Last week, we launched a redesign of Creative Commons’ various license (aka “legal code”) pages. See one for yourself. In this post, I’ll spell out what the changes are and why we made them.

The most obvious change we made is updating the overall look of the pages so that they resemble the rest of the Creative Commons website, which was redesigned back in September 2016, as well as the CC license “deed” pages (e.g. the CC BY 4.0 deed), which were redesigned in 2017. We’d always intended to pull the design of the license/legal code pages up in line with the deeds, but the deeds took precedence, since they are the most frequently viewed pages on our website. I’m happy to say that we’ve finished the project with this latest design update.

Along with this look-and-feel overhaul, we wanted to ensure that the license/legal code pages were more mobile-friendly. The previous design was released well over a decade ago, before the typical web user was likely to be viewing CC licenses in a mobile display. We noticed that reading the text of a CC license was difficult on many types of mobile devices, and it was important to us to fix this. Text and images in the new design automatically adjust to better fit the type of experience you are using to view the license.

We also added a brand new feature–one we liked so much that in tandem with the license page overhaul, we ended up extending it to the deed pages as well. This is the translation menu pulldown tool, also known as the “language switcher.” Previously, to see the content of a license or deed page in another of its translated languages, you would hit a link at the top of the page (“Official translations of this license are available in other languages”) or scroll to get to the very bottom of the page where you would then see a list of the other available languages, each one linked to the corresponding translated page. This worked fine, but we wanted to improve the experience of getting to a new translation. The new translation menu tool sits right at the top right of the license and deed pages and enables you to easily identify which languages the page has been translated into, and more quickly select the one you’d like to view. We also kept the list of translated languages at the bottom of these pages intact, in order to accommodate those who are used to identifying and viewing translations that way.

Additionally, we made a handful of smaller changes that are intended to help people better use the licenses. First, the new design includes the website header that is used across the rest of creativecommons.org. The old license design did not include this, making it somewhat difficult for a person who landed on the license page via a search result or a link from an external site to understand where exactly on the web they were. By adding the website header to the license pages, we hope to do a better job contextualizing for people that the license is part of a much larger system, and to give them a much more direct path to learning about Creative Commons generally and getting involved with the CC community.

Lastly, we made two more tweaks focused on improving the experience of using the licenses. There have long been two pieces of text that precede the actual terms of a Creative Commons license on the license pages–a disclaimer at the top followed by a brief list of considerations (the part entitled “Using Creative Commons Public Licenses”). This content is extremely important, but we realized that in the previous design of the pages, it could be tough to differentiate between it and the license terms that follow. In the new design, the disclaimer appears in italics, while the considerations are presented in a truncated style–the first few lines of each of the two considerations appear above a small button that enables you to expand these sections to read more.

We’re excited about these changes and hope that the public finds them useful. A big thank-you to Diane Peters and Sarah Hinchliff Pearson, CC’s general counsel and senior counsel, respectively, for all their help in getting our list of changes into shape. Also a huge thanks to the folks at Affinity Bridge, the web development and design firm who helped us take our ideas for these revised pages and make them live.

In a unique joint translation process, community members from Creative Commons Portugal and Brazil came together to release a single Portuguese translation of the CC 4.0 license suite. Portuguese is the sixth most spoken language in the world, and the translation will reach over 220 million Portuguese speakers around the world.

Thank you to our translation team: Teresa Nobre, CC Portugal; Mariana Valente, CC Brazil; Pedro Mizukami, CC Brazil; Luiz Moncau, CC Brazil; and Eduardo Magrani, CC Brazil.

The first draft of the license translation was submitted in July 2014, with a public comment period from November 2014 to January 2015. This month’s translation represents years of work by the Creative Commons Portuguese and Brazilian communities, and marks the 18th translation of 4.0 (with many more to come!)

Parabéns pela tradução, CC Brasil e CC Portugal!

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If you’re in the EU, go to saveyourinternet.eu and tell your MEPs to stop the proposal and reopen the debate.

