Imagine a Vilhelm Hammershøi painting printed out and hung over your fireplace, a 3D printed sculpture in your garden, or maybe a party that mixes Spotify playlists with an opera singer performing romantic songs in front of the newly acquired Friedrich’s painting. Sounds like something John Lennon dreamed up in the song “Imagine?” These are actual examples of a museum keeping up to date and using technology to its advantage.

SMK Friday at the SMK Museum, Copenhagen, Ida Tietgen, CC BY

Engaging with users: a closer look at the strategies of GLAM institutions

After almost 30 years of “the modern internet” and ten years of “Internet 2.0,” we already know that technology won’t open all the doors. As GLAM (Galleries Libraries Archives and Museums) practitioners our objective is clear: how can we make sure people stay connected to knowledge and heritage, and become inspired by it? How can technology be our ally?

Heritage institutions improve accessibility and access to knowledge, art, and culture. . In addition to access, they also provide the inspiration and building blocks for further innovation and creativity. How can the (digitised) commons serve as the means to both heritage institutions’ and their audiences’ ends? What are the different institutional strategies and user behaviours related to them? What works and what doesn’t in delivering access, use and reuse? To what extent are CC licenses already promoting this? And, last but not least: why?

Alicja Peszkowska gets up close with Johannes Larsen’s ‘Hvinænder i en våge’, 1899, picture by Jonas Heide Smith, Watching the Watchers, CC BY

We are going to address these questions during our Creative Commons Summit 2017 session. The idea behind the session is to shift the conversation from the abstract ideas and values to the actual institutional strategies and user behaviours. Our implicit hypothesis is that the only way for the commons to stay relevant over time is for increased usage. The context of who and how they can be used is, on the other hand, ever-changing. There are no absolute responses. The research that has already been done in a field will serve as a point of reference and a context for studying particular examples. We propose to explore the examples of how GLAM institutions successfully engaged the users basing on their (different) behaviours, rather than assumptions or declarations. And we welcome participants’ own reflections on both the present, and future, of heritage institutions’ use of open licenses to deliver creativity and innovation.

Our session will kick off with presentations and later take up a form of an open discussion. Let’s talk commons, and let’s talk GLAM. You are invited. See you in Toronto!

Nearly a quarter of the participants coming to the Creative Commons Global Summit in Toronto, CA from April 28–30 are scholarship recipients. They are representatives from a variety of communities and issues, including free and open culture, copyright reform, GLAM, open education, and global information systems. They represent every CC world region, with the majority coming from Africa, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America.

Of the 95 scholarship recipients, 23% are from Africa, 18% are from Latin America, 29% are from Europe, 18% are from Asia-Pacific and 6% are from the Arab World. In addition, we’ve nearly doubled our scholarship numbers this year both in terms of community participation and organizational funding. This is a big investment for CC, and we’re proud to support our community members to help them join the conversation.

Through our scholarship program, we are creating a healthy community by recognizing and engaging with gender, cultural, and geographical diversity in order to fulfill our organizational mission of a vibrant commons and community. As you’ll see, the diversity of the scholarship recipients extends beyond geography in order to provide opportunities to summit first timers as well as CC veterans and moves the community conversations beyond licenses toward advocacy, art, law, education, usability, and growth of the commons.

Creative Commons believes that providing pathways to participation is crucial to our goal of lighting up the commons and we’re proud to support so many participants from our Global Community. Below, read about some of the ways our community is looking forward to engaging during the summit and beyond.

Lia Hernandez, CC Panama Legal City Leader

I am almost ready to attend the CC Global Summit in cold Toronto. I am so excited because its my first global summit and I am looking forward to meeting all of you in real life.

Christian Villum, CC Denmark

As always, I look forward to the summit in order to reconnect with the global community and have important discussions that help drive forward the expansion of the global knowledge commons. Specifically I am excited to be part of a few of the sessions around new open business models because I believe this to be a cornerstone in building the future that we want.

Cherubim Mawuli Amenyedor, CC Ghana

I’m excited about the summit because I will get to meet, share and learn from equally passionate and knowledgeable community members working tirelessly to explore the future of the Commons and sharing for users, creators and activists.I’m grateful to CC for providing the needed platform to free-up the results of creative work for re-use, sharing and collaboration. I believe this will help me unlock Africa’s creative potential in the digital economy.

