In October, CC Mongolia ran a workshop to promote national culture and language in the Buryat Republic of Russia as part of their Awesome Fund grant. A full report on their activities can be found here, and a short report by Batbold Zagdragchaa, CC Mongolia coordinator, is below.

If you’re interested in getting involved with our global community, join our Slack to find out more.

The project objective was to promote CC outreach among the national minority group Buryats, in Siberia, Russia. Buryats are ethnic Mongolians who comprise 30% of the population of the Buryat Republic. Young urban Buryats are becoming less proficient in their native language in favor of the Russian language. There is a need to promote Buryat culture, traditions and language. Using CC licenses and adopting principles of openness and sharing can enhance these activities.   

There are some factors that can contribute to increasing interests and wider acceptance of CC licenses in Russia and in its Buryatia Republic. CC has been officially adapted into Russian legislation since October 2014. The official websites of the Russian President and the government are under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International, for example. In 2016, the government of neighboring Tuva Republic started using CC license in its web portals at http://gov.tuva.ru/ and http://opentuva.ru/ .

CC Mongolia organized a workshop on October 14, 2016 at Buryat State University in Ulan-Ude. Around 40 people including educators, students, web developers, and government officials participated in the event. CC Mongolia presentation comprised of two parts:

• National OER program in Mongolia for 2014-2024 and its projects
• CC license introduction and its use in Russia and worldwide

For the most of audience it was the first time they’ve heard about CC licenses. Several participants expressed their interest to learn more about CC licenses and their willingness to use it for their work.

During the visit, also discussions were held about future potential projects, which can use open licensing and possibilities for public and private organizations to implement an open policy.  

The outcomes of the workshop are:

• Raised awareness about CC licenses and principles of openness and sharing will
• Promoted linguistic and cultural diversity
• Potential for future partnership for joint projects

After the workshop, we will continue email communications about open access. In terms of language promotion, we hope in the future to collaborate with UNESCO affiliate institutes and preferably create a network similar to EU’s LANGOER.

The post Awesome Fund workshop to promote national culture and language in the Buryat Republic of Russia appeared first on Creative Commons.

We would like to express our gratitude to the kind folks at Escola Das Gaivotas for hosting us, and to Teresa, Fatima, André, and Diogo from the CC Portugal team for being the best hosts ever!

What happens when you put 30 passionate commoners accustomed to meeting only online in a lovely conference venue in an historic city? Lots of talking, group updates, big plans being made, old and new issues being tackled, great projects presented, and new designs of collaboration schemes.

At the end of September, 30 participants from 15 different European Creative Commons teams came together for a meeting in Lisbon, Portugal. CC Representatives from the UK, France, Poland, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Ireland, Slovenia, Greece, Belarus, Ukraine, Austria, Belgium, Denmark and Romania joined the meeting, organized by CC Portugal. We were joined by CC CEO Ryan Merkley and Timothy Vollmer and Paul Stacey from CC HQ. 

From this meeting, we learned that the CC affiliate network is interested (and involved) in much more than just licenses. CC teams are vital in new emerging “commons” activities, the sharing economy, 3D printing, open agriculture, open business models, and copyright reform.

Some highlights of the meeting:

• The School of Rock(ing) Copyright, an information sharing bootcamp on copyright reform organized by Communia, with support from CC’s Awesome Fund. For a full report on this session, see Communia’s website. We all stand for creativity, innovation, access to knowledge, and development. Copyright laws can either boost or limit these goals, so we are actively involved with making progressive changes to copyright to benefit users, education, and the commons. Having some non-EU affiliates with us as well offered an interesting perspective on the importance of training and support on copyright reform in other regions and other languages than English.
• CC business models with a presentation of CC Portugal’s Toolkit for businesses, and an overview of CC’s Open Business Model project. Open business models about more than using the commons for gaining profit.

