cape point (panorama) by André van Rooyen, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 In September we announced that Creative Commons and the Open Policy Network are hosting a second Institute for Open Leadership. We’ve seen a significant increase in the number and diversity of policies that require that publicly funded resources should be widely shared under liberal open licenses…

  The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published its latest Open Educational Resources (OER) report yesterday: Open Educational Resources: A Catalyst for Innovation, Educational Research and Innovation. (PDF) The report covers the following topics: OER in educational policy and practice OER as a catalyst for innovation Fostering new forms of learning for the…

The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) is a UK-based charity that “seeks to transform the lives of poor and vulnerable children in developing countries.” Yesterday the foundation announced its first Transparency Policy, which requires its grantees and consultants to widely disseminate resources they create under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY). We…

After five years of secret negotiations between governments and corporate lobbyists, the public has finally seen the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and the details are bad. The provisions covering intellectual property directly threaten the public interest and the commons. We believe the TPP should be rejected, and we need everyone opposed to this…

Game Plan. By Rob Armes, CC BY 3.0 Today, the OER community releases the Foundations for OER Strategy Development. This document provides a concise analysis of where the global OER movement currently stands: what the common threads are, where the greatest opportunities and challenges lie, and how we can more effectively work together as a…

The Free Music Archive, a long-running Creative Commons music platform, is running its first-ever fundraising drive. It will run from mid-November until mid-December 2015, and is offering donors shirts and stickers at various pledge levels. The Free Music Archive has existed for many years and has provided millions of users with curated, ‘some rights reserved’…

Trans-Pacific Partnership would harm user rights and the Commons 16 November 2015 The final text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) has been released. The gigantic agreement contains sweeping provisions regarding environmental regulation, pharmaceutical procurement, intellectual property, labor standards, food safety, and many other things. Over the last five years, it has been developed and negotiated…

    Yesterday, Creative Commons joined the U.S. Department of Education (ED) for a series of important announcements that will advance OER in grades PreK-12 across the United States. ED announced the launch of its #GoOpen campaign to encourage states, school districts and educators to use Open Educational Resources (OER). OER, made “open” by CC…

Yesterday the Obama administration released an updated version of its Open Government National Action Plan. Ever since the launch of the global Open Government Partnership in 2011, participating nations have made commitments to work on initiatives “to promote transparency, increase civic participation, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to make government more open, effective, and accountable.”…

Today marks the launch of #NEWPALMYRA, an online community platform and data repository dedicated to the capture, preservation, sharing, and creative reuse of data about the ancient city of Palmyra. The project features 3-D models of ruins from Palmyra created by Bassel Khartabil, the lead for Creative Commons Syria who has been imprisoned there since March…