Creative Commons has responded to the European Commission’s consultation on recommended standard licenses, datasets and charging for the re-use of public sector information (PSI). See our response here. The Commission asked for comments on these issues in light of the adoption of the new Directive on re-use of public sector information. The Directive 1) brings…

As we prepare for the December board meeting, I’d like to reflect on Creative Commons’ biennial Global Summit in Buenos Aires last August and report on developments in Cathy Casserly’s transition as CEO. It was inspiring to be among the several hundred who gathered in Argentina, meeting with the global affiliate network, CC staff, and…

The structure of human proteins defines, in part, what it is to be human. It is very expensive, as much as a couple of million USD, to determine the structure of human membrane proteins. Improvements in methods, computers and access to the complete sequence of our DNA, however, has made it possible to adopt more…

Today marks the launch of the Open Access Button, a browser bookmark tool that allows users to report when they hit paywalled access to academic articles and discover open access versions of that research. The button was created by university students David Carroll and Joseph McArthur, and announced at the Berlin 11 Student and Early…

Opensourceway / CC BY-SA United States Senators Dick Durbin of Illinois and Al Franken of Minnesota have introduced legislation called the Affordable College Textbook Act that seeks to make college textbooks affordable and openly available under the Creative Commons Attribution license. According to Durbin’s press release, Bill S.1704 does 5 things: Creates a grant program…

Aurélie Filippetti / Open Knowledge Foundation / CC BY French minister of culture and communications Aurélie Filippetti launched a set of initiatives yesterday designed to promote a more creative, more open France. The impressive announcement covers a lot of measures, including an open data policy for cultural data, the launch of a new workspace designed…

This is a guest post written by Gino Cingolani, a member on the design team for the CC Toolkit project. We’re making progress with the project, and wanted to share about a regional activity that helped launch the development of the CC Toolkits. Thanks to Gino, Teresa Sempere Garcia, and Pablo Corbalan for leading the…

This is a guest post by Pete Forsyth, organizer of the School of Open’s “Writing Wikipedia Articles: The Basics & Beyond” course and member of WikiProject Open. The University of Mississippi’s Spring 2014 course “Open Educational Resources and Practices” will include the module “Writing Wikipedia Articles” (aka WIKISOO), which I developed and taught through the…

Providing free learning with pathways to formal credit, the OERu officially launched on Friday November 1, 2013 at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops British Columbia. “In basing your learning and teaching on OER, you have an excellent opportunity to treat the minds of your students primarily as fires to be set alight rather than as…

Finally the Arabic translation… / Muhammad Basheer / CC BY Following a multi-year process and the dedication of several Creative Commons Arab regional teams and communities, Creative Commons is very proud to announce that its 3.0 license suite is now available in Arabic. The Egypt 3.0 licenses were completed by our CC Egypt team, hosted…