Today, the European Parliament the Legal Affairs Committee voted in favor of the most harmful provisions of the proposed Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market.

The outcome reflects a disturbing path toward increasing control of the web to benefit powerful rights holders at the expense of the open internet, freedom of expression, and the rights of users and the public interest in the digital environment.

The committee voted 13-12 in favor of Article 11, the provision known as the “link tax,” which grants an additional right to press publishers requiring anyone using snippets of journalistic content to first get a license or pay a fee to the publisher for its use online. Article 11 is ill-suited to address the challenges in supporting quality journalism, and it will further decrease competition and innovation in news delivery. Similar efforts have already failed miserably in Germany and Spain.

The committee voted 15-10 in favor of Article 13, the provision that would require online platforms to monitor their users’ uploads and try to prevent copyright infringement through automated filtering. Article 13 will limit freedom of expression, as the required upload filters won’t be able to tell the difference between copyright infringement and permitted uses of copyrighted works under limitations and exceptions. It puts into jeopardy the sharing of video remixes, memes, parody, and code, even works that include openly licensed content.

As Communia reports, the committee voted against nearly all measures that would attempt to grant more rights to users, such as commonsense proposals for limitations and exceptions for freedom of panorama and user generated content. The committee adopted some positive improvements to the provisions having to do with education, access to works in the cultural heritage sector, and in research, but many of the changes are superficial, leaving the underlying effect of the article quite restrained.

Over the last months we contributed to massive online campaigns to #SaveTheLink, stop the #CensorshipMachines, protect education, and promote innovation in research and text and data mining. These efforts were organised by dozens of civil society and digital rights organizations, and hundreds of thousands of people made their voices heard in calling for a more progressive and balanced copyright in the EU.

The fight is not over. EDRi notes that there are several additional steps before the Directive can be fully adopted. In the vote today, the Parliament gave itself a mandate to negotiate a final deal with the EU Council (the EU Member States). But this decision can be challenged in the next plenary meeting (all 751 MEPs), where the Parliament could decide to reopen the copyright reform for debate within the larger forum, thus potentially offering an opportunity to make other changes to the text. This vote would likely happen on July 4.

The work to #FixCopyright in the EU is far from complete. We’ll be there advocating for copyright rules that protects and promotes the commons and the open web. We need your help to make sure that our voice is heard even louder this time.

Today, CC is pleased to announce the appointment of two new members of the Board of Directors, both prominent leaders and advocates in their fields. Congratulations to Amy Brand, Director of the MIT Press, and Delia Browne, National Copyright Director for the Council of Australian Government’s (COAG) Education Council and Copyright Advisory Group.

Amy Brand is Director of the MIT Press, one of the largest university presses in the world, and an important figure in open access publishing. The MIT Press is well-known for its publications in emerging fields of scholarship and its pioneering use of technology. Brand’s career spans a wide array of experiences in academia and scholarly communications. She received her doctorate in cognitive science from MIT and has held a number of positions in scholarly communications, publishing, and open information access at MIT, Digital Science, and Harvard before returning to the press in 2015 to serve as director. She is an Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, and serves on the boards of Crossref, Duraspace, Altmetric, and Board on Research Data and Information of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine. She’s currently working on her first documentary film, on women in science.

Delia Browne is a highly respected copyright lawyer and policy advocate who leads the National Copyright Unit (NCU) providing specialist copyright advice to Australian Schools and Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutes with a focus on the rapidly changing digital teaching environment. A long time member of the Creative Commons Global Network, Delia is the Education Sector Lead of Creative Commons Australia and has attended every Creative Commons Global Summit since 2007 and she was an essential member of the community strategy team that authored CC’s Global Network Strategy. Delia is a strong advocate of the open education movement and has drafted a number of declarations and pieces of legislation including the Cape Town Declaration on Open Education and the Copyright Amendment on Disability Access and Other Measures Act 2017. She is a sought-after speaker and participates in many international conferences and think tanks on Copyright Law Reform and OER. She has represented Creative Commons at the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights and is dedicated to furthering the WIPO Limitations and Exception agenda particularly with regard to education. Delia is a co-founder and the President of Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) and a board director of the Australian Digital Alliance. She is also a member of the editorial board of Media and Arts Law Review and has taught Intellectual Property at the University of New Wales, Griffith University and the University of Auckland (her alma mater.)

