Brigitte Vézina, the Director of Policy and Open Culture, has facilitated the CC Copyright Platform for the past three years since the Platform’s relaunch in 2020. This year, the CC legal team—Kat Walsh and Yuanxiao Xu—is taking over the facilitator role for the Copyright Platform.  The Creative Commons Copyright Platform is a collaborative space for…

In 2022, two working groups (WGs) of the Creative Commons Copyright Platform collaborated on policy papers tackling issues related to copyright and access to knowledge. In this blog post, we highlight their insightful contributions to the CC copyright reform community. Working Group on Digital Sharing Spaces Led by Emine Yildirim, the WG on Digital Sharing…

On 29 January 2020, the Canadian federal government introduced Bill C-4, “An Act to Implement the Agreement between Canada, the United States of America and the United Mexican States” (CUSMA).1 The bill includes a proposal to extend copyright’s term of protection2 by 20 years, moving it from “life of the author + 50 years” (the…

Developments in artificial intelligence (AI) raise several questions when it comes to the use of copyright material and Creative Commons-licensed content in particular.1 One of them is whether CC-licensed content (e.g. photographs, artworks, text, music, etc.) should be used as input to train AI. To get a sense of the various views on this question,…

American University Washington College of Law (AUWCL) has received a three-year grant of $3.8 million from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, for its Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property (PIJIP). The project will study changes needed in international copyright policy to ensure equity in the production of and access…

Four years ago today, the Marrakesh Treaty entered into force. The Treaty is truly special in the international copyright law universe: it has a clear humanitarian and social development dimension and it’s the first international treaty that focuses on the beneficiaries of limitations and exceptions, rather than on the rights of creators or holders of…

WIPO Main Building (Arpad Bogsch Building, WIPO (CC BY-NC-ND)

New beginnings at WIPO  On March 4, Daren Tang was nominated director general of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the United Nations agency dealing with intellectual property matters. Tang is currently the chief executive of the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) and his six-year term as top WIPO official will start on October…

We’re coming up on a crucial decision on changes to copyright in the European Union that will govern how creativity is accessed and shared for years to come. On 12 September the European Parliament will vote on the draft Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. If you’re in the EU, go to https://saveyourinternet.eu/…

Imposing a mandatory and unwaivable compensation scheme violates the letter and spirit of open licensing. Copyright policymakers in Europe and South America have proposed legislation that would impose an unwaivable right to financial remuneration for authors and performers on copyrighted works. The laws attempt to ensure that creators receive payment for their work, but they…