Over the next few days, I’m going to share a series of posts about Creative Commons’ 2016-2020 strategy. Let me skip to the end: CC is going to refocus our work to build a vibrant, usable commons, powered by collaboration and gratitude. Over the course of these next few posts, I’ll explain what that means,…

Over the next few days, I’m going to share a series of posts about Creative Commons’ 2016-2020 strategy. Let me skip to the end: CC is going to refocus our work to build a vibrant, usable commons, powered by collaboration and gratitude. Over the course of these next few posts, I’ll explain what that means,…

Along with over 50 organizations, I attended a recent European Commission public hearing on access to and preservation of scientific information. Among those present were representatives from national and regional ministries, higher education institutions, libraries, data repositories, public and private funders, scientific societies, supranational research centres, journal publishers and advocacy groups. A majority of those…

Hannes Grobe / CC BY-SA Techdirt’s Mike Masnick is perhaps the most prolific blogger on the ill impact of overly restrictive legal regimes, including of course copyright and patents, but also trademark and even employment law (see Noncompete Agreements Are The DRM Of Human Capital) and often on people delivering real value to customers (sad…

For the past year, Creative Commons has been working on tools to help increase access to works in the public domain. Often, it is not clear whether a work has entered the public domain or is still covered by copyright protection. This lack of clarity can cause a lot of problems, and Creative Commons is…

The Associated Press wants to track reuse of their content through a “news registry.” This registry “will employ a microformat for news developed by AP”: The microformat will essentially encapsulate AP and member content in an informational “wrapper” that includes a digital permissions framework that lets publishers specify how their content is to be used…

Noam Cohen’s piece in the New York Times over the weekend highlighted some of the issues surrounding photography on Wikipedia: At a time when celebrities typically employ a team of professionals to control their images, Wikipedia is a place where chaos rules. Few high-quality photographs, particularly of celebrities, make it onto this site. This is…

Museums, archives, and cultural institutions have been forced to re-examine their relationship with the digital presentation of public domain works in their collections. This has brought the issue of “copyfraud” to the forefront. Recently, the UK’s National Portrait Gallery (NPG) threatened legal action under UK law against a Wikipedia user for, among other things, copyright…