  

  Open business models are about allowing all actors gain a fair share (above and beyond monetary rewards) for their contribution to the commons. Exploring and supporting open business models can also work to tackle the related discrepancies that can possibly turn a flourishing commons into a closed, feudalistic environment. The use of CC can one aspect for creating open, regenerative, and distributed networks.

• The kick off for the CC Certificates project raises fascinating challenges for CC in terms of education and validation of information about CC. A certification mechanism will formalize many of our efforts to teach about open, which is a challenge for a network with such a grassroots ethos. The project has a dedicated website where you can check for updates.
• A ‘CC infrastructure’ session on what’s going on at tech and legal level. You can check the notes from this meeting here.
• We also discussed the Global Network Strategy and next steps for our European community, which we look forward to continuing to work on over the next months, particularly as we prepare for our Global Summit in April in Toronto.

We’ll keep you updated as we continue our work for CC Europe in support of the commons. In the meantime, if you want to join the discussion, you can find us on Slack!

PS If you are wondering about the marvelous artworks in the photos, they’re by Vhils.

The post CC Europe meetup in Lisbon appeared first on Creative Commons.

To commemorate the event, NDU hosted Naeema Zarif, Creative Commons Regional Coordinator for the Arab World. Ms. Zarif met NDU President Fr. Walid Moussa, who expressed the importance of capitalizing on recent trends in open education to broaden access, foster innovation, and alleviate student textbook costs.

During the symposium, Dr. Fawzi Baroud, Assistant Vice President for Information Technology, described the history of  NDU’s involvement with open education beginning with his own participation in the U.S. State Department sponsored Open Book Project in 2014 and the continued collaboration with Creative Commons to create awareness and devise capacity building projects for an optimal OER culture within the university. He also traced the University’s future trajectory with regard to OER and the role it will play in advancing OER in Lebanon and the region. Ms. Zarif went on to speak about CC licenses in a panel titled “Creative Commons Licenses and the Future of Open Education in the Arab World.”

The symposium’s second day (titled “NDU Student Attitudes toward the Use of OER”) focused on the piloting of OER in a university-wide English course targeting close to 600 students in more than twenty sections across three campuses. Dr. Kamal Abouchedid, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, highlighted the integration of OER as a strategic initiative at NDU and as a means of fostering open education.

The design of the course was described by Dr. Sandra Doueiher, Assistant Professor and Coordinator of English. Joining the discussion from Denmark via Skype, Dr. Ena Hodzik spoke about the scholarship of OER, specifically about the issue of quality and utility in the integration of OER. Dr. Hodzik went on to explain that the student survey administered by NDU closely aligned with the major themes in the literature of OER.

Survey results were presented by Dr. George Abdelnour, Chair of the Department of English and Translation. The extensive survey sought student feedback on the use of OER based on general attitudes, effectiveness, quality, and learning outcomes of the resources used. By a 2 to 1 margin, he explained, students showed high levels of satisfaction and engagement with OER. The findings also showed a favorable inclination toward enrolling in courses using OER in the future.

The post OER Symposium held by affiliate team at NDU in Lebanon appeared first on Creative Commons.

The Toronto summit will be a launchpad for the next phase of work for Creative Commons and its global communities. Earlier this year, we unveiled a new Strategic Plan, which focuses on collaboration, vibrancy, gratitude, and usability as our key principles. This is our first summit since this announcement, where we expect to draw together nearly 500 participants from a variety of disciplines including policy and law, arts and culture, open education, GLAM, free culture, open science, open access, and technology. This event is for the global open community, broadly construed, and its focus all aspects of “open” work in education, free culture, open data and research, open knowledge, and more.

Communities around the world are at the heart of our work. Without activists, advocates, professionals, and supporters around the world, Creative Commons would not be the globally recognized standard it is today. Our summits have historically kickstarted actions to help creators make connections and celebrate the commons, and the 2017 summit is poised to be our most successful yet.

