It’s Open Access Week 2016. Open Access Week is an annual week-long event that highlights the importance of sharing scientific and scholarly research and data. The goal is to educate people on the benefits of open publishing, advocate for changes to policy and practice, and build a community to collaborate on these issues. This year’s…

Last week, 14 people were convicted by an Uruguayan judge for the crime of making copies of educational resources. The defendants, owners of copy shops located near the University of the Republic (Universidad de la República) in Montevideo, have been sentenced to seven months in prison, although the judge has conditionally suspended the imprisonment. The…

Graphical recording created at the Cancer Moonshot Summit on June 29, 2016. (Credit: StephScribes/White House Cancer Moonshot Task Force.)

Today Vice President Biden announced a comprehensive plan for his Cancer Moonshot initiative, which seeks to achieve a decade’s worth of progress on cancer research in five years.

Last month the European Commission released its proposed changes to copyright in the EU. Unfortunately, the proposal fails to deliver on the promise for a modern copyright law in Europe.

This post was written by Natalia Mileszyk and Lisette Kalshoven of COMMUNIA. Photo by Saša Krajnc, CC BY 4.0. Last week at the Creative Commons Europe Meeting in Lisbon, COMMUNIA organised a “School of Rock(ing) Copyright” workshop. Creative Commons affiliates from Poland, the Netherlands, and Portugal joined efforts in sharing knowledge about the current European…

Braille soon coming to Visual Libraries Project by Claire Sambrook, CC BY-NC 2.0. Today the Marrakesh Treaty—the international agreement to improve access to copyrighted works for the blind and visually impaired—goes into effect. The treaty has been discussed at the World Intellectual Property Organization since 2008 and was signed in Marrakesh in June 2013.  It…

As connectivity continues to increase globally, more people than ever live in a ubiquitous and nonstop media environment. In light of these changes, the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s work has never been more important.

Today Creative Commons, CC Colombia, and over a dozen other CC affiliates and partners sent a letter to the Colombian government calling for user-friendly copyright reform. Colombia’s copyright law is being re-opened to come into compliance with the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. We believe that this is a timely opportunity to introduce positive changes to…

Copyright policy should benefit everyone, not just legacy rightsholders Today the European Commission released its legislative proposal for changes to EU copyright law. The proposal has been introduced as a Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market. The Directive fails to deliver on the promise for a modern copyright law in Europe. In an ideal…

In March we hosted the second Institute for Open Leadership. In our summary of the event we mentioned that the Institute fellows would be taking turns to write about their open policy projects. This week’s post is from Fiona MacAlister, OER Specialist at Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa. I was privileged to attend the…