Public Domain Digitization Advocacy across GLAM Institutions in Nigeria

Àlàáfíàbámí Ọládipúpọ̀

The Public Domain consists of materials from which society derives knowledge and inspiration to create new cultural and creative works. Having a great interest in the Public Domain, Free Knowledge Africa has tasked itself with organizing a series of events and projects fashioned to promote Public Domain works in Nigeria. In doing so, we have been able to document over a thousand works in the Public Domain database we are currently building and have been able to digitize a few of them.

This proposed activity, funded by the Creative Commons Open Culture Activity fund, seeks to advocate for the Public Domain within GLAM Institutions across Nigeria. Our primary goal is to inspire these institutions to embrace openness and digitize the valuable works within their collections. Building upon our established connections with the National Library of Nigeria, developed through previous projects, we aim to extend our outreach to 5 state branches and encourage the adoption of Open Access practices.

Beyond advocacy, our initiative includes the identification and digitization of approximately 100 Public Domain works from each library, totalling at least 500 digitized works. Subsequently, we plan to upload these digitized materials and create Wikidata Items for a minimum of 500 Public Domain Works in Nigeria.

Expected outcomes include heightened awareness and acceptance of Open Access principles among GLAM Institutions, leading to increased digitization efforts. The project aims to significantly contribute to the preservation and dissemination of cultural heritage, making a substantial impact on the accessibility and appreciation of Public Domain materials in Nigeria.

 

The Gateway to Amazonian Knowledge: A Project for Openly Disseminating Cultural Collections from Belém

João Alexandre Peschanski

“The Gateway to Amazonian Knowledge” project intends to openly disseminate cultural collections from Belém — especially connected to biodiversity and traditional culture — emphasizing the crucial role of open knowledge in preparing for COP-30 in Belém. This initiative involves a collaborative process to enhance content donation from local institutions, with a particular focus on strengthening partnerships with the Emílio Goeldi Museum. By fostering open access to cultural resources, the project seeks to enrich understanding and appreciation of Amazonian heritage while promoting collaboration and knowledge sharing on a global scale. This specific project will be part of a broader campaign called Wiki Loves Pará, that is especially geared towards contributing textual content about the Brazilian Amazonian Forest into Wikipedia.

 

Unearthing Ghana’s Hidden Heritage: Exploring Historical Artifacts in Northern Kingdoms

Mohammed Awal Alhassan

The northern half of Ghana, steeped in a rich and often overlooked history, harbors a treasure trove of undocumented artifacts. Within its borders lie the ancient Dagbon, Mamprugu, and Waala Kingdoms—custodians of a cultural heritage spanning centuries. Our project aims to explore and document these artifacts, increasing awareness through Wikipedia articles and images/videos on Wikimedia Commons. Additionally, we will create structured data for these artifacts using Wikidata, which could be utilized in the future to develop visualization tools and other resources.

Tangible items such as traditional woven fabrics like “smock” clothing, handmade beads, wooden sculptures, swords, bows and arrows, traditional drums, and handmade pottery items such as bowls, jars, and decorative pieces all reflect the region’s historical connections to weaponry and hunting practices, and as well reflect the local craftsmanship and cultural heritage making them valuable artifacts that reflect local craftsmanship and traditions.

 

Open access to cultural heritage/GLAM Rwanda

Nyirahabihirwe Clementine

In Rwanda there is a lack of awareness and understanding about open cultural practices in GLAMs.