We wholeheartedly invite you to join us in Toronto next April. For information about how to participate, please sign up for our special summit email list below. Thank you for your support.

The post Announcing the 2017 Creative Commons Global Summit appeared first on Creative Commons.

For all team members of CC China Mainland, to organize an international or regional meeting has been our long cherished wish. Finally in 2016, the year that marks the 10th anniversary of CC China Mainland, with the strong support of CC HQ and our Asia Pacific Coordinator SooHyun, and endeavors from all CC China Mainland volunteers, we made our dream of a Beijing gathering come true.

In early April, we got the encouraging and challenging news that the Beijing meeting would be in early July. After initial internal discussion, our small group of   a lawyer, teacher, web developer, photographer and marketing manager were willing to contribute from various aspects even though they were based in different locations – Beijing, Hangzhou, Shanghai and Wenzhou.

As the capital city and a metropolitan, Beijing is well-known for its history, culture and diversity, It’s also a bit noisy considering more than 20 million population! We hoped our first  Beijing gathering would be impressive and exciting and show the other side of the capital to all participants. Based on this goal and limited budget, we chose National Judges College Beijing Branch near Yanqi Lake.. Located in Northeastern part of Beijing, the lake is a quiet, beautiful place far from the city center, where 2014 APEC Meeting was held.

Attendees from Bangladesh, Japan, Mongolia, Philippines, Taiwan, India, Hong Kong, Indonesia and South Korea arrived in Beijing 1st of July. CC China Mainland were excited to see all our colleagues from different countries and regions.The spirit of volunteerism was strong – a university student volunteered for airport pickup – a well done job!

On July 2, the regional conference started with affiliate updates in the morning. Representatives from each region gave an update over what happened since the last regional meeting. Apparently many interesting and meaningful actions were taken to either reinforce the concept of CC or to promote understanding and adoption of CC licenses.

In the afternoon, international and regional issues such as affiliate network strategy discussion, regional website, and how to collaborate in open policy advocacy were covered. All of us agreed that being an important member of global CC family, we could and should do more in advocating CC. Also we spent some time for a license translation & translation sprint, community building, fundraising, and technology related issues.

3rd of July’s meeting was dedicated to Chinese speaking affiliates. In addition to follow up some discussion from the previous day, the group shared ideas to resolve key issues they faced during their translation while discussing how the group could move the  4.0 and CC0 collaborative translation project move forward. In order not to miss the rare chance to enjoy the beauty of suburb Beijing, afternoon’s meeting location was changed from indoor to outdoor.

Thanks for everybody’s endeavors to make our Beijing gathering happen, especially our Asia Pacific Coordinator SooHyun. With these experiences, we hope we will be able to hold a global summit in near future with existing & potential volunteers of CC China Mainland.

More details about the event, meeting notes, and photos are on the Wiki.

The post Our Long Cherished Beijing Gathering appeared first on Creative Commons.

One of the greatest strengths of the Creative Commons organization is the dedicated volunteers worldwide who help build openly licensed projects and educate the public about CC in their local communities and internationally.

A few months ago, we provided mini grants to these communities through The Awesome Fund. A dedicated team of organizers evaluated all proposals and selected 19 awesome projects (out of 34 applications) that will take place in the second half of 2016.

That’s Awesome! What can I expect?

These grants fund projects that align with CC program areas like creative communities, policy, and business. They include a wide variety of activities across the CC spectrum including performance, free culture, translation, and copyright reform.

We are pleased to announce that the following projects have been granted financial support through the Awesome Fund:

Many of the projects focus on the collaborative nature of CC networks, with affiliates teaming up to create shared resources across their regions. For an overview of all these awesome projects, check this wiki page. We will be posting blog posts, photos, and celebrations of all this work in the upcoming weeks.

Missed out on this round? No worries! We’ll have another call for proposals in September.

You can also follow #ccisawesome on Twitter and Facebook for updates on these projects and more.

