Beeple, AKA Mike Winkelmann, is a graphic designer, artist, and videographer whose popular video art and design work has largely been released free under CC. Every day for the past 10 years, Winkelmann has released a drawing online through his series of “Everydays,” which is now a personal archive of over 3000 CGI drawings and animations. His output is prolific in other genre as well – his hundreds of CC VJ loops are sought after by electronic musicians and artists looking for mashups.

Winkelmann’s short films have screened at a variety of festivals, and his Creative Commons illustrations and drawings have been used by artists such as Skrillex, Amon Tobin and Taïsto. He currently releases his work on Flying Lotus’s Brainfeeder label.

Discover more of Winkelmann’s work at Beeple-Crap, Instagram, Tumblr, and Vimeo.

You’re a successful artist in a variety of genre on a popular label, yet you consistently release free VJ loops and other material under CC. How do you balance the two modes of creating? Why do you release your work into the commons? Why did you start using CC to begin with?

I think creating stuff and giving it away for free is something that just comes naturally to me for some reason. If there is something that I’ve worked really hard on, I want as many people to see it as possible so giving it away is the easiest way to facilitate that.

Of course, just like everyone else, I have a family and bills to pay and so I can totally understand wanting to charge money for personal work. For me though I’ve tried to draw a line between the freelance stuff that I do and purely personal work that allows me to still release things for free.

One of the arguments that skeptics sometimes deploy when talking about Creative Commons is, “Why would someone pay for this when they can get it for free?” How would you counter that assumption? What leads you to continue to use CC? How do you balance between free/attribution models and paid models as an independent artist?

I think the topic of art valuation is a very interesting subject. I think in some ways it comes down to issues of supply and demand, but is also further complicated with digital assets that can be copied at no cost. I honestly don’t think there are really any ‘right’ answers but personally I feel that there is room for both sides. While it is obviously true that most people will not pay for something that they can get for free, there exists a large amount of counter points to that argument on sites like Patreon where people give money free to people whose work they enjoy. I think sometimes people concentrate a little too much on trying to come up with some great business model when they should be focusing a bit more on their craft.

In terms of my own work, I don’t really have a paid model for the digital assets I create. All of the paid work I do is custom (freelance) work. At the moment I like having things be a but more cut and dry like that.

You’re on your 11th round of “Everydays,” in which you complete an art project every day, resulting in over 3500 pieces of original art. What’s the impetus for this project? How has it changed in 11 years? What have you learned, and what would you do differently?

I completed 10 years of everydays in May of last year without missing a day. The main goal of this project was to get better at art. When I first started out, it was to get better at drawing. After the first year of drawing I saw a huge improvement (while I was much better, I definitely still sucked) but saw this as a powerful tool to learn new techniques and continually improve.

Honestly I don’t think much has changed in 10 years. While I’ve seen a ton of improvements and benefits from the project, my skill set is really not even close to where I’d like it to be. I have so many different areas I’d love to focus more attention on so I don’t see stop anytime soon.

How has the rise of more visual, viral social media like Instagram and Facebook changed your work? How have you utilized other platforms as you’ve evolved as an independent artist?

These platforms have been great for helping me reach an audience especially given the format of work that I do. Putting out a picture a day or short little VJ clips, these are very small, easily digestible pieces that are perfectly suited for these platforms so I feel like I’m pretty lucky to be making work that is a natural fit for these mediums. I feel like being adept at utilizing these platforms and understanding the nuances of the audiences with each is pretty key to gaining a following today. On the flip side, I also think it’s something that you can get ‘too’ involved with and can be a bit of time hog. So I think you need to sort of find a balance between maintaining a presence on these platforms but not having it overtake your time.

What projects are you working on now that you’re most excited about? What kinds of projects are your favorite to work on?

Lately I have been doing some VR and AR work that has been really exciting. These are obviously very new formats that don’t have a lot of set rules so people are sort of discovering these things as they go along. I am also continuing everydays, VJ clips and working a short film. So working across a pretty wide range of medium which in itself has been a lot of fun since I get bored pretty easily doing the same things.

The post Art and the Every Day with Mike Winkelmann (AKA beeple) appeared first on Creative Commons.

We’re taking part in Copyright Week, a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements of the law, and addressing what’s at stake, and what we need to do to make sure that copyright promotes creativity and innovation.