Some proposed activities of this project are:

1. CC Chapter Rwanda aim to reach out new members online and offline and reach over 40 members for a baseline of  15 members, these will be achieved through special 4 online events and active social media engagement
2. CC Chapter Rwanda aims to reach out new members offline specifically in 10 GLAM institutions, through 3 workshops which will be held in 3 different districts (Huye, Nyanza, Kigali City) with 40 participants from different communities, districts and GLAMs. These workshops will enhance collaborative dialogue methodology among stakeholders, which will be designed as part of the project for its sustainability.
   • Explain them the importance of the  visibility of GLAM collection on online,  identify together the challenges and way forward for promoting them and increase their engagement in open GLAM practices.
   • Make the Rwandan community aware about Creative Common licenses/tools: Online training  on Open practice, the use of Open CC licenses & attributions to increase the online visibility of GLAM collections.
   • Document taken pictures from GLAMs in Rwanda on Wikimedia Commons and improving Wikipedia articles.
   • Making resources from different GLAMs available to be used by anyone around the world through Creative Commons tools and licenses.
   • Provide Wikimedians around the World with Rwandan digitized resources to contribute to the continued improvement of Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia and its sister projects (WikiSource, Wikidata, WikiCommons…).
   • Creation and engagement GLAM community: Offer opportunities for members to participate in meaningful activities and events that build GLAM community and foster engagement, seek out collaborations with other groups and organizations to increase the size and diversity of the community.
   • Encourage and support community members to take on leadership roles and responsibilities. In total we will have +30 participants (20 from five GLAM institutions + 10 CC Rwanda members + others who will be interested).

 

We plan to report back at the end of the year with the results of each project. Congratulations to the winners!

Learn more about CC’s Open Culture Program, and if you’d like to get more involved, check out the Open Culture Platform.

Creative Commons, Open Knowledge Foundation, Open Future, and Wikimedia Europe are  hosting a day-long side event to Wikimania 2024. The event will take place in Katowice, Poland, on 6 August 2024, the day before Wikimania kicks off on 7 August 2024.

Wikimania 2024 is the biggest meeting of open movement activists and organizations this year. It offers a rare occasion for activists to meet in person. We are making use of this opportunity to bring together those working in the field of Openness, Free Knowledge, and the Digital Commons to talk about shared advocacy strategies: the political challenges of Knowledge Commons. We are counting on the participation of people already planning to attend Wikimania, and those who will come especially to attend our side event. We are expecting around 70 people to join our event.

Our goal is to establish relationships needed to design a shared advocacy vision that over time can result in stronger, collaborative advocacy work. To this end, the event will focus on three topics: 1) Legal and Policy issues, 2) Communication and Global Campaigns, and 3) Community activation and Sustainability.

Are you planning to attend Wikimania and interested in joining us for this event? Please fill out this interest form.

There are few opportunities to bring together the movement’s most engaged participants and discuss shared strategies for advocacy and ways of moving forward together. Wikimania’s 2024 motto is “Collaboration of the Open.” Our one-day side event to Wikimania is an opportunity to bring this motto to life.

CC’s Learning and Training team share highlights from a range of trainings, discussions, and engagements in the first few months of 2024. If you would like to explore CC Certificate courses or have a custom training, please email learning [at] creativecommons.org. We would look forward to working with you.

If the embedded timeline above is not working, the highlights are also listed below.

What’s next

In the coming months, we  look forward to co-developing a public folder of CC training materials with CC communities around the world. Stay tuned for more information and how to get involved. 

Meanwhile: would you like a CC training at your institution or community of practice? Learn more on our website and email learning [at] creativecommons.org for more information. We’d be delighted to help you continue to grow your knowledge of Creative Commons licensing and the open movement.

