Skip to content

Category: Policy

Webinars: AI Inputs, Outputs and the Public Commons

Better Internet
Two images generated by AI side-by-side: On the left: A brightly colorful painting in the style of Hieronymus Bosch showing vaguely human figures climbing on and attending to a wooden Medieval-looking Rube Goldberg contraption involving wheels, levers, and spheres. On the right: A white robot with a look of concentration on their face, wearing a red cap and robe, holding a painter’s palette, painting something beyond the frame with a brush that has an abstract flower growing up from its handle.
AI Inputs and Outputs” by Creative Commons was made from details from two images generated by the DALL-E 2 AI platform with the text prompts “A Hieronymus Bosch triptych showing inputs to artificial intelligence as a Rube Goldberg machine; oil painting” and “a robot painting its own self portrait in the style of Artemisia Gentileschi.” CC dedicates any rights it holds to the image to the public domain via CC0.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been exploding across the digital landscape — from people sharing text and images generated by AI platforms, to new policy that tries to shape a future where AI is expected to play an even bigger role — all while we aren’t really sure yet even how to define AI, much less…

CC’s Engagement on EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act

Copyright
An abstract European Union flag of diffused gold stars linked by golden neural pathways on a deep blue mottled background.
"EU Flag Neural Network" by Creative Commons was cropped from an image generated by the DALL-E 2 AI platform with the text prompt "European Union flag neural network." CC dedicates any rights it holds to the image to the public domain via CC0.

Beginning in 2021, the European Union has been considering a new AI Act, which would regulate certain uses of AI. In particular, it seeks to ban certain uses of AI, such as broad-based real-time biometric identification for law enforcement in public places, and it seeks to ensure that certain precautions are taken before deployment of…

Statement on the Introduction of the EU Media Freedom Act

Copyright
Headshot of Catherine Stihler, wearing a blue shawl standing in front of a body of water with buildings and clouds in the distance.
"Catherine Stihler" by Martin Shields is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Creative Commons CEO Catherine Stihler welcomed the EU’s publication today of its Media Freedom Act. Catherine said: “An independent, plural media is central to a healthy, functioning democratic system which in turn is the bedrock for citizens’ trust and confidence in politics and values. Creative Commons applauds the EU in its efforts to protect journalists…

A Big Win for Open Access: United States Mandates All Publicly Funded Research Be Freely Available with No Embargo

Copyright, Open Access, Open Data, Open Science
An orange open padlock icon sandwiched by the words open and access.

Today the United States White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued dramatic guidance to all US federal agencies: update all policies to require that all federally funded research and data is available for the public to freely access and re-use “in agency-designated repositories without any embargo or delay after publication.” Creative Commons…

CC Still Opposes Mandatory Filtering and So Should You

Copyright

As part of Creative Commons’ key strategic goal of Better Sharing, we have taken a firm stance against mandatory content filtering on the internet. In new proposed legislation, the U.S. Congress is now raising mandatory content filtering again as a tool to eliminate infringement of copyrighted works. For those who are new to the discussion,…

CC Supports Internet Archive’s Efforts to Ensure Public Access to Books

Copyright

Yesterday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a motion for summary judgment calling to reject the lawsuit against the Internet Archive (IA) brought by four big publishers that threatens IA’s controlled digital lending (CDL) program. Creative Commons fully supports this motion. Here’s why.  The Internet Archive is an American non-profit library preserving and giving access…

CC Expresses Views on Italian National Cultural Heritage Digitization Plan

Copyright, Open Culture

A few weeks ago, the Italian Ministry of Culture issued its National Cultural Heritage Digitization Plan 2022-2023 – Guidelines for the acquisition, sharing and reuse of digital cultural heritage reproductions.  While the Plan is welcome as an important step towards the digital transformation of cultural heritage institutions (CHIs), it risks nonetheless restricting, rather than increasing,…