At the 2017 Creative Commons Global Summit, we hosted a special session with filmmaker Robin McKenna that featured an early look at her then-in-progress documentary GIFT. McKenna’s film is now completed and opens today in select cities in the US.
Inspired by The Gift, Lewis Hyde’s influential 1983 book about creativity and sharing (and an early inspiration for Creative Commons), GIFT explores gift-based cultures around the world and looks to understand how sharing makes us human. It follows the journeys of several people and their diverse creative pursuits, and chronicles how the acts of creating and sharing are currencies in their own right.
Watch the trailer for GIFT below, and check out our interview with McKenna from 2017 to learn more about her filmmaking process and what moved her to make this lovely documentary. Bonus material: Back in 2010, we interviewed Lewis Hyde—it’s an insightful read!
The Creative Commons Global Network (CCGN) is a passionate community that lights up our vibrant, collaborative, global commons. The CC Network is also critical to our mission of sharing. To support CC Network members, we launched a scholarship program for CC Certificate courses.
Today, we are proud to highlight our first 10 CC Certificate Scholarship recipients. The CC Certificate provides an-in depth study of Creative Commons licenses and open practices, uniquely developing participants’ open licensing proficiency and understanding of the broader context for open advocacy.
After launching the official CC Certificate courses in July of 2018, we offered 18 scholarships a year later. We’re thrilled to enroll our first scholarship recipients in the September 2019 and January 2020 classes! They join the ranks of 507 other participants from 42 countries or territories who have enrolled in CC Certificate courses. These initial scholarships are just the start. We aim to increase the number of scholarships we offer by 50% next year, and further increase the number in subsequent years.
It’s simple. Creative Commons offers as many scholarship tickets as we can to CC Network Chapters. As leaders in the field with regular connection to local community members, Chapter leads and representatives determine the recommended scholarship recipients. They send scholarship recommendations and contact information to CC, and we help recipients register in the Librarian or Educator Certificate courses.
The Scholarship program covers 80% of the recipient’s ticket, requiring scholarship recipients to contribute the remaining US $100.
In this initial round, we’ve prioritized scholarships for CC network members in Global South countries who want to use Certificate knowledge to fuel their own community efforts and “pay it forward” to their communities. Once we are able to offer all interested CC Country Chapters in the Global South at least one scholarship, we will provide scholarships to other CC Country Teams until, one day, we’ll have at least one community member trained in every interested CC Network country.
From June—August 2019, Creative Commons hosted eight CC Certificate classes for Academic Librarians and Educators. Participants in the classes studied Creative Commons licenses, copyright, the public domain, and open practices. Certificate students developed open licensing proficiency and deepened their understanding of the broader context for open advocacy. See examples of the assignments participants shared under CC licenses here!
Graduates from these classes included 67 educators and 90 librarians. Together, they joined the Certificate alumni community of 442 remarkable people making extraordinary changes in every region of the world. From translating Certificate content in multiple languages, to hosting workshops to developing entire graduate-level courses, CC Certificate alumni bring a new level of advocacy to open education and open access.
Image: Elizabeth Batte tweeted her Certificate graduating from the June 2019 class. She will join Jeanne Pavy, another June Certificate graduate, and present how they plan to use gained knowledge on campus, and the impact of CC licenses in higher education at the 2019 LOUIS User Conference on October 15.
Image: Certificate alumnus, Kamel Belhamel, puts his CC knowledge to great use at the University of Bejaia, in Algeria. View his slides and the 2nd CC Algeria Chapter meeting notes.
Here’s what our alumni are saying:
72% use the knowledge they gained from the course at least weekly
86% use the knowledge they gained from the course at least quarterly
62% are consulted by colleagues as an open licensing expert since graduation
Interested in taking the CC Certificate? Don’t miss out—we are now accepting new registrations for our 2020 courses!
Today is the International Day for Universal Access to Information (IDUAI).
Image credit: UNESCO, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
You may be wondering why this day is necessary—particularly in 2019, when the average person is inundated with an estimated 34 gigabytes of information every day, from emails and text messages to Youtube videos and news programs. In fact, it’s easy to take information for granted. However, access to public information, in particular, is not universal.