Timeline text

• 9 January: CC provided a short overview of OER and CC licenses as tools to support education and science in Ukraine. This was presented for Ukrainian conference “Open Knowledge in Ukrainian Universities: Open Educational Resources.” Recording available on YouTube.
• 20 January: At the 2024 ALA LibLearnX conference in January, CC presented: “3D Scanning for Cultural Heritage Institutions: Practical Skills and Considerations for Library Preservation.” In this hands-on workshop, participants learned the basics of how 3D scanning works and the importance of this technology for preserving cultural heritage and library collections. After a quick demonstration, we were able to dive into a deeper discussion about the copyright and open licensing considerations of this particular type of digital preservation.
• 26 February: CC provided a general CC licensing training for CC network colleagues in Rwanda. We thoroughly enjoy supporting CC network colleagues and are happy to provide one-hour trainings like this upon request.
• 29 February: In a keynote, titled “In Cyborg Luddite Solidarity,” we explored the challenges and promises generative AI poses for creators and open educators. From concerns around privacy, consent, bias, economic and environmental impacts, access to and control over technology further entrenching inequities, copyright, misinformation and more, generative AI remains a contentious advancement. Simultaneously, the benefits and promises witnessed in 2023 alone were awe-inspiring. AI advanced life-saving medical knowledge, enhanced educational curriculum alignment across national borders, and made creative expression more accessible to untrained creators. Using generative AI, international projects strengthened linguistic diversity online — work vital to addressing one of the major inequities of the internet. While our new landscape continues to evolve, we drew from the Luddite Movement and Cyborg Manifesto to highlight ethics from our collective pasts that may apply today.
• Between 4 and 8 March, we celebrated Open Education Week with a range of learning offerings.
• 4 March: In Affordable Learning Kentucky’s virtual OE week symposium, CC delivered a talk titled “OER and Social Justice: Are We Keeping Our Promises?” We were grateful to engage with a new audience about the OER and its potential for even greater accessibility and social justice to empower learners from all facets of society. 
• 4 March: This Licensing Q&A webinar was part of the Creative Commons Certificate courses, and was available to the public. Meredith Jacob is the CC US Public Lead and Director of the Project on Copyright and Open Licensing at the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at American University Washington College of Law.
• 5 March: CC hosted a webinar focused on Wikidata, OER, and curriculum alignment in Ghana, Uruguay, and Italy, with special guests Nat Hernández Clavijo and Sailesh Patnaik. Clavijo and Patnaik shared the transformative potential of Wikidata in curriculum alignment through a review of Wikidata for Education, a project born in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ghana, in collaboration with UNESCO’s Global Education Coalition. The project aligned Wikipedia articles with school curricula, revolutionizing the way students access relevant information, and has since expanded to Uruguay and Italy. Recording link (English); Recording link (Español)
• 6 March: CC provided a training day in prep for Missouri’s A&OER Conference. Training days are great opportunities to ensure large groups have a baseline understanding of CC licenses, open practices, and open advocacy efforts. 
• 7 March: In celebration of Open Education Week, OE Global’s Alan Levine interviewed CC Director of Learning and Training, Jennryn Wetzler. The podcast will be available on the OEGlobal Voices podcast page.
• 8 March: This Q&A webinar included an overview of CC’s recently released Recommended Best Practices for Better Sharing of Climate Data and the CC licenses and tools that support best practices. Our recommendations are a result of collaboration between Creative Commons, government agencies, and intergovernmental organizations including ECMWF, NASA, NOAA, and the World Resources Institute. They mark a significant milestone in our ongoing effort to enhance the accessibility, sharing, and reuse of open climate data to address the climate crisis. Our goal is to share strategies that align with existing data sharing principles and pave the way for a more interconnected and accessible future for climate data. These recommendations also align with the strategies and outcomes of the Open Climate Campaign, a partnership between Creative Commons, SPARC, and EIFL.
• 12 March: This Licensing Q&A webinar with CC General Counsel Kat Walsh was part of the Creative Commons Certificate courses, and was available to the public. 
• 12 March – 2 April: CC piloted a series of webinars with ALA’s Core division about copyright, Creative Commons licensing, and the potential impact of emerging technologies on copyright and open access. Recording links are forthcoming.
• 21 March: This informational webinar was part of the Creative Commons Certificate courses, and was available to the public. Nancy Olson, Director of Distance Education and Instructional Technology at Barstow College provided practical guidance on Accessible OER.
• 5 April: CC co-presented a session at the Northeast OER Summit titled “Beyond Affordability: Collaboration, Reuse, Translation and Localization of OER in Ukraine.” Through storytelling of a recent event in 2023, Ukrainian colleagues and CC demonstrate the power of OER as a tool for cross country collaboration, connection and as support for learning communities in Ukraine. Presenters invited participants to join their collective story, exploring ways to support Ukrainian colleagues translating and localizing needed skills training amidst war.
• 17 April: Creative Commons announced the launch of “Introduction to Open Educational Resources,” our first professional development microcredential course and partnership with the University of Nebraska at Omaha, commencing on 31 May.