Today’s topic for Copyright Week is Transparency: Whether in the form of laws, international agreements, or website terms and standards, copyright policy should be made through a participatory, democratic, and transparent process.

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Creative Commons has been following the development of several multilateral trade agreements such as the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Trans-Pacific Partnership (now known as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement, or CPTPP), and the EU-Mercosur Association Agreement (EU-Mercosur).

These sweeping and complex agreements attempt to introduce trade regulations on a wide variety of products, including goods and textiles, agricultural products, and automotive parts. In addition, the agreements introduce provisions regarding environmental regulation, pharmaceutical procurement, intellectual property, labor standards, and food safety.

These trade negotiations typically contain copyright provisions that would affect the commons and the public domain, creativity and sharing, and user rights in the digital age.

Secrecy ensures outcomes are serviceable to power

A fundamental flaw with NAFTA, CPTPP, EU-Mercosur, and nearly all other trade agreements is that the texts and negotiating meetings are entirely opaque to the populations those agreements would cover. They are developed and negotiated in secret—at least from the perspective of the public and civil society. Sometimes industry representatives and other business interests are invited to view texts or give recommendations on proceedings, typically  after they’ve agreed to a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) forbidding them from sharing the information with anyone else.

The draft text of a trade agreement is kept secret for a reason. If the public got a glimpse of what was in the document, they’d be totally opposed to it.

How does this play out? It means that  TPP was already complete and the text was published before we could accurately analyze (and rightly criticize) the provisions inside. Civil society organizations like Creative Commons and the broader public have been put at an extreme disadvantage, as only a privileged few stakeholders invited into the closed negotiation circle have had their interests fully considered. And civil society increasingly has to rely on leaks in order to discover what is going on behind closed doors.

It’s not surprising then that we see that when intellectual property is put on the bargaining table, there’s a significant push to drastically increase enforcement measures for rights holders, lengthen copyright terms, and demand harsh infringement penalties. If incumbent industries and rightsholder associations are the ones getting access instead of the public, the objectives of the negotiators will align with those parties that have the ability to shape it.

As we’ve written, this secretive copyright policy making process has a disconcerting effect:

Despite the various international agreements that aim to harmonize copyright, individual nations continue to use multilateral trade pacts as an opportunity to add increasingly onerous requirements and further lock up copyrighted works. This kind of venue shopping harms the commons and users by creating a “ladder effect”: increased IP protections are negotiated between a few countries, and then used to pressure other nations to adopt, rather than conducting a fair, public, and international discussion.

In a letter to NAFTA negotiators at the restart of that process, we demanded reforms to make the proceedings more transparent, inclusive and accountable. We said that it is unacceptable that binding rules on intellectual property, access to medicines, and a variety of other trade-related sectors will be reworked within a process that is inaccessible and often hostile to input from members of the public. All trade negotiations should be made through procedures that are transparent to the public and which include all stakeholders. Increased transparency and meaningful public participation will lead to better outcomes.

The lights are on, but nobody’s home?

Even though they rely on secrecy, , governments working on multilateral trade agreements realize they can’t keep the public out forever. Some have set up some sort of feedback mechanism to collect the views of stakeholders. For example, during the lead up to the re-negotiation of NAFTA, Creative Commons and thousands of other interested parties submitted comments to the Canadian, Mexican, and U.S. consultations regarding the negotiating priorities and objectives. Are they listening? It’s not clear that any of our concerns (or those of like minded organisations working in the public interest) are reflected in the priorities published by the member governments (for example, see the summary U.S. objectives).

The examples generalize beyond trade negotiations. The EU has downplayed input from the public regarding its review of the copyright rules, discarding some, ignoring others, and demonstrating bias for professionally-written, pro-business, and English language responses. In the U.S., the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was harshly criticized for a broken public consultation regarding its proposed rulemaking to repeal net neutrality, with evidence revealing responses from individuals who did not consent to it, and even comments from dead people.

Lather, rinse, repeat

At this point we feel like a broken record: the process of copyright policy making needs to drastically change in order to adequately take into consideration the rights of users and the public interest. It’s safe to assume that copyright and other intellectual property rights will continue to be included in bilateral and multilateral trade negotiations, so it’s imperative that the negotiations be radically reformed to make the proceedings transparent, inclusive and accountable. It’s absolutely crucial that negotiators lift the un-democratic and counterproductive secrecy that has pervaded most of the recent discussions.