These two women are excellent additions to our Board of Directors, joining with CC to fulfill our vision for open access to knowledge and a vibrant, usable Commons powered by collaboration and gratitude. We look forward to seeing all that they accomplish in their new appointments.

The Lithuanian translation of the 4.0 CC licenses and CC0 is now completed. Both the licenses and CC0 translation can be viewed on the Creative Commons website.

The 4.0 translations are much anticipated by local heritage institutions as an online tool for evaluation of validity of rights and labelling content in the process of creation. The possibility to link the users directly to CC licenses and tools in Lithuanian is particularly welcome.

The Lithuanian translations were written by volunteer lawyers from the CC Lithuania team: Jurga Gradauskaitė; Rėda Pilipaitė, Paulius Jurčys, and Olegas Juška. The process was supervised by Prof. Vytautas Mizaras from the Faculty of Law at the University of Vilnius, Lithuania.

The CC Lithuania team will proceed with seminars and notifications to let potential users know of the possibility to use 4.0 in their local language and to reinforce the message of the benefits of labeling and sharing content.

As the Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament is nearing a vote on the proposed reform of the EU copyright rules, time is running out to make your voice heard. The vote will take place on June 20.

The final copyright directive will have deep and lasting effects on the ability to create and share, to access and use education and research, and to support and grow diverse content platforms and information services. As it stands now, the copyright reform—especially Article 13—is a direct threat to the open web.  

Article 13 is the proposal that would require online platforms to monitor their users’ uploads and try to prevent copyright infringement through automated filtering.

If you’re in the EU go to https://saveyourinternet.eu/ and tell Members of the European Parliament to delete Article 13 from the copyright directive. From the website:

Article 13 will impose widespread censorship of all the content you share online, be it a parody video, a remix, a meme, a blog post, comments on Reddit, a piece of code, livestreaming your gaming experience, or even a link in a tweet.

The filtering requirement violates fundamental rights enshrined in existing EU law, such as the provision in the E-Commerce Directive that prohibits general monitoring obligations for internet platforms.

One example of the negative consequences of Article 13 is that it will limit freedom of expression, as the required upload filters won’t be able to tell the difference between copyright infringement and permitted uses of copyrighted works under limitations and exceptions. Article 13 fails to uphold rules that protect the ability of EU citizens to use copyright-protected works in transformative ways. And it puts into jeopardy the sharing of video remixes, memes, parody, and code, even works that include openly licensed content.

Now the European Parliament is the last line of defense that can put the copyright reform back on track—or at least remove the most harmful parts of the draft legislation, particularly Article 13.

To provide a little background, for the last several years the EU has been working on revising its rules on copyright. Ever since the European Commission released its lackluster draft Directive on copyright in 2016, Creative Commons and dozens of organisations have been engaging policymakers to make crucial changes in order to protect user rights and the commons, enable research and education, and promote creativity and business opportunities in the digital market.

A few weeks ago the ambassadors of the EU countries agreed to a version of Article 13 that fails to address the biggest shortcomings of the Commission’s original proposal, and in a number of ways actually makes it worse.

Contact Members of the European Parliament now!

Send your representatives an email, tweet, or phone call before June 20 and tell them you need copyright laws that protect an Internet where you can share news and culture with your friends and family, where you can expect to be treated fairly, and where your rights as EU citizens are protected. Tell them to delete Article 13.