On Wednesday, 8 May  2024, at 2:00 pm UTC, CC’s Open Culture Program will be hosting a new webinar in our Open Culture Live series titled “Open Culture in the Age of AI: Concerns, Hopes and Opportunities.”

At CC, we promote better sharing and open access to cultural heritage to help build and sustain vibrant and thriving societies. With generative AI entering the scene, what are some of the issues to consider to ensure institutions make the most of this new technology and avoid its pitfalls as they fulfill their missions? In this panel we will discuss some of the opportunities and risks that come along with embracing generative AI in cultural heritage institutions, and some ideas for engaging in this new technology for the benefit of institutions, creators, as well as curious visitors and learners.

Firstly, looking inwards,  what are some of the ways in which cultural heritage might implement the use of AI to automate and improve labor-intensive processes as well as explore and enrich their data?

Secondly, looking outwards, when it comes to sharing their cultural heritage collections and related data online, potential use as AI training data is on the minds of many institutions. On the one hand, collections can offer important and useful training data for beneficial projects. Indeed, more diverse inputs to training datasets could aid in countering bias and ensuring outputs are more representative. On the other hand, especially in the age of AI, sharing collections needs to be done responsibly, respectfully and ethically, and institutions must remain guided by their public service missions. With generative AI here to stay, how can these considerations be adequately balanced? How can cultural heritage institutions play a role in contributing to the development of responsible AI?

We will be joined by a panel of experts including:

• Suzanne Duncan, Chief Operating Officer at Te Hiku Media, New Zealand
• Minne Atairu, interdisciplinary Artist, and doctoral student in the Art and Art Education program at Teachers College, Columbia University, USA
• Bart Meletti, Head of Knowledge Exchange at CREATe, University of Glasgow, Scotland
• Michael Trizna, Data Scientist, Smithsonian Institution, USA

Register here. 

CC is a non-profit that relies on contributions to sustain our work. Support CC in our efforts to promote better sharing at creativecommons.org/donate.

What is Open Culture Live?

In this series, we tackle some of the more   challenges that face the open culture movement, bringing in speakers with personal and professional expertise on the topic.

• Back to Basics: Open Culture for Beginners 
• Respectful Terminologies & Changing the Subject 
• Whose Open Culture? Decolonization, Indigenization, and Restitution
• Maximizing the Value(s) of Open Access in Cultural Heritage Institutions

Today we in the Open Culture Program are releasing a new publication: Don’t be a Dinosaur; or, The Benefits of Open Culture.

Following in the footsteps of open culture pioneers, many institutions are taking the leap to open their collections online, partly as a way to celebrate a sense of (re)connection with cultural heritage collections in the digital space. While the road to OC is strewn with barriers, its benefits are well worth the journey. 

This report distills the many views expressed in our Open Culture Voices (OCV) series about the ways in which so many people can benefit from open culture. In short: 

• Openly shared cultural heritage: 
  • is easier to find
  • reaches broader and more diverse audiences
  • can be preserved, safeguarded and refined in digital form
  • can be (re)used with more legal certainty
• Open cultural heritage leads to: 
  • More resilient and relevant collection holders
  • More vibrant research and more participatory education
  • More dynamic cultural creativity
  • More just, democratic, diverse, free, and equitable societies

To find out more:

• Read the full report
• Take a look at the one-page summary
• Watch the OCV series’ introduction video
• Check out each expert’s individual blog posts with links to their videos

→ To stay informed about our open culture work:

• Sign up for our open culture mailing list
• Join the open culture platform
• Visit our website on open culture
• Sign up for our Open Culture Matters newsletter

Last week, Creative Commons (CC) participated in the 45th session of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR). In this post, we briefly report on the session discussions on exceptions and limitations for cultural heritage institutions (CHIs), a topic of utmost relevance to our Open Culture Program. 