Leslie Chan, University of Toronto Scarborough

Usually I have to travel to attend conferences of this scale, and it is a nice change to welcome the world to Toronto instead. I am committed to ensuring that the Web will continue to be inclusive and open to diverse knowledge making and sharing, and I am looking forward to meeting so many like minded folks and to share experience. I will be speaking on Lessons from Failures in Open Advocacy and how I would do things differently on Sunday morning April 30.

Dimitar Dimitrov, Wikimedia Brussels

I have always believed that instead of several parallel movements we are one big free and open movement. I am particularly excited to meet the great girls and guys who are actively working on freeing up creativity and knowledge in Africa.

Paula Eskett, CC New Zealand

I’m most excited about the amazing speaker lineup and connecting and learning from the other Summit participants, but can’t deny the obvious excitement of traveling to the other side of the world too!

Last year I was so lucky to be part of IOL2 — a life changing learning experience, and I’ve recently joined the CC Aotearoa New Zealand Advisory Panel as an education representative.

As a professional librarian I see CC and Open as integral to the sustainability and future focused thinking of all libraries regardless of sector, and strongly believe in libraries providing equitable access to information and spaces to create and share new knowledge.

I’ll be delivering a session Friday 4pm : Preloading not backfilling : Preparing our children for a life of Open.

Mohamed Rahmo, CC Morocco

I’m excited about the summit because I will meet my open counterparts from all over the world. I’m from Morocco and I have an idea for all the people of the CC community in the world — I would like to launch a global content creation day, and I will advocate about the copyright policy back home so I want to learn from the other people. Back home we will also start a series of workshops to educate people about CC.

John Weitzmann, CC Germany

I’m excited about the CC Global Summit because it is most important and inspiring to meet many of the fantastic people in the network in person. My connection with the CC idea is based on the fact that such legal tools are simply necessary as long as the defaults of the law continue to hinder exchange and sharing.

Bastian Greshake, Germany

I’m super excited to finally meet all of the commoners again, as we’re not getting the chance to meet in person that often. I’m involved as I’m running a website that uses Creative Commons to enable research by putting genomes into the public domain. While I’m a strong believer in all things open*, my professional background makes me especially interested in the Academic Commons, that’s why I’ll be facilitating a session on “Towards the Scholarly Commons” on Saturday from 2:30–3:30PM.

Kayode Yussuf, CC Nigeria Tech Lead

I am a member of the CC Africa . School of Open team, I was a member of the CCSummit program committee and I plan and execute CC Nigeria’s projects.

I am excited to attend the Global Summit because I’d get the opportunity to meet with community members in real life. I am also looking forward to seeing the CCSummit program play out. The committee did a lot of work, making calls, sharing documents across several times zones to put the program together. As one of the committee members put it — this will be the best summit ever.

Carlos Guerrero, Hiperderecho, Peru

I’m really excited about the summit because it’s a big opportunity to share experiences and to enhance the ecosystem of CC. I’m especially enthusiastic about the work on my region; Latin America. Nos vemos ahí!

Clint Lalonde, CC Canada

I have been involved with the CC community for a number of years through my work with Open Educational Resources, and believe that the work of CC is vitally important in empowering people to fully maximize the affordances of new and emerging digital technologies. This will be my first CC Global Summit and, while I am looking forward to connecting with others working in the OER space, I am very excited at the opportunity to connect and learn more about the burgeoning Platform Co-operative movement and am happy to see the connections being made between the CC community and this exciting new movement.

Yi-hsuan Lin, CC Taiwan

I am mainly in charge of the license translation/localization issues. I’m excited to participate in the summit and I’m looking forward to networking with others who have reconciled 4.0 license issues.

Thanks for CC HQ for providing me this great opportunity to participate 2017 CC global summit!

Aristarik Maro, Public Lead CC Tanzania

I’m so excited about the 2017 summit because I’ll get to meet community members from different parties of the world, some of who I have been communicating with online in real life!! & some of which are new to me but hoping to hook up and network. I am thankful to CC for the support especially the establishment of the countries’ affiliate teams where we network. I’ll participate in most interesting sessions and use CC communication tools to support the Global Movement in my country.

Maxwell, economics student and open textbook advocate at University of Victoria

I got truly involved with CC while working with a professor to develop an open textbook for microeconomics. I’m excited about the summit because I’ll get a chance to immerse myself in the CC environment and learn about the many aspects it has beyond just open education! I’m involved with CC because I see the potential it has to make education more innovative and more accessible.