The post CC is Awesome! appeared first on Creative Commons.

 كانت السنتين الماضيتين مفعمة بالنشاط و الحيوية خصوصا في منطقة الشرق الاوسط و شمال افريقيا من خلال العديد من المشاريع المتنوعة مثل:  مشروع الكتاب المفتوح، ندوة اليونسكوالاقليمة للمصادر التعلمية المفتوحة في دول مجلس التعاون الخليجي و اليمن، توقيع مذكرةتفاهم مع جامعة سيدة اللويزة في لبنان، تنظيم فيديوهات بث مباشر على اليوتوب في مختلف المناسبات للحديث عن المسالة التقنية الملحة المتعلقة بحق المؤلف في العالم العرب، إضافة الى قيام الجزيرة الانكليزية بترجمة كتيب البيانات الصحفية الى اللغة العربية. وكذلك إطلاق حملة دعم للمطالبة بحرية باسل خرابيط؛ والقيام بإجتمعات حيوية للمجتمعات التابعة للمشاع الابداعي في لقائين تاريخين: اللقاء الاقليمي لاعادة الهيكلة, بناء القدرات و مشاركة افضل التطبيقات العملية للمشاع الابداعي في المنطقة, و لقاء الترجمة لوضع اللمسات الاخيرة على الترجمة الرسمية لباقة رخص المشاع الابداعي  4.0 الى اللغة العربية. و من المتوقع ان تشهد سنة 2016 تطوارت مثيرة و نمو متسارع  لمجتمع المشاع الابداعي في العالم العربي أيضا

اليوم و بعد عملية مطولة و جهد شاق و مكثف قام الفريق القانوني و اللغوي بانهاء ترجمة النسخة ٤.٠ النهائية لرخص لمشاع البداعي الى اللغة العربية وهي جاهزة الان للمشاورة العامة

المشاورة العامة هي مساحة مفتوحة للجميع – من المحامين الى مستخدمي رخص المشاع الابداعي, من اللغويين الى المترجمين – للمساهمة برأيهم. إذا كان لديك تعليقات او مساهمات جوهرية حول الجوانب المختلفة للرخصة سواء الجوانب القانونية أو اللغوية او قابيلة الاستخدام فان تعليقاتك و مساهمتك مرحب بها و سنكون سعداء بمشاركتك لنا برايك و أفكارك من خلال الرد على هذه الرسالة باللغة العربية. ينبغي ارسال التعليقات في اقرب وقت ممكن حتى يتاح للفريق الوقت لممراجعة, لذلك نرجو منكم ارسال تعليقات قبل ٢١ يوليو/تموز 2016

مع استمرار الجهود لتوسيع و حشد الدعم و التعاون بين الأقران في العالم العربي فإننا نامل ان تكون هذه المشاورة العامة فرصة لتعزيز التعاون عبر الحدود. هذا الدعم و التعاون القضائي و القانوني لهو نموذج  قوي وفعال في المنطقة و من المرتجى ان يصبح منهجية قابلة للتطبيق في المشاريع المستقبلية

كل التهاني للمشاع الابداعي في العالم العربي و نتطلع لسماع تعليقات الجموع العربي حول الترجمة

The post النسخة النهائية من الترجمة العربية لرخص المشاع الابداعي متاحة للمشاورة العامة الآن CC4.0 appeared first on Creative Commons.

The past two years have been specially vibrant, with a wide range of projects including the Open Book Project , a UNESCO regional seminar on OER in the GCC and Yemen,  Notre Dame University—Louaize in Lebanon signing an memorandum of understanding as an affiliate, Google hangouts on various occasions to tackle pressing issues in the digital ecosystem, and the Al Jazeera English translation of the The Data Journalism Handbook  to Arabic.

Other projects include #FreeBassel campaign support and the two historic meetings: the Regional Meeting to restructure, build capacity, share best practices, and the translation meeting to officially translate the 4.0 version of the CC license suite into Arabic. 2016 is also projected to have more exciting developments for the rapidly-growing CC community in the Arab world.