As in previous SCCR sessions, our main objective was to drive copyright reform towards better sharing of heritage materials in the interest of the public and in tune with the sharing possibilities of the digital environment. For more details check out our official statement and watch our intervention on the WIPO webcast. 

Overall, we welcome the session outcomes. However, protracted discussions on the various versions of the implementation plan for the Work Program on Limitations and Exceptions (SCCR/45/6 and SCCR/43/8 REV.), which aim to determine a clear path forward in the negotiations, meant that substantive discussions could not take place. We look forward to engaging with the future Draft Implementation Plan on the Work Program on Limitations and Exceptions (SCCR/45/10 PROV.) and to bringing our expertise on copyright in the public interest to the discussions on objectives, principles, and options.

Limitations and exceptions for CHIs were not the only issue on the Committee’s agenda. Other key items included the protection of broadcasting organizations (read Communia’s take on this topic), other exceptions and limitations such as for educational and research institutions and for people with disabilities, copyright issues in the digital environment, as well as the interplay between generative artificial Intelligence (AI) and copyright, among others. 

You can read more about the meeting outcomes in the Summary by the Chair.

We look forward to participating in the Committee’s next session to contribute to creating a fairer and more balanced international copyright system in the public interest.

Creative Commons is proud to announce the launch of “Introduction to Open Educational Resources,” our first professional development microcredential course and partnership with the University of Nebraska at Omaha, commencing on 31 May.

This microcredential pilot started with one CC Certificate alumnus’s enthusiasm for open education. Craig Finlay, OER and STEM Librarian at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) Libraries, took the CC Certificate course for Academic Librarians in September, 2021. Since then, he’s advocated for open education in a variety of capacities: managing UNO’s biannual campus Affordable Content Grants, which largely fund converting courses from using all traditional textbooks to using at least one open educational resource; hosting regular CC workshops for faculty on campus; and co-authoring a white paper exploring OER’s positive impact on student success. Co-creating the microcredential course offered the next step in applying his CC Certificate expertise and passion for open education. Craig was intent on bringing CC licensing expertise to more learners, seeking professional development, and UNO granted a pathway for this.

Over the course of the last several months, CC and UNO have developed the “Introduction to Open Educational Resources.” The course remixes Certificate lessons in open licensing, copyright, open education, fair use and the public domain.  Content targets the ecosystem of scholarly and academic publishing and explores growing and managing open education efforts in these domains. Learners enrolling in this 9-week course will engage asynchronously, but should expect to work five hours per week to complete course work; successful completion will result in a microcredential for non-credit and professional education. 

Beyond the course announcement, we wanted to share a few crucial elements that made this partnership successful: 

• A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which outlined the goal, key roles, responsibilities and timeline for our work. 
• A mutually viable financial model, which ensures this work can be sustainable for both institutions. 
• Adaptability. Because this project involved multiple stakeholders, we needed to remain flexible to meet differing needs. 
• Trust. Working together has been easy because of our basis in trust.

We share these key ingredients to this microcredential pilot because we expect the partnership can be replicated for a number of new communities. If you work at an institution and are interested in partnering with CC on a microcredential course related to CC Certificate course content, please contact certificates [at] creativecommons.org.

Note: The CC Certificate program was created as an investment in our open advocates around the world. CC built the training to strengthen the global communities’ work engaging in open movements in education, access and more recently, cultural heritage. 

CC Certificate courses develop peoples’ practical expertise in open licensing, copyright, and ways to engage in open knowledge and culture movements. The program has certified over 1700 people in 65 countries with open licensing expertise. Through open licensing course content, CC supports communities making derivatives of the course, from Masters level courses, faculty workshops, an audio recording, to nine language translations, and more. 

The Board of Directors of Creative Commons (CC) is pleased to announce the appointment of Anna Tumadóttir as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of CC. 