Marcela Basch, Buenos Aires

I can’t wait to get to Toronto and meet the amazing global CC community. I run El plan C, a digital magazine on collaborative economy, free culture and commons, with special focus on Latin America. The future of the commons and collaboration is one of my main areas of interest, so I’m eager to participate on that track and be able to discuss with people who’s been thinking about that from other points of view, geographically and culturally speaking. Almost at the end of the meeting I’ll be hosting a session on this topics, “What is exactly a commons oriented initiative and how could it be sustainable?”, on Sunday 4pm. Spoiler: I don’t really have answers yet, but I hope we could think it through together.

Shahadu Sadik, Wikipedia Ghana

I am an editor on Wikpedia, a blogger and a technology enthusiast. I love open education.

I am super excited to be a part of this year’s Creative Commons Global Summit in Toronto Canada. I just can’t wait to meet people from across the globe to share and discuss issues relating to Creative Commons and its sister projects.

Megan Beckett, CC South Africa Public Lead

I’m passionate about advancing access to education and life changing learning experiences in my country. CC tools and licenses have been an integral part in enabling the far reaching impact of the work we’ve done at Siyavula Education in OER collaborative development and communities of practice. I’ve also recently joined CC South Africa as the Public Lead. I’m really looking forward to the Summit to be inspired, to learn and to engage with CC and openness more broadly in the international community, whilst finding out what works for others locally.

Elizabeth Oyange, Copyright Associate for Aga Khan University (global), based in Nairobi, Kenya

I look forward to attending the CC Summit for a broader perspective on the various program areas, the keynote speeches and meeting like-minded CC’ers from all corners of the world. This community involvement and networking will allow us to disseminate current views and CC information and hopefully contribute our institutional insight.

Calú (Carlos) Raul Correa Loyola, CC Ecuador

I don’t believe in copyright lottery, obstacles to science and knowledge access, and old-fashioned ways to create. I’m very excited to attend CC Summit because we can push forward all Internet potential, driving a new era of development, growth and productivity. I would like promote this potential in my country, sharing and applying this ideas on widespread arenas with my partners and colleagues.

Guido Gamba, CC Argentina

I’m looking forward to the summit and to meet fellow colleagues from the commons all around the world. I’ve been involved with the network for quite some time already–in fact, this is not my first global summit! Regardless, I’m excited and anxious as if it was my first one. I believe that CC is a vivid example that things can be done otherwise, in a more just and fair way, and it’s always thrilling to meet with so many people people who feel the same way. I’ll be participating in two sessions: “Faces of the Commons: How Can the People of Creative Commons Change the World?” (Friday 13:30h) and “Building a Culture of Appreciation for the New Global Network” (Saturday 16:00h). I hope to see you there!

Hilman Fathoni, Creative Commons Indonesia (CCID), Legal Lead

Aleck Ncube, CC Zimbabwe

Freyja van den Boom, Researcher and Project Manager Future TDM

Hildah Nyakawa, Executive Director at Jamlab, CC Kenya

I’m excited about the summit because I’ll be able to meet and interact with fellow Open Education contributors and enthusiasts.

I have been hosting School of Open sessions here in Kenya and at the summit I’ll be co-hosting a session with P2PU on Learning Circles on Saturday from 11:30 am to 12 noon.

Kristina Alexanderson, CC Sweden

Savithri Singh, CC India Public Lead

Emmanuel Malongo, CC Tanzania, Education & Technology

Nasir Khan, CC Bangladesh

I am a big fan of Creative Commons – the idea of CC and the great people who believe in this. It is a great opportunity for me to get involved with the awesome projects and initiatives under CC. Recently I heave been working with the government of Bangladesh on establish an open policy for open data portal of Bangladesh (http://data.gov.bd). I am interested in attending the Community & Movement and The Future of the Commons track related sessions.  I was a fellow of IOL first session and attended the Global Summit in 2015 and Asia Pacific regional summit in 2014 & 2016. It was always exciting to discuss in person with the people who are connected via online. When CC volunteers came to a place to discuss something great always happens!

CC’s community grew up around the licenses, but over the past decade it has evolved into a powerful and diverse movement of interests and areas of work including open policy, open education, access to research and data, and cultural sharing. While those communities grew naturally, CC has never had a model for collaboration, shared goal-setting, and mobilizing action. The new network strategy, for the first time, creates a simple structure to enable global collaboration and action.

The Global Network will identify and collaborate on a series of shared interests and priorities, which we have called Platforms. A Platform is an area of work, a space for individuals and institutions to organize and coordinate themselves across the broad network. It’s open to anyone inside and outside the Creative Commons Global Network to support, share experience and collaborate on its goals and objectives. Through Platforms, we want to initiate strategic collaboration between network members that will have worldwide impact.