“Although technology has increased the amount of information and systematized the collection of data, people and communities across the world still lack access to critical, public information,” explains Bushra Ebadi. As a researcher and Executive Committee Member of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO, Bushra relies on public information to study and develop solutions for issues such as insecurity, corruption, inequality, and climate change.
Access to information “is an integral part of the right to freedom of expression” and “a key enabler towards inclusive knowledge societies.”
According to Moez Chakchouk, UNESCO’s Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information, access to information “is an integral part of the right to freedom of expression” and “a key enabler towards inclusive knowledge societies.” Despite this, UNESCO says that many governments “do not have national legislation on access to information as a specific expression of the law,” otherwise known as freedom of information legislation. This means that millions of people do not have the right or the ability to access public information. Further, “Even when these laws exist they are not necessarily abided by,” adds Bushra, “there can be a lot of red tape to access information in a timely manner.”
This lack of access is particularly worrying for researchers and activists, like Bushra. Without universal, open access to data from governments or research institutions, for example, developing effective solutions to global problems is difficult.
A Closer Look At Government Data
Increasingly, governments are using tools like Creative Commons’ CC0 Public Domain Dedication (CC Zero) to maximize the “re-use of data and databases” by clarifying that these resources are in the public domain and not restricted by copyright. However, there are many instances when data collected by governments are not made easily accessible (e.g., through an online data portal or open source data set).
In 2017, the World Wide Web Foundation found that almost every country included in its Open Data Barometerreport failed to adequately share important data with the public. For example, only 71% of the observed government data sets were published online, only 25% were available via an open license, and only 7% of government data sets were truly open—meaning they “can be freely used, modified, and shared by anyone for any purpose.” The Foundation also reported that many of the available data sets were “incomplete, out of date, of low quality, and fragmented.”
In her work, Bushra often relies on government data to conduct policy research, but has routinely experienced problems. “The relevance of the data is largely dependent on how and what information was collected, as well as the format it is available in,” she explains. While studying issues related to forced migration and gender discrimination in the Global South, for example, she found it difficult to access reliable data.
“By restricting access to those who can afford it or have power and privilege, we support a system and culture of elitism…”
To compensate for this lack of data, researchers must often rely on data collected by non-government entities—which are typically kept behind expensive paywalls. According to Bushra, this is particularly detrimental. “By restricting access to those who can afford it or have power and privilege, we support a system and culture of elitism in which a select group of people with access are able to dictate what is done with information and how it is used.”
Image credit: Rights Con 2019, CC BY-NC 2.0
The Power of Information
Universal, open access to public information, particularly government data, not only facilitates scientific collaboration and innovation, it also empowers communities that have been historically marginalized and silenced.
“Access to information is intrinsically tied to the right to know and the right to exist,” Bushra emphasizes, “and without access to information, citizens lack the tools they need to hold their governments and people in power accountable.”
Information is powerful—that’s why, even in 2019, the International Day for Universal Access to Information remains not only important, but necessary.
To learn more and get involved, visit UNESCO’s website or sign up for their newsletter.
Earlier this year, we met Patrick Böhler, a journalist and executive editor of SWI swissinfo.ch, the international news service of Switzerland’s public broadcaster. In our conversation, we discussed the ways that various media companies and journalistic projects have used Creative Commons licensing to increase public access to their stories.
We were excited when Patrick circled back recently to tell us about his latest project, The Pangolin Reports, which launches today in newspapers and online media in several countries. The result of a nine-month investigation by more than 30 journalists around the world, The Pangolin Reports is a series of investigative reports that document the poaching and smuggling of pangolins, the scaly anteaters that are known to be the most illegally traded mammals in the world.
Photo by Yu Chih-Wei, CC BY-NC-ND
Böhler and an international team of journalists known as the Global Environment Reporting Collective worked in 14 newsrooms across Asia, Africa, and Europe to produce The Pangolin Reports. The series, released under Creative Commons’ BY-NC-ND license, builds on local reporters’ expertise in order to generate worldwide awareness about the multi-million-dollar black market for pangolins—and the criminal network behind the supply chain.
The Pangolin Reports is designed to spark a larger conversation about animal trafficking and to inspire a global campaign to help save the pangolin. To learn more about the project (including information about its CC license), visit pangolinreports.com. If you’re interested in joining and/or supporting the Global Environment Reporting Collective, write to contact@pangolinreports.com.
(@kamelbelhamel) 