“The CC Board universally supported Anna’s appointment as CEO,” says CC’s Board Chair Delia Browne. “Anna has been a source of stability as well as a catalyst for CC’s future direction throughout her time at CC. The Board is looking forward to her leading the team with her experience, thoughtfulness, and commitment to removing barriers, improving workflows and effectiveness, and sharing openly as part of a robust knowledge commons,” continues Delia.

Anna’s longstanding leadership at CC has been a pillar of CC’s success since she joined in September 2019 as Director of Product. Anna was promoted to Chief Operating Officer (COO) in 2021 after her successful time leading product strategy. In 2023, she also held the role of Deputy CEO, ensuring ongoing effective operations and stewardship of organizational priorities.

During her tenure as Interim CEO, Anna articulated an innovative and sustainable future for CC. As CC continues to define its role within the emergence of generative artificial intelligence (AI), Anna is positioned to guide this exploration with an unwavering commitment to knowledge sharing within the broader commons. Cementing CC’s role as the stewards of the legal infrastructure of the open web, in collaboration with the CC Global Network and community, is a key priority.

“I am honored to formally step into the role of CEO, and bring my experience with and understanding of CC’s global contributions, and ongoing need for sustainability and world-class operations, into this role,” says Anna. “I wish to thank the Board of Directors for their support during this transition period, as well as give my thanks to the CC team who are co-creating a shared vision of the future that I’m excited to implement alongside them,” continues Anna. 

Anna’s appointment is effective immediately and will begin with a strategic refresh for the organization with more details and opportunities to engage with this process to come. Please join us in congratulating Anna and wishing her well in this new role. 

Our work on copyright has long focused on supporting libraries and archives in the service of their missions to preserve and ensure access to culture. Our 2022 copyright reform agenda centers those sorts of institutions (and more generally GLAMs) and the critical role they play in society. Among other things, that agenda calls attention to the ways in which copyright might impede libraries and archives who wish to make their collections available for research uses, including use for AI training in order to fulfill their public interest missions.

That issue – AI training – has become ever more relevant. The concept of mass digitization of books, including to support text and data mining, of which AI training is a subset, is not new. But AI training is newly of the zeitgeist, and its transformative use makes questions about how we digitize, preserve, and make accessible knowledge and cultural heritage salient in a distinct way.

In 2023, multiple news publications reported on the availability and use of a dataset of books called “Books3” to train large language models (LLMs), a form of generative AI tool.  The Books3 dataset contains text from over 170,000 books, which are a mix of in-copyright and out-of-copyright works. It is believed to have been originally sourced from a website that was not authorized to distribute all of the works therein. In lawsuits brought against OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta, and Bloomberg related to their LLMs, the use of Books3 as training data was specifically cited. 

The Books3 controversy highlights a critical question at the heart of generative AI: what role do books play in training AI models, and how might digitized books be made widely accessible for the purposes of training AI for the public good? What dataset of books could be constructed and under what circumstances? 

Earlier this year, we collaborated with Open Future and Proteus Strategies on a series of workshops to explore these questions and more. We brought together practitioners on the front lines of building next-generation AI models, as well as legal and policy scholars with expertise in the copyright and licensing challenges surrounding digitized books. Our goal was also to bridge the perspective of stewards of content repositories, like libraries, with that of AI developers. A “books data commons” needs to be both responsibly managed, and useful for developers of AI models. Today, we’re releasing a paper based on those workshops and additional research. 

While this paper does not prescribe a particular path forward, we do think it’s important to move beyond the status quo. Today, large swaths of knowledge contained in books are effectively locked up and inaccessible to most everyone. Large companies have huge advantages when it comes to access to books for AI training (and access to data in general). At the same time, as the paper highlights, there are already relevant examples of nonprofit and library-led efforts to provide responsible, fair access to books for many more people, not just the privileged few. We hope this paper can support further research, collaboration and investment in this space.

Read the full paper. 

What are the EMFA’s objectives?

The proliferation of digital services has exponentially changed the way in which we engage with information, bringing both opportunities and challenges. In an increasingly digital world, the dual threats of mis- and disinformation are a huge challenge for democratic societies, especially at a time when almost half of the world will hold elections in 2024. And as we look at how media consumption evolves over time, many more citizens are now consuming their information online. In this context, the primary objectives of the EMFA are to ensure media plurality, as well as editorial and functional independence of public media, and to protect journalists across the EU. 

