CC and the Google Book Settlement

Mike Linksvayer, November 16th, 2009

The Google Book Settlement is probably the copyright story of the year — it’s complex, contentious, involves big players and big subjects — the future of books, perhaps good and evil — resulting in a vast amount of advocacy, punditry and academic analysis.

It’s also a difficult item for Creative Commons to comment on. Both “sides” are clearly mostly correct. Wide access to digital copies of most books ever published would be a tremendous benefit to society — it’s practically an imperative that will happen in some fashion. It’s also the case that any particular arrangement to achieve such access should be judged in terms of how it serves the public interest, which includes consumer privacy, open competition, and indeed, access to books, among many other things. Furthermore, Creative Commons considers both Google and many of the parties submitting objections to the settlement (the Electronic Frontier Foundation is an obvious example) great friends and supporters of the commons.

We hope that a socially beneficial conclusion is reached. However, it’s important to remember why getting there is so contentious. Copyright has not kept up with the digital age — to the contrary, it has fought a rearguard action against the digital age, resulting in zero growth in the public domain, a vast number of inaccessible and often decaying orphan works, and a diminution of fair use. If any or all of these were addressed, Google and any other party would have much greater freedom to scan and make books available to the public — providing access to digital books would be subject to open competition, not arrived at via a complex and contentious settlement with lots of side effects.

Creative Commons was designed to not play the high cost, risk, and stakes game of litigation and lobbying to fix a broken copyright system. Instead, following the example of the free software movement, we offer a voluntary opt-in to a more reasonable copyright that works in the digital age. There are a huge number of examples that this works — voluntary, legal, scalable sharing powers communities as diverse as music remix, scientific publishing, open educational resources, and of course Wikipedia.

It’s also heartening to see that voluntary sharing can be a useful component of even contentious settlements and to see recognition of Creative Commons as the standard for sharing. We see this in Google’s proposed amended settlement, filed last Friday. The amended version (PDF) includes the following:

Alternative License Terms. In lieu of the basic features of Consumer Purchase set forth in Section 4.2(a) (Basic Features of Consumer Purchase), a Rightsholder may direct the Registry to make its Books available at no charge pursuant to one of several standard licenses or similar contractual permissions for use authorized by the Registry under which owners of works make their works available (e.g., Creative Commons Licenses), in which case such Books may be made available without the restrictions of such Section.

This has not been the first mention of Creative Commons licenses in the context of the Google Book Settlement. The settlement FAQ has long included an answer indicating a Creative Commons option would be available. Creative Commons has also been mentioned (and in a positive light) by settlement critics, for example in Pamela Samuelson’s paper on the settlement and in the Free Software Foundation’s provocative objection centering on the tension between the intentions of public copyright licensors and the potential for settlements to result in less freedom than the licensor intended.

Independent of the settlement, we happily noted a few months ago that Google had added Creative Commons licensing options to its Google Book Search partner program. This, like any voluntary sharing, or mechanism to facilitate such, is a positive development.

However you feel about the settlement, you can make a non-contentious contribution to a better future by using works in the commons and adding your own, preventing future gridlock. You can also make a financial contribution to the Creative Commons annual campaign to support the work we do to build infrastructure for sharing.

If you want to follow the Google Book Settlement play-by-play, New York Law School’s James Grimmelmann has the go-to blog. We’re proud to note that James was a Creative Commons legal intern in 2004, but can’t take any credit for his current productivity!

ccSalon SF (8/12/09) Audio Now Online

Allison Domicone, August 18th, 2009

Thanks to everyone who made it out to our ccSalon in San Francisco last Wednesday. We had a great turn-out, excellent presentations and discussion on CC and open source, and refreshments, all of which made for a delightful evening in PariSoMa’s inviting space.

Couldn’t make it to the salon? Fear not! You can now download and listen to the presentations, in addition to viewing the presenters’ slides:

Chris DiBona, Open Source Program Manager at Google. Audio | Slides (PDF)
Evan Prodromou, founder of Identi.ca. Audio | Slides (PDF)
Nathan Yergler, CC’s Chief Technology Officer. Audio | Slides (Slideshare)

We’re currently planning the next ccSalon SF for October, so stay tuned. Remember, the best way to stay on top of upcoming CC events from around the world is to subscribe to our events mailing list!

ccSalon SF next Wednesday! CC and Open Source

Allison Domicone, August 5th, 2009

CC friends and fans in the Bay Area: we hope you can join us next week at our ccSalon, when, in the spirit of Open Source World, we’ll hear about CC and open source technology from our three presenters for the evening:

* Chris DiBona, Open Source Program Manager for Google, Inc.
* Evan Prodromou, co-Founder of WikiTravel and founder of Identi.ca.
* Nathan Yergler, Creative Commons’ Chief Technology Officer.