We are using the opportunity of this Global Summit to open the conversation about designing Platforms in several ways. On Friday, just after the opening, we will host a session called Programs for the New CC Global Network: How Can We Work Together? (Friday 13:30 – 15:00), where we expect to talk about the future work our community would like to be engaged to work in the future and have a big picture conversation about it. On Sunday (13:30 – 15:30), there will be a session called A Platform for Big Thinking about CC, a follow up session to the first, where we expect to think really big about the Future of the Commons, both in terms of challenges surrounding CC but also the Digital Commons.

Then, we will have specific sessions on Platforms related to the Open Education Platform (Friday 15:00 – 16:50), Copyright Reform (Saturday 15:30 – 18:00) and Open GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) (Sunday 13:30 – 15:30). And, strongly connected with this community-driven effort, we also scheduled a specific session on Building a culture of appreciation for the new Global Network (Saturday, 16:00 – 17:30) where we expect to open a conversation about requirements, needs and tools we would like to see to make our community strengthen and grow healthy and diverse.

While participating in the Summit, and especially leading sessions, please keep in mind the possibility of establishing a platform around a shared issue of interest. We have prepared guidelines for people interested in proposing a platform.

The CC Summit is an exciting opportunity for global collaboration and action. Summit participants will begin to share their goals, objectives, strategies, and tactics and lead a global conversation towards a stronger commons and community through an open invitation that starts at Summit, but will continue through the year, and beyond.

The Summit is the beginning of this conversation as well as the beginning of a big experiment in working together. By proposing a platform early on, you can join this early phase of testing how platforms will function. If you have ideas about CC platforms, please share them on social media using #ccplatforms hashtag and in our Slack. We would be very happy to see a broad range of platforms being discussed. Join us.

Our new book was released to Kickstarter backers today and will be available at the CC Global Summit and in wide release May 5.

For the last year and a half, Creative Commons staff Sarah Hinchliff Pearson and Paul Stacey have been writing a Kickstarter backed book about sharing and open business models called Made With Creative Commons.

Here’s a short excerpt:

“When we began this project in August 2015, we set out to write a book about business models that involve Creative Commons licenses in some significant way — what we call being Made with Creative Commons. With the help of our Kickstarter backers, we chose twenty-four endeavors from all around the world that are Made with Creative Commons. The mix is diverse, from an individual musician to a university-textbook publisher to an electronics manufacturer. Some make their own content and share under Creative Commons licensing. Others are platforms for CC-licensed creative work made by others. Many sit somewhere in between, both using and contributing creative work that’s shared with the public. Like all who use the licenses, these endeavors share their work — whether it’s open data or furniture designs — in a way that enables the public not only to access it but also to make use of it.

We analyzed the revenue models, customer segments, and value propositions of each endeavor. We searched for ways that putting their content under Creative Commons licenses helped boost sales or increase reach. Using traditional measures of economic success, we tried to map these business models in a way that meaningfully incorporated the impact of Creative Commons. In our interviews, we dug into the motivations, the role of CC licenses, modes of revenue generation, definitions of success.

In fairly short order, we realized the book we set out to write was quite different from the one that was revealing itself in our interviews and research.

It isn’t that we were wrong to think you can make money while using Creative Commons licenses. In many instances, CC can help make you more money. Nor were we wrong that there are business models out there that others who want to use CC licensing as part of their livelihood or business could replicate. What we didn’t realize was just how misguided it would be to write a book about being Made with Creative Commons using only a business lens.”

The book we ended up writing is so much more than what we set out to do. Made With Creative Commons started as a book about business models, but it ultimately became a book about sharing. Part analysis, part handbook, part collection of case studies, we see Made With Creative Commons as a guide to sharing your knowledge and creativity with the world, and sustaining your operation while you do. It makes the case that sharing is good for business, especially for companies, organizations, and creators who care about more than just the bottom line. Full of practical advice and inspiring stories, Made with Creative Commons is a book that will show you what it really means to share.

We’re thrilled to announce Made With Creative Commons is now ready for release. It will first be released to our Kickstarter backers April 21, 2017 and print copies will be distributed April 28, 2017 to all attendees of the Creative Commons Global Summit. The book will be officially made available to the public on May 5, 2017 at madewith.cc. You can pre-order copies on Amazon now.