Misinformation is the sharing of inaccurate information. Disinformation is the sharing of inaccurate information, with the intention to mislead.

CC’s support for journalists 

Access to verified information is a basic human right and an issue we care deeply about at CC, especially as part of our work on Open Journalism. In 2023, we published A Journalist’s Guide to Creative Commons, which offers practical advice on how to make the most out of CC licenses in journalism and encourages journalists to openly license their outputs.

We find that CC-licensed news articles can dramatically increase their spread. The Conversation, a nonprofit network of eight international news sites publishing hundreds of useful articles of news and analysis each week under CC licenses, reports that around 60% of their readership comes from republished articles. Furthermore, small news outlets, lacking budgets for image subscriptions, turn to CC-licensed images on platforms like Flickr for free access to media.

Policy engagement with the EU

Starting with our Statement on the Introduction of the EU Media Freedom Act, we have provided context and input into the EU policy making process regarding the costs and risks of disinformation,  through parliamentary hearings and engagement on the EMFA text itself. We have outlined how our licenses and our community-based work can support free and fair access to pluralist media content as well as defend independence of information for citizens, whether they access their information through more traditional channels (TV, radio, newsprint) or more modern, digital channels. 

Our efforts centered on Article 17, which introduced the so-called “media exception,” thus creating special privileges for some incumbent, traditional media such as commercial newspapers and broadcasters. We argued that such a provision would disfavor smaller and independent creators, interfere with policies aimed at protecting users from harmful information, and have implications for how all people are able to share their creativity and knowledge online. 

EMFA: A positive step forward but not the end of the road

While we welcome adoption of the EMFA, we believe the EU must remain active and vigilant in the fight against disinformation, resolute in its defense of independent journalism, and tireless in its defense of media plurality. We remain concerned about several aspects of the EMFA, particularly around the “media exception,” including: 

• Public media should not get a lighter treatment than private media: We believe that public media do not inherently have lower risks of disinformation. So while we welcome the provisions on ownership transparency, we feel the text still falls short in providing lighter touch provisions for state-owned, state-funded media outlets which may hide behind domestic standards bodies and regulators.
• Traditional vs new media – same standards should apply to both: We remain unconvinced by the inferred assumption that public channels, which often tend to be “traditional” media outlets such as radio and TV, are more “reliable” than private media outlets, in particular digital ones. Citizens have a right to expect that all media, irrespective of ownership structure or interfaces used, should respect the same norms and standards. 
• Content moderation provisions risk exacerbating dis- and misinformation:  We support the premise that decisions on content moderation by all operators, including very large online platforms, do not per se negatively affect media freedom. However, we fear the 24-hour “must-carry” obligation could have the perverse effect of allowing dis- and misinformation to spread further and faster. The “going viral” nature of social media and platforms is a challenge to balancing content moderation vs. robust controls to limit arbitrary removal of information. Despite the EMFA’s creation of an appeals process, the final text still lacks appropriate checks and balances to ensure content moderation can be practically enforced in a robust, proportionate way across all platforms. We also fear this could risk undermining the Digital Services Act implementation and encourage other stakeholders to request similar privileges in content moderation policies, creating a patchwork of potentially inconsistent rules. 

In short, we strongly believe journalism provides a crucial public service. Access to verifiable information and stories that question the underlying terrain of power is critical to all democratic societies. Open-access information provides the strongest collective bulwark against the societally corrosive effects of mis/disinformation in the public arena. 

While the EMFA may not be applicable by the time EU citizens cast their votes in June this year, we applaud the EU’s efforts to strengthen its regime in this important area. CC will continue to engage with policymakers to enhance the sharing of knowledge and defend the basic rights and freedoms enshrined in the EU acquis. 

For more information on our work on policy and on open journalism, contact us at info@creativecommons.org.