Like the rest of the internet, it seems, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) that comes into effect today has given us a good opportunity to pause and do a comprehensive review of the ways in which Creative Commons collects and uses the personal information of its community. As an organization, our data processing activities are pretty minimal. But given our event planning, fundraising, and other core functions, we do collect and use some data on a regular basis. We have rewritten our privacy policy to make it easier to understand how, when, and why that data collection happens.

The full new policy is here. We have strived to make it simpler and more human-readable, all while ensuring it is as precise and legally robust as possible. (Just like our legal tools!) Substantively, the most significant changes are:

• We rewrote our privacy principles to better reflect the ideals that motivate CC’s current practices.
• We provided a more detailed explanation of our analytics tools and the instances in which the information they gather may be tied to your other personal information.
• We described our retention practices, which reflect CC’s recent effort to begin to streamline and centralize data storage practices internally.
• We added a simple process for you to request to access the data CC holds about you.

Most of CC’s data collection happens when you voluntarily and knowingly provide CC with data, for example, by signing up to join the CC Global Network or donating money to our programs. There are, however, three ways in which CC collects and uses some data indirectly: Google Analytics, fundraising analytics, and email analytics. Our privacy policy describes those processes and how to opt out if you choose to do so.

If you are already on our mailing list, we are not requiring you to opt back in to continue to receive CC email updates. We decided that measure was not necessary given that CC has been consistently strengthening its mailing list sign-up procedures over the years, up to the double opt-in mechanism we use now. As always, you should feel free to update your preferences or unsubscribe entirely at any time by going to this link.

CC will continue to monitor privacy regulations around the world and look for ways to improve our privacy practices.

Happy Africa Day 2018!

Every year on 25th May, Africans join together to remember the launch of the Organisation for African Unity (now rebranded to African Union) on May 25, 1963 in Ethiopia.

For years, many CC members across the African continent have expressed interest in collaborating on African Creative Commons initiatives.

On the sidelines of the recent CC Global Summit in Toronto, the African participants gathered, proposed and discussed areas of collaboration. We agreed to develop and complete projects by December 2018 in the following four categories:

1. Open Policy – Led by Elizabeth Oyange (CC Kenya) and Seble Baraki (CC Ethiopia)
2. Open Education Resources – Led by Aristarik Maro (CC Tanzania) and Hildah Nyakwaka (CC Kenya)
3. Arts & Culture – Led by Mohamed Rahmo (CC Morocco) and Asma Al-Amin (CC Kenya)
4. Open Access – Led by Kamel Belhamel (CC Algeria) and Helen Chuma-Okoro (CC Nigeria)

Some of these groups have already began working on their ideas:

1. The Open Policy group is targeting a project at the African Union. Details here.
2. The Open Access group project details are here.

In addition to these categories, Raphael Berchie (CC Ghana) and Simeon Oriko (CC HQ) will help to lead the creation of chapters across the continent. Obianuju Mollel (CC Tanzania/Canada) will coordinate follow up work across the four categories.

We welcome you to join us and contribute your skills and knowledge towards realizing the potential of these projects.

How do you join in?

Join the CC Africa WhatsApp group where many discussions on these and other topics are taking place. Also, join the CC Africa Slack Channel.

Not on CC Slack yet? Sign up here to join: https://slack-signup.creativecommons.org/

For those of you who missed it in the flurry of the 2018 CC Summit announcements, we opened registration for the official CC Certificate last month. The CC Certificate is a training course on Creative Commons licenses, open practices and the ethos of the Commons. We launched the CC Certificate as a way to invest in advocates in open movements – to build and strengthen their open licensing expertise. Find out more here. Our first round of classes in July are already sold out, but we still have space in our October classes. We’re working on outreach, translation, scholarships, and Certificate Instructor training courses, so watch for more announcements!

While these updates and advancements are exciting, we recognize the need for this program to grow quickly to meet demand. We plan to iterate on the Certificate offerings, regularly assessing content and process to better meet your priorities. We welcome your input!

If you are interested in any of the following opportunities to get involved, please sign up below.