We can’t thank our backers, case study interviewees, and Creative Commons colleagues enough for their support and encouragement. Writing Made With Creative Commons transformed and inspired us. We hope it inspires you too.

In the fall of 2016, a small Toronto-based civic tech group convened around a question: What if we could use technology to connect municipal campaigners and enable them to share knowledge and tools in an open resource kit across traditional geographic and partisan divides?

We were motivated by the significant advantage incumbents enjoy as well as an appreciation of the potential impact thousands more well-run, digitally-savvy campaigns could have on our democracy.

At their best, local campaigns are ideal learning environments for skills to drive community change. They can be:

• Relevant – Issues often directly affect all community members.
• Independent – In jurisdictions with no political parties, individual candidates must make a direct appeal to voters based on their own track record and ideas.
• Diverse – Campaigns draw teams of volunteers across professional, class, ethnic and partisan lines.
• Entrepreneurial – They’re low-resource pressure-cooker environments that form meaningful bonds between community volunteers.
• Risky – Campaigns are time-limited and election day provides a built-in failure mechanism.
• Important! Campaign volunteers make our system of representative government possible by helping civic leaders find their public voice and run for office.

Despite the significant role election campaigns play in our democratic system, the process of planning and managing a successful ground campaign remains a mystery to the average citizen.

DemocracyKit

In October 2016, we founded the Open Democracy Project and launched an Indiegogo campaign that raised $31K – enough to develop the first version of DemocracyKit. Upon release April 25, 2017, DemocracyKit will have a searchable campaign resource library, community directory and campaign orientation with five modules: Explore, Build Your Team, Create a Plan, Choose Technology and Run a Campaign. Documents are stored in Google Drive to facilitate editing by a distributed team of contributors and editors and made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) licence.

Your Input

Open Democracy Project is a distributed team and we use the same technology and tactics as the municipal campaigns we’re preparing to serve. Currently, we meet weekly in Toronto and Ottawa, Ontario and have volunteers organizing to launch this summer in Alberta.

We’re in the process of drafting a 2-year strategic plan and are keen for input on how best to structure the organization to allow for growth and partnerships across Canada and abroad.

We would appreciate your input. Please join our Creative Commons Global Summit workshop on April 29, 5 – 6pm.

Workshop Agenda

1. Introduction to the Open Democracy Project
2. DemocracyKit walkthrough
3. Workshop & feedback:

• Feedback on Mission, Vision, Values
• Preparing to expand in Canada
• Preparing to partner internationally

Hope to see you there!

“Runde mit Flechtwerk und Knoten” by Dürer, Albrecht is licensed under

CC0 1.0

CC Search beta has added 470,000 images from the millions of materials contained in Europeana’s collection of Creative Commons images. Europeana is Europe’s digital platform for cultural heritage, collecting and providing online access to over 54 million of digitised items ranging from books, photos, and paintings to television broadcasts and 3D objects. As an important cultural partner to CC, Europeana’s platform strengthens the commons through its large, searchable collection of digital records from nearly 4,000 European libraries, archives, museums and audiovisual galleries. As CC Search continues to grow, we’ll be adding more material from this rich repository of cultural heritage images, data, and records.

The new CC Search provides tools to make lists, attribute work with one click, and serves up a massive collection of images by utilizing open media APIs. This new addition from Europeana brings the number of searchable objects up to 10,022,832 making Europeana the second main image provider. Previous repositories include February’s landmark release from Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as large collections of freely licensed images from 500 px, Flickr, Rijksmuseum, and New York Public Library. While the beta project focuses on images, the tool aims to provide a ‘front door to the commons,’ bringing together a multitude of collections to inspire creativity and collaboration on the web.

Among the images now available in CC Search are major works by masters of European art as well as photographs, prints, drawings, and more. Explore the entire collection at the CC Search page.

Listen to a recording of this post on Soundcloud

Food brings people together. Sharing favourite recipes and talking about interesting spices can open conversations. But it’s not the recipe or the spice that leaves a lasting impression. It’s the people that come together to share the meal. It’s going to be a global smorgasbord when the Creative Commons Global Summit comes to Toronto, April 28 to 30th. I’m looking forward to swapping some recipes and experiencing new spices while sharing about Virtually Connecting (VC).

#OpenEd16 Virtually Connecting
VC sessions from #OpenEd16 by Autumn, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

At the CC Global Summit there will be many opportunities to share the magic that happens within Virtually Connecting sessions in both physical and digital spaces. It’s an opportunity to bring people together in small groups to share ideas, experiences, feelings, connections between and among the formal conference sessions. These common ingredients often become remixed and cook up unexpected results. VC sessions range in format from hallway hangouts to conversations about conversations. However these sessions happen, it’s about the people at the table that makes the meal a memorable one. A list of the many VC sessions shared is found on the VC site.