When: Wednesday, August 12, 7-9pm
Location: PariSoMa, 1436 Howard St. (map and directions). Plenty of street parking available. (Please note, the space is located up two steep flights of stairs, and unfortunately does not currently have elevator access.)

Light refreshments will be provided.

Check it out on Upcoming and Facebook. We hope to see you there!

ccSalon SF 8/12/09: CC and Open Source

Allison Domicone, July 20th, 2009

We hope you can join us at the next ccSalon SF! In the spirit of Open Source World (taking place in San Francisco that week), we’ll hear about CC and open source technology from our three presenters for the evening:

* Chris DiBona, Open Source Program Manager for Google, Inc.
* Evan Prodromou, co-Founder of WikiTravel and founder of Identi.ca.
* Nathan Yergler, Creative Commons’ Chief Technology Officer.

When: Wednesday, August 12, 7-9pm
Location: PariSoMa, 1436 Howard St. (map and directions). Plenty of street parking available. (Please note, the space is located up two steep flights of stairs, and unfortunately does not currently have elevator access.)

Light refreshments will be provided, and since we rely on the generosity of our community to keep us afloat, we’ll be accepting donations for CC at the door.

Check out the event posting on Upcoming and Facebook. We hope to see you there!

CC Salons are global events, and anyone can start one, no matter where you live. We encourage you to check out our resources for starting your own salon in your area.

Google Image Search Implements CC License Filtering

Fred Benenson, July 9th, 2009

Today, Google officially launched the ability to filter search results using Creative Commons licenses inside their Image Search tool. It is now easy to restrict your Image Search results to find images which have been tagged with our licenses, so that you can find content from across the web that you can share, use, and even modify. Searches are also capable of returning content under other licenses, such as the GNU Free Documentation License, or images that are in the public domain.

To filter by CC search, go to Google’s advanced Image Search page and select the options you’d like in the “Usage rights” section. Your results will be restricted to images marked with CC licenses or other compatibly licensed photos.

Remember, Google can only provide search results that its algorithms find tagged with the license you specify; it is your obligation to verify the license of the image you’re using and make sure you’re conforming to its guidelines.

This is a huge step forward for the future of image search on the web, so congratulations to the Google team on another great CC implementation!

Picasa Adds CC Search

Fred Benenson, June 12th, 2009

Yesterday, Google Blogoscoped picked up on Picasa’s new CC feature: Search! In case it weren’t clear, we get really excited when platforms like Picasa enable CC content exploration. Its one thing to enable your community to select a CC license for their work, but its another thing entirely to help the rest of the web discover that content. Picasa’s commons community will surely benefit from this kind of exposure, so thanks to Picasa for enabling such a valuable feature.

If you’re working on a platform that supports CC, and haven’t considered building a CC-specific license-sensitive search portal, now there’s no excuse!

Thank you!

Joi Ito, January 7th, 2009

Joi Ito / Photo by Mizuka / CC BY

One week ago I asked for support in helping us reach our $500,000 goal. At that time, we had $12,000 left to raise with only 2 1/2 days left in the campaign, and we were all wondering how we were going to make it. Today, I’m proud to say that our community went above and beyond — raising CC a grand total of $525,383.73.

I want to send a special thank you to all of the individuals and companies that are long time supporters of CC. We’ve had hundreds of people continue to support CC over the years and I wish I could thank each and everyone of you publicly for your continued support. However, I don’t want to take up the entire CC main page, so please know how appreciated your commitment to CC is. To Digital Garage, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Tucows, Consumer Electronics Association, and wikiHow, thank you for your continued commitment to CC – I look forward to working with each of your companies in bringing more global awareness about CC, and I feel confident that together we will continue to enrich the digital commons we’re all investing in.

And to all the new individuals and new corporate supporters (Attributor, DotAsia, Ebay, Nevo Technologies, Safe Creative) – thank you for choosing to support CC this year. CC is only as strong as the community that supports it and we’re thrilled to see this community thriving. Think of all we can do over the next year by coming together and supporting each other.