• CC Certificate information listserv sign up: here
• Interest in beta testing additional CC Certificate tracks, such as GLAM, or the CC Instructor Training course: here
• Interest in hosting an in-person Certificate “bootcamp” training: here

Thanks for being a part of this process! We look forward to working with you.

From our Humans of the Commons Series: SooHyun Pae on listening to the network, the beauty of translation, and knowledge as a human right. Based in South Korea, SooHyun Pae is a translator and the Asia Pacific Regional Coordinator for Creative Commons.

When the Creative Commons community began discussing how to better engage with the world, my role changed – especially when we decided to restructure the CC Global Network last year. I assisted in the transition process from the old, obsolete program to the new global network structure. We conducted interviews with members of our network as part of our “Faces of the Commons” report, and I helped conduct the interviews in my region.

I had clear expectations about what I would hear from the interviewees; I’ve worked with the Creative Commons affiliate team for many years, and I thought I knew them very well. But I was completely wrong. All of them had different perspectives about the CC movement and its value. There were some common challenges they were struggling with, but they often varied widely by country.

I got to see the diversity of the CC community and the beautiful individuals within it.

What was also very striking was that they all have a deep appreciation for this wonderful community. While they face a lot of challenges, and some had complaints about how we were doing the work, they really cherish the relationships and friendships they’ve made in the community.

These experiences allowed me to see the diversity of the community itself and, at the same time, the value of the beautiful individuals within it. It was an exciting and inspirational experience. It’s so important to highlight individual contributions. We always wanted to do that, but before the “Faces of the Commons” report, we didn’t have enough concrete examples to show people why it was so important. I think the report can be the basis for future endeavors towards that goal.

Translating knowledge and creativity

I became involved in the CC Korea community after watching Lawrence Lessig’s TED Talk. I was fascinated by it. I didn’t know anything about Creative Commons at the time, but I began to do research and learned there were many people doing the same thing in Korea. That’s how I became involved in the Creative Commons Korea community.

At the time I was working as a full-time translator. I was so in love with languages and translation – I love meeting people from different places and learning about new cultures. I realize that translation is a derivative form of work, and I struggled to understand why certain content should be inaccessible to someone just because it has been copyrighted by someone else. Even if the author wanted to share the work, it’s still copyrighted and at risk of being potentially illegal in certain hands if shared. I didn’t know which approach to take when I used someone’s work in my translations.

Creative Commons made it clear that knowledge and creativity should not be restricted by a legal system that doesn’t make sense.

I realized that it’s important to make knowledge and creativity accessible to as many people as possible if you want others to benefit from your work. It makes me feel less restricted and less limited when I do translation work and share a creative work with others.

I try to translate books with Creative Commons licensing because it shows the value of the licenses, and helps me collaborate with others. It also allows me to reach out to traditional publishers and give them information about alternative licensing options.

This year I’m translating the book “Made with Creative Commons” by Paul Stacey and Sarah Pearson. It’s about open business models, and contains interviews and analyses by Creative Commons staff. I’m interested in this project because I want to experiment with a new model. Instead of working with traditional publishers, I wanted to team up with people interested in publishing online, under Creative Commons licenses, doing independent publishing. My hope is to develop this into other projects in other languages.

Knowledge as a human right

When I think about what a vibrant Commons means, I like to use the analogy of a river. Keeping the Commons vibrant is like keeping the river in your neighborhood safe and clean, so that anyone can drink and make use of it. Everyone understands that access to safe water is vital to the health of the community.

In this digital era, access to information and knowledge is becoming critical to survival and the well-being of society.

To me, supporting the Commons is like protecting the environment and protecting human rights. Restrictive copyright systems, capitalism, and monetization of knowledge and information have increasingly become threats. Building a vibrant and sustainable Commons-based ecosystem is directly related to the sustainability and well-being of individuals in the world. It creates the foundation for more knowledge and creativity that others can be inspired by and build upon.