that DRM and TPMs should not be used to control, limit, prevent or otherwise affect activities and uses allowed under CC licenses’ terms. Plainly, DRM and TPMs are antithetical to the “open” ethos and at odds with the values of sharing that we support.

What is DRM? DRM consists of access control technologies or restrictive licensing agreements that attempt to restrict the use, modification, and distribution of legally-acquired works. Examples include encryption technology used on DVDs, keys (or passwords) with video games or copying restrictions on ebooks. 

DRM goes against the spirit of open sharing

Most creators who choose CC licenses probably don’t want DRM — they want wide distribution, use, and reuse of their content. Generally, we encourage creators to share their content in “downloadable” and “editable” formats (i.e. DRM-free — without any technical restriction to download, copy, or modify) to make it easier for others to benefit from and use the content, including for educational and socially beneficial purposes. We likewise discourage sharing CC-licensed content on platforms, sites or channels that add DRM to the shared content. That way, the spirit of open licensing is upheld and the legitimate expectations of the public regarding the freedoms associated with using openly-licensed content aren’t compromised. 

DRM does a disservice to the public: it blocks legitimate access to the content, thereby posing a threat to the universal, fundamental rights of access to knowledge, science, culture and education.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: standing up against DRM is incredibly important for many communities in the open movement, particularly open education. Of particular importance is the ability for educators and learners to “retain” content and “to make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage).” 

DRM poses a dire risk to the principles at the foundation of the open movement. DRM often constitutes an unnecessary obstacle preventing access to and use of content for legitimate purposes. When used in connection with openly-licensed content, DRM does a disservice to the public: it blocks legitimate access to the content, thereby posing a threat to the universal, fundamental rights of access to knowledge, science, culture and education. We at CC will continue to advocate against it.

The post We’re Against Digital Rights Management. Here’s Why. appeared first on Creative Commons.

The Creative Commons Legal Database is a collection of case law and legal scholarship to help our users learn more about legal issues surrounding Creative Commons (CC) licenses and legal tools. This information has been contributed by many dedicated members of the CC Global Network and the CC Legal Team. It was shared in a public beta site, and we have been working to release a new version to finally graduate the project as an official CC product.

What did we want to improve on the beta site? First, we wanted to integrate Vocabulary, the CC’s design system, and through this unify the look and feel with other CC websites and applications undergoing the same process. Second, the management of the information by CC Legal Staff (reviewing and publication) was a cumbersome process, so we wanted to reimplement it providing a friendly administration interface.

Explore the new site

Now you can access the revamped CC Legal Database site and enjoy the smooth experience. Browse resources that aim to help you understand the enforceability and precedents set by courts around the world concerning Creative Commons licenses, including legal scholarship discussing the CC licenses and public domain tools.

On listings, you can search specific content by keywords or filter by topics clicking on tags. See details by clicking on the case name or scholarship title.

You can also contribute relevant information to the database within the site, a project that the CC Legal team will be rolling out in the near future. Once active, you can submit a legal decision or article with a link and other basic information. Many fields are optional but the more you fill in the better. 

In case of doubts, check the Frequently Asked Questions or contact our Legal team.

Also, as mentioned before, we reimplemented the whole site to make the information management easier by the Staff.  Although this is something not everybody can see, we hope the automation of tasks and a cleaner admin interface will help speed up the process of providing more information for the public.

What’s next?

There is always room for improvement. For this project, these are some points where we can still improve on a technology level:

• Improve the search─Currently, the search feature is quite limited on the terms that can be queried, which means if users make a mistake, i.e. exchanging two letters, they probably will not find what they wanted. Additionally, the search can be improved by showing recommendations when nothing is found.
• Make tables sortable by columns─Give more power to the user to explore and scan the resources. It would be nice to have features to provide more interactivity with data.

If you are interested in the process it took to reimplement the site, there is a series of posts on the Open Source blog that walks through it.

How can I contribute?

The CC Legal Database is an open-source project, so community contributions are welcome. You can find the code on a Github repository and report bugs or suggest new features there. Please read the contribution guidelines before doing so. We also have a Slack channel to discuss the specifics of the project, you can join #cc-dev-legal-database if you want, we will be waiting for your valuable feedback. Finally, please stay tuned for an announcement by the CC Legal team that will include a call for contributions.

The post Explore the New CC Legal Database Site! appeared first on Creative Commons.

Dear Mr. President-elect,

First, I’d like to offer my sincere congratulations to you and to Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. This has been such a difficult year for so many around the world, and in this time of extreme polarization it is encouraging to hear you both talk about bringing people together to meet our common challenges. For many years I was a Member of the European Parliament, and I know how incredibly important it is to build bridges and work collaboratively with people we don’t always agree with.

I’m writing today as the leader of Creative Commons, a global nonprofit organization focused in part on making valuable scientific research and educational resources freely and openly available to the public. We work with universities, companies, governments, and institutions around the world to develop solutions for providing unencumbered access to knowledge.

In your 2016 speech to the American Association for Cancer Research, you quoted an article written by our then-CEO, Ryan Merkley, about the unnecessary barriers to publicly funded research. You noted that “taxpayers fund $5 billion in cancer research every year, but once it’s published, nearly all of [it] sits behind walls.” You correctly suggested that better treatments might be developed more quickly if cancer researchers, as well as the general public, had access to the rich trove of publicly funded research and data that is locked up behind prohibitive paywalls.

The COVID-19 health crisis has underscored the urgent need for scientific research and data to be shared freely and openly with others. Several of the most significant funders of scientific research, including the National Institutes of Health, the Gates Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust have long-standing open access policies. But many others do not, and as a result, many of the diagnostics, vaccines, therapeutics, medical equipment, and software solutions currently being developed in the fight against the pandemic will not reach and benefit as many people as quickly and effectively as they should.

Additionally, as you are very well aware, the pandemic has massively disrupted the lives of over a billion students around the world. For many, access to educational materials is a daily struggle even in normal times. Because of a myriad of barriers, such as the prohibitive cost of learning resources, or the legal maze of convoluted copyright rules and exceptions, many students are denied their fundamental human right to education.

This year’s shift to online learning has introduced many new complexities for both students and educators. While some educators can post their existing learning materials online for their students, for others, the move to online requires access to, and the legal rights to perpetually use and adapt materials developed by others. This has brought into focus the essential need for both broad access to Open Educational Resources (OER) and broad copyright limitations and exceptions (L&E) for educators and students to freely and legally use copyright works so all students everywhere can learn.

At Creative Commons, we believe that open access to knowledge is critical—especially during times of crisis. For nearly 20 years, we have collaborated closely with entities including the US government to make the world more equitable by overcoming obstacles to the sharing of knowledge. In these unprecedented times, our mission is more important than ever, and I look forward to working with you and your administration in developing solutions that unlock knowledge and make it possible for anyone, anywhere to access and build upon it.

Sincerely,
Catherine Stihler
CEO, Creative Commons

The post An Open Letter to President-elect Biden appeared first on Creative Commons.