Since I’m a relative newcomer to the Creative Commons (CC) neighbourhood, I’m looking forward to meeting new people and actively sharing my VC experiences. I’ll also be connecting with the VC community through conversations with people who are attending the summit. Since this is now a sold-out event, there’s an opportunity for those who can’t physically be present to engage in the conversations. VC sets the table and anyone can join the meal.

What will happen when Virtually Connecting meets CC?

Will new topics simmer while recipes are remixed? Will exciting flavours be exchanged? There’s a wealth of creativity in the common ground that food and cooking can bring. A meal together breaks down barriers and builds community – no telling where this can lead. Toronto and the CC Global Summit will have much to offer when VConnecting meets CC.

VC is centered on people, conversations, and topics that are open and invitational. These global campfire conversations are “motivated by a desire to improve the virtual conference experience for those who cannot be present at conferences for financial, logistical, social or health reasons.” (Virtually connecting web site). These video collaborations use Google hangout to connect people from the physical conference space to virtual participants who engage in live conversations. Check the VC website to see how it all started over two years ago and how it’s grown over time.

The aim of VC is to welcome and include while recognizing that these conference conversation experiences are bounded by time, space, access, technology, and by the availability of volunteers who can engage in these synchronous physical-with-virtual gatherings. Technology issues with hardware and software are often uncontrollable ingredients. Speakers, microphones, laptops, tablets, mobile technologies, and environmental locations become controlling factors in the quality and novelty of the conversational context.

#DigPed UMW
Digital Pedagogy Lab Institute University of Mary Washington 2016 CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The recipe for VC sessions is an ever-changing blend of ingredients. As master chefs are aware, it’s not the recipe that rules the outcome, but the serendipity of quality, quantity, diversity and novelty of ingredients that create the best dishes. While adding spices to the combinations, it’s the magic of the moment that determines the outcome. As it is with VC conversations, not all seasoning combinations work out well and the resulting flavours aren’t necessarily to everyone’s liking, but the lessons learned in the explorations are worth the efforts. When VConnecting meets CC at the Global Summit it’ll be less about reduction or intensifying discourse, and more about adding zest to the open dialogues.

The CC Global Summit will provide space and place for people from diverse neighbourhoods within the CC movement to engage openly in conversations of importance to the community. With there may be separate tracks for engagement at the summit, there’s potential for a rich diversity of flavours to add into the mix. VC will bring a metaphoric campfire to augment and spice up the conversations. With this shared collaboration in physical and digital spaces, VC and CC can create a savoury exchange of ideas, people and experiences. With the upcoming VC and CC interactions, I hope that some VC spice will leave a lasting, positive impression in the CC cooking pot. In return, I’m certain that CC experiences will flavour the meal for VC participants. The possibilities that can come from the CC Global Summit with a VC presence are potentially catalytic which hopefully will continue the remixing of recipes for both movements.

Virtually Connecting is ON!
George Station, Mia Zamora, Kate Green, and Christian Friedrich at DML Conference 2016 by Alan Levine Public Domain

You are welcome to join in these conversations and add your unique ingredients. The schedule of VC sessions happening at the CC Global Summit is posted on the Virtually Connecting site. If you are on-site at the summit, you are welcome to watch a session in action. When you’re ready, join into an event. If you can’t get to the CC Global Summit you can participate in a session virtually or watch live while it’s happening. Sessions will be recorded and can be viewed after the event. Send us a tweet @VConnecting or add a comment on the blog post to let us know you’re open to the opportunity. Please let us know how and when you’d like to join in.

So let’s get together in the kitchen and stir the pot a little! New spicy combinations will emerge.

Remix of the Visions of the Future HD40307 poster courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech. Original created by The Studio. Made available by JPL for any purpose without prior permission.
Remix by Paul Stacey, for Creative Commons Global Summit 2017.

CC Summits have always been an opportunity for the Creative Commons global movement to take stock of our work and plan next steps. This year, we decided to make this theme even more prominent, and defined “Future of the Commons” as one of the five tracks of the Global Summit.

This track was formed due to the influential research from the internal “Faces of the Commons” study conducted by a team led by Anna Mazgal. One of the recommendations in her report was that Creative Commons create a platform for engaging people in generating big ideas and insights related to the future of the commons and the potential for Creative Commons to be an agent of exponential social change.