I also want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the following companies and foundations who are committed to sustaining CC and the open movement. To the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Mozilla, IETSI, Red Hat, Google, and the Omidyar Network – thank you.

Thank you all from the bottom of my (and the rest of the CC staff’s) heart — we know how difficult it is right now and are deeply honored that you would choose to support CC this year. This doesn’t just help us continue our work but also reaffirms the growing strength of our community and the belief in a more fair and accessible digital world.

The CC staff, the board of directors, and I all look forward to what will surely be an exciting 2009.

- Joi

Google releases Browser Security Handbook under CC BY

Mike Linksvayer, December 17th, 2008

Last week Google published a 60 page equivalent Browser Security Handbook under the CC Attribution license:

In hopes of helping to make the Web a safer place, we decided to release our Browser Security Handbook to the general public. This 60-page document provides a comprehensive comparison of a broad set of security features and characteristics in commonly used browsers, along with (hopefully) useful commentary and implementation tips for application developers who need to rely on these mechanisms, as well as engineering teams working on future browser-side security enhancements.

Although this may sound dry, the handbook is effectively a highly readable and fascinating explanation of many of the reasons the web and web browsers work as they do. Highly recommended for deep reading by anyone remotely involved in web development, and for skimming by everyone else.

Hopefully publication under the most liberal CC license, allowing republication, modification, and commercial use, so long as credit is given, will help this important content find its way into developer, educational, and training resources around the world.

REMINDER: CC’s Google Policy Fellowship Deadline is December 12th

Fred Benenson, November 24th, 2008

Just a quick reminder that applications for Creative Commons’ Google’s Policy Fellowship for this coming summer are due December 12th, so if you haven’t applied yet, don’t miss the deadline!

The Google Policy Fellow will receive a substantial grant to work at Creative Commons on the following issues (but this is certainly not an exhaustive list of the things we’ll have you thinking about):

• Write case studies about projects and creators that have implemented Creative Commons licenses and analyze strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for each; paying particular consideration to cultural and genre differences.
• Synthesize statistics garnered from recent studies focusing on international license adoption. Fellow will be expected to generate and investigate diverse theses relating to license choice, adoption, and use.
• Coordinate with counsel to critically analyze the current state of public domain policy in US and abroad. Develop a framework to help Creative Commons’ deploy messaging regarding public domain policy in US and abroad.
• Survey the current legal and non-legal opinions with respect to the ’strong vs. weak’ copyleft debate and how it relates to differences between mediums (photography, music, etc.) in order to establish guidelines and uncover precedent for our ShareAlike licenses.
• Research and analysis of how contemporary the discourse of copyright, sharing, reuse, and remix has been shaped over the last six years as a result of the Creative Commons project.
• Investigate new opportunities for Creative Commons implementation in ‘uncontacted’ communities, institutions, artists, and mediums.

Check out more details and the application here.

Creative Commons’ Google Policy Fellowship

Fred Benenson, October 27th, 2008

We’re very excited to announce that Creative Commons will be part of Google’s Policy Fellowship for this coming summer. The Google Policy Fellow will receive a substantial grant to work at Creative Commons on the following issues (but this is certainly not an exhaustive list of the things we’ll have you thinking about):

• Write case studies about projects and creators that have implemented Creative Commons licenses and analyze strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for each; paying particular consideration to cultural and genre differences.
• Synthesize statistics garnered from recent studies focusing on international license adoption. Fellow will be expected to generate and investigate diverse theses relating to license choice, adoption, and use.
• Coordinate with counsel to critically analyze the current state of public domain policy in US and abroad. Develop a framework to help Creative Commons’ deploy messaging regarding public domain policy in US and abroad.
• Survey the current legal and non-legal opinions with respect to the ’strong vs. weak’ copyleft debate and how it relates to differences between mediums (photography, music, etc.) in order to establish guidelines and uncover precedent for our ShareAlike licenses.
• Research and analysis of how contemporary the discourse of copyright, sharing, reuse, and remix has been shaped over the last six years as a result of the Creative Commons project.
• Investigate new opportunities for Creative Commons implementation in ‘uncontacted’ communities, institutions, artists, and mediums.

Check out more details and the application, which is due by Friday, December 12, 2008.