After an extensive process, the legal team finished the CC4.0 Licences Arabic Translation Draft for public consultation.

The public consultation is an open forum where everyone, including lawyers, active license users, linguists, translators, and others are invited to contribute to the project. If you have comments about different aspects of the licenses, particularly in regards to legal, linguistic or usability issues, please feel welcome to provide feedback and share your thoughts by replying to the thread in Arabic.

Comments should be submitted as soon as possible to allow enough time for review, so we encourage you to post here or to the CC Arab World list before the 21st of July 2016.

As efforts across the Arab world continue to expand and gather peer support, we hope that the this public consultation will foster more collaboration. Inter-jurisdictional support is a model that is particularly strong in the region, and hopefully it can become a viable approach for future projects.

Congratulations to the CC Arab World! We look forward to your public comments.

*An Arabic version of this announcement was posted to the CC Arab World list as well.

The post CC 4.0 Arabic Translation Draft Open for Public Consultation appeared first on Creative Commons.

Image by Sierra_Graphic, CC0

The Australian Productivity Commission has recommended important changes to Australian copyright law that support content creators and users in the digital age. On 29 April 2016, the Commission released a Draft Report on reforms to Australia’s intellectual property laws based on the principles of effectiveness, efficiency, adaptability and accountability. Creative Commons Australia strongly supports the passage of the Copyright Amendment (Disability and Other Measures) Bill 2016, as recommended by the Commission. That Bill will introduce extensions to copyright safe harbours and simplify the existing statutory license provisions. We also support the Commission’s draft recommendation to introduce a fair use exception into Australian law.

The Commission’s Recommendations

The Productivity Commission concluded that “Australia’s IP system is out of kilter, favouring rights holders over users and does not align with how people use IP in the modern era”. The Draft Report contained a number of useful recommendations that would make Australia’s outdated copyright laws relevant in the digital age:

• Australia should introduce a fair use exception to copyright. Fair use should replace the current fair dealing exceptions and ensure copyright laws regulate “only those instances of infringement that would undermine the ordinary exploitation of a work at the time of the infringement”;
• Under current Australian law, copyright in unpublished works lasts forever. This should be removed, allowing full use of orphan and out of print works;
• Circumvention of technologies designed to control geographic markets for digital content should not be unlawful. The law requires clarification;
• All publications funded by State and Federal governments, directly or through university funding, should be free to access through an open access repository within 12 months of publication; and
• Copyright safe harbours should be expanded to include all online service providers without an expansion of liability for copyright authorisation.

Creative Commons Australia’s Submissions

Creative Commons Australia made submissions in response on 3 June 2016, supporting many of the Productivity Commission’s recommendations. CCAU’s submissions were guided by three key principles: to ensure access to and use of content is not unnecessarily restricted; that creation and innovation is encouraged; and that open access and open licensing is supported.

Fair Use

Australia needs a fair use exception to address the needs of consumers and creators of content in a digital market. Consumers and creators need support for new expression, which necessarily builds upon existing knowledge, culture, and expression. CCAU fully supports the implementation of the replacement of fair dealing with a fair use exception. Fair use is a flexible exception more suited to the digital age and is likely to align better with consumer and creator expectations for reasonable content use. Fair use encourages the use of content for innovative purposes, reflecting the primary objective of copyright. The Australian Law Reform Commission has issued an extensive reportrecommending the introduction of fair use and the Productivity Commission has supported this.

Copyright Term and international law reform

Australian copyright law has steadily increased its focus on protecting rights holders over the last two decades. The Productivity Commission suggests that this is reflected in the recent extension of copyright terms from life of the author plus 50 years, to life plus 70 years. The Commission notes that this move imposed a significant cost on consumers with no corresponding public benefit. The difficulty in reforming this area is due to an overlapping web of international agreements that entrench the minimum term of copyright protection (including the Berne Convention, TRIPS, the Australian-US Free Trade Agreement, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement). As a result, Australia does not have the ability to independently determine the appropriate extents of our national copyright law. CCAU recommends a start to the difficult process of disentangling intellectual property laws from international agreements that do not advance national interests.