Why should we care about the future of the commons?

This interest is due in part to the ongoing strategic process, which will conclude at the Summit with the adoption of a new model for the CC network. As we re-design our global community, we need to ask ourselves: what are our long-term goals, what is the role that CC can play in shaping our societies, and how do we address new challenges?

Creative Commons builds its activism on the belief that the way in which we manage a variety of resources matters, particularly when it comes to copyright. When properly shared, our intellectual resources will foster collaboration, equity, innovation and engagement. This fundamental assumption is valid as much today, as it was when CC was formed in 2001.

The “Future of the Commons” track is an opportunity to reflect together on our mission and goals, on the relevance of CC tools, and ways in which we can adapt to better address current challenges. We also want to talk about how we can work collaboratively with others, to build a broader open movement and a shared vision of the commons.

Future of the Commons graphic by Joanna Tarkowska, CC BY

The three strands of the track

The Future of the Commons track was shaped around three strands, each with their own set of questions.

Strand One: What is the commons, in particular the digital commons? How has CC contributed to the digital commons in the last 15 years? What part does CC currently play in helping it flourish and what more could CC do? Who else is working on this and how might CC collaborate with them?

Strand Two: What is the role of the commons in the future economy? How do we develop open business models? What is CC’s role in sharing cities, platform cooperatives, and the sharing economy? How do we apply the concept of sharing to other crucial resources and technologies (like data or the internet of things)?

Strand Three: What is CC’s role in going beyond licenses? How do we engage in and advance the social community practice of commoning? How is a commons managed? What are social norms for helping a digital commons thrive?

You can learn more about the track sessions in our Summit schedule.

If you care about the future of the commons – get in touch!

We invite Summit participants who are particularly interested in these issues to meet during lunch on Friday for an informal chance to meet peers. Look for the track logo in the lunch area.

We will also be organizing a Virtually Connecting session on Sunday during the 10.00 am break, to bring together summit participants with online peers, in order to share more broadly the track experience.

To make the Future of the Commons track interactive we are inviting participants attending each session to write down one big idea or action from the session they think CC should pursue to ensure a flourishing future commons. All ideas will be posted to a Future of the Commons wall poster in the Summit venue hallway. Over the course of the summit, the Future of the Commons wall will gradually have more big ideas on it. to encourage idea browsing and conversation.

All the ideas from the Future of the Commons wall poster will feed into a culminating session on the last day of the Summit called “A Platform for Big Thinking About the Future of the Commons”. All participants in this final session will be engaged in an activity that selects and prioritizes ideas from the wall poster into a Future of the Commons action plan.

The “Future of the Commons” track has been shaped by an organizing team including: Alek Tarkowski (Poland), Claudia Cristiani (El Salvador), Alexandros Nousias (Greece), Anna Mazgal (Poland), SooHyun Pae (South Korea), and Paul Stacey (Canada).

On April 22, 2017 (Earth Day) tens of thousands of people will join the March for Science and stand together “to acknowledge and voice the critical role that science plays in each of our lives.” Marches will take place in Washington, D.C. and over 500 other cities.

The mission of the March for Science is to champion the robust funding and public communication of science as a pillar of human freedom and prosperity. It aims to promote science that serves the public interest, fuels evidence-based policymaking, and advocates for cutting-edge research and education.

A particularly important aspect of science is communicating openly about the results of scholarly research. Practicing science in such a way that promotes collaboration can accelerate and improve research discoveries. From the website:

Restricting the free exchange of scientific research within local and global communities threatens to stall the scientific progress that benefits people all over the world. Gag rules on scientists in government and environmental organizations impede access to information that is a public right. Our tax dollars support this scientific research, and withholding their findings limits the public’s ability to learn from the important developments and discoveries that we have come to expect from our scientists. In addition, scientists often rely on the public to help identify new questions that need to be answered.

Check out the satellite events and join a march to promote and protect science for the good of all.

ACTA workshop at the EP by European Parliament, CC BY-NC-ND

Dr. Michael Geist is a law professor at the University of Ottawa where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law. He is an authority on intellectual property, telecommunications, and privacy policy, and is a frequent writer and commentator on issues such as international trade negotiations and Canadian copyright reform. Geist will join the CC community at the Creative Commons Global Summit later this month.

Creative Commons is looking forward to hosting its Global Summit in Toronto at the end of this month. One of the topics to be discussed is how CC allies from around the world can share information and work together around supporting the reform of copyright rules in service of users and the public interest. CC affiliates are already active in copyright reform and commons advocacy in Europe, Australia, Latin America, and other places. Can you describe what’s going on with copyright reform in Canada, and how the Creative Commons network can help mobilize positive changes? What do you think we should push to achieve at the Summit re: copyright reform organising?

Canada is often held out as a great example of successful copyright advocacy leading to a more balanced law. After more than a decade of debate, the law was overhauled in 2012.  While there are plenty of provisions for rights holders – strong anti-circumvention laws and anti-piracy measures – the law also features some innovative limitations and exceptions such as an exception for non-commercial user generated content.  There is also a cap on statutory damages in non-commercial cases and a privacy-friendly approach to intermediary liability.  Moreover, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that fair dealing is a user’s right that should be interpreted in a broad and liberal manner, leading to results that affirm a balance to copyright.

The 2012 reforms also included a mandatory review every five years, which means that a new review will start late in 2017.  There is still room for improvement and learning from best practices from around the world would be enormously helpful.  Moreover, there is an expectation that some rights holders will demand that the government roll back fair dealing at the very time that other countries are open to fair use provisions.  The Global Summit offers an exceptional opportunity to develop national and international strategies, learn about reforms around the world, and begin the process of speaking with a consistent voice on positive copyright reform.

You’ve been a key voice in opposition to international trade agreements that attempt to push through restrictive clauses around intellectual property and e-commerce that enhance corporate protections while downplaying user rights. The most recent version of this was the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a sprawling agreement signed by 11 Pacific Rim nations, including Canada. Now that the United States, under the Trump administration, has formally withdrawn from the agreement, what is the future for the TPP? And what do you make of the seemingly inevitable reopening of NAFTA, especially with regard to digital rights?

The TPP in its current form is dead.  The agreement reflects a bargain for countries premised on access to the U.S. market.  Without the U.S., that bargain doesn’t make any sense.

That said, the U.S. seems intent on reviving many of the IP provisions in future trade talks, including NAFTA.  The renegotiated NAFTA will have enormous implications for copyright and digital rights more generally.  I expect to see pressure for copyright term extension and increased criminalization of copyright. On the digital rights issue, privacy concerns such as data localization and data transfers will be on the agenda.  The U.S. is likely to promote restrictions on both issues, leaving countries between a proverbial rock and a hard place with the U.S. seeking open transfers and the European Union focused on privacy protections from localization and limits on transfers in some circumstances.

As usual, there’s a lot of FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) that’s continually sown around claims about copyright’s effect on rightsholders. You’ve written on several of these topics recently, including efforts by rightsholders associations to inflate numbers on piracy rates, fraud in search index takedown notices, and disinformation around the impacts of fair dealing on publishers’ businesses. How can digital rights advocates fight against such tactics?

There has been a remarkable amount of fake news associated with copyright’s effect on rights holders. The Google data on fake takedown notices from its search index were stunning – more than 99% of requests did not involve an actual page in its search index. Similarly, during a recent trip to Australia and New Zealand I was shocked to see how Canadian law has been badly misrepresented with claims about effects on publishers that were simply false.

The best way to counter FUD is with facts. In Australia, one representative from a leading publisher approached me after a talk to express embarrassment over the claims that had been in that country’s policy process in light of the real facts. Our community should not hesitate to counter inaccurate claims on piracy and fair use/fair dealing with a clear, objective discussion of the reality online and in the marketplace.

The issue of supporting and expanding copyright exceptions for education is on the table now within the context of the reassessment of the EU copyright rules, the international agenda at WIPO, and other national level copyright reforms. How do you see this will be addressed within the Canadian copyright reform which will commence this autumn?

Canada included several new exceptions within the 2012 reforms, including the additional of “education” as one of the fair dealing purposes. The reality is that this change was relatively minor since the existing purposes such as research and private study covered most purposes within education.  Indeed, the Supreme Court’s rulings on fair dealing were far more important than the legislative change.  That said, there will be a concerted lobbying effort to roll back fair dealing for education in Canada that must countered with facts.  Further, there is room for improvement. Canada’s anti-circumvention laws are among the most restrictive in the world and do not include a fair dealing exception.  That should change if Canada wants to ensure that fair dealing is treated equally in the analog and digital worlds.  Moreover, Canada would still benefit from a fair use provision, particularly given the increased emphasis on data and machine learning, which may not neatly fit within our existing purposes in all circumstances.