Unpublished Works

CCAU supports the recommendations of the Productivity Commission removing the perpetual copyright protection afforded to unpublished works under Australian law. A significant amount of Australian cultural heritage remains unjustifiably locked up in unpublished work. This content cannot be digitised, archived, preserved, or reused. This can be rectified by the passage of the Copyright Amendment (Disability and Other Measures) Bill 2016.

Geo-Blocking and the ‘Australia Tax’

Australian consumers experience higher prices, long delays, and a lack of competition in digital content distribution markets. This is known as the ‘Australian Tax’. Under current law, it is not always clear whether Australians have the right to circumvent geoblocking technology to access media goods and services sold in other markets. CCAU recommends that Australian law be clarified in this regard, and supports an amendment to the Copyright Act to include exemptions for all types of media, in the encouragement of a competitive digital market in Australia.

Open Access

CCAU supports open access to articles, research and data. Open access improves research efficiency, provides assurance of greater scientific integrity, and reduces the overall costs of research infrastructure. For information to be useful, rights to re-use this content need to be clearly detailed through the use of open licensing. This can be achieved through the use of Creative Commons licensing.

Safe Harbours

Australian creators are currently disadvantaged by safe harbour exceptions that are too narrow to allow distribution of content in the digital market. Safe harbours provide the legal certainty required for content hosts to distribute creator content. Enacting laws which promote legal access and broader use of copyright content is also the most effective way to reduce infringing activity. CCAU supports the extension of safe harbours to all online service providers.

The post CC Australia Supports Commission Recommendations for User-friendly Copyright Reform appeared first on Creative Commons.

Last week, on March 11 2016, Creative Commons Turkey was officially launched during an event at Özyeğin University in Istanbul. Creative Commons is extremely proud and happy to have CC Turkey join the affiliate network, and we want to congratulate the whole team for their efforts over the last year to accomplish this.

We hope and expect that the CC Turkey team will play a pivotal role in the region, and we are looking forward to working with them on the translation of the licenses into Turkish and for the organisation of CC-related events!

Hoşgeldiniz CC Türkiye!
-Gwen Franck, Regional Coordinator Europe
—

Reposted from Creative Commons Türkiye:

The Creative Commons Turkey launch event was held in Özyeğin University on Friday, March 11 with the theme of #shareyourcreativity. The event featured a large number of guests including legal professionals, IT experts, researchers, educators and librarians.

We are pleased to announce that Creative Commons Turkey is now a part of the global CC community.

The event offered a rich program of exciting, horizon-broadening speeches and enlightening discussions. In the spotlight of the discussions of open society, free society and copyrights reform and culture of sharing which Creative Commons represents and is therefore a natural part of it. The use of Creative Commons licenses will make great contributions to the development of these dynamics in Turkey. The launch event was a step towards identifying the points of resistance and gaps in adopting the culture of sharing in the Turkish society and building a legal infrastructure for it.

Sharing and dissemination of intellectual, cultural and artistic outputs to wider audiences are unprecedented elements of a creative, innovative, well-educated, sophisticated and free society. In recognition of this fact, Creative Commons Turkey, under the leadership of Özyeğin University, will continue to work unflaggingly to enable and promote the use of CC licenses in collaboration with all stakeholders. You may follow up on our activities at creativecommons.org.tr and @ccturkiye.

We invite you all to share your creativity with CC licenses.

Please visit the program page for the presentations and videos of the Creative Commons Turkey launch event. [Photos from the event are available on Flickr.]

The post Creative Commons Turkey Joins the CC Affiliate Network appeared first on Creative Commons.