As mentioned before, we would like to see: public release of text proposals by governments before negotiations with clear processes established for members of the public to comment on them; consolidated versions of negotiating texts published between negotiating rounds; locations and times of key meetings announced well ahead of time; and the establishment of consultative trade groups that are broadly representative of both business and public interest stakeholders with a commitment to conducting deliberations openly.

The post Secret negotiations, empty promises: Copyright policymaking needs sunlight for better outcomes appeared first on Creative Commons.

We’re taking part in Copyright Week, a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements of the law, and addressing what’s at stake, and what we need to do to make sure that copyright promotes creativity and innovation.

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Today’s topic for Copyright Week is Public Domain and Creativity: Copyright policy should encourage creativity, not hamper it. Excessive copyright terms inhibit our ability to comment, criticize, and reworkour common culture.

Creative Commons licenses help authors keep and manage their copyright on terms they choose. Our public domain tools, on the other hand, enable authors who want to dedicate their works to the worldwide public domain to do so (by using the CC0 Public Domain Dedication), and facilitate the labeling and discovery of works that are already free of known copyright restrictions (by using the Public Domain Mark).

Creative Commons cares deeply about the public domain, and we’re not alone. There are many incredibly impactful, important, and simply interesting organisations and projects out there working to highlight, protect, and expand the public domain. Here are just a few of our favorites!

Wikipedia

Not only does Wikipedia provide the starting point for anyone who wants to learn about what the public domain is, it’s also an excellent educational resource for Wikipedia editors (and anyone) to dive deeper into the theory, history, and country-specific rules surrounding copyright and the public domain. Wikimedia Commons (the media repository that hosts the images, sounds, and videos you see in a Wikipedia article) contains thousands of public domain works, helpfully reviewed and tagged by editors. The Wikimedia Foundation has also been quite active in policy advocacy in defense of the public domain.  

Internet Archive

Everyone knows Internet Archive because of the mighty Wayback Machine, the sprawling web archiving tool that has saved over 310 billion (!) web pages so far—searchable by anyone. But you might not know that the Internet Archive is a massive digital library—home to 11 million books and texts, 4 million audio recordings (including 160,000 live concerts), 3 million videos (including 1 million Television News programs), 1 million images, and 100,000 software programs. The archive contains likely tens or hundreds of thousands of public domain media files, and users can create an account and upload their own creative works and put them into the worldwide public domain using CC0.

Communia Association

The Communia International Association on the Public Domain is a collective of organisations and activists working to strengthen and enrich the public domain (Creative Commons is a founding member). The current focus of the association is policy analysis and advocacy within the context the European Commission’s proposal for a new Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market. The current association was created at the completion of the eponymous research network, funded by the European Commission from 2007 to 2011. A major initiative of the project was the Public Domain Manifesto, endorsed by more than 1500 organisations and individuals, as well as a book-length study on the digital public domain, showcasing the major outputs of the research group.

Public Domain Review

The Public Domain Review is an online journal that showcases works that have entered the public domain, “that vast commons of out-of-copyright material that everyone is free to enjoy, share, and build upon without restriction.” It was launched by Open Knowledge in 2011. The site includes dozens of long-form essays which “seek to offer insight and reflection upon public domain works and the oft overlooked histories which surround them.” The website also includes browseable collections of public domain media, and also publishes an annual “class of” series around the new year to highlight works of authorship which will enter the public domain at the stroke of midnight on January 1.

Center for the Study on the Public Domain

The Center for the Study on the Public Domain is a research group started at Duke Law School in 2002. Its aim is “to promote research and scholarship on the contributions of the public domain to speech, culture, science and innovation, to promote debate about the balance needed in our intellectual property system and to translate academic research into public policy solutions.” The center was co-founded by James Boyle, a renowned copyright scholar and author who also was a founding board member of Creative Commons. In 2008 Boyle wrote a seminal work called The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind. The center conducts legal and cultural research, and also has released several comic books on copyright issues, including Bound By Law and Theft! A History of Music.

Thanks to the tireless work of these organisations, the commons continues to strengthen and grow, improving access to our shared cultural and creative works in the public domain.

The post 5 Awesome Organisations Working to Protect and Expand the Public Domain appeared first on Creative Commons.

We’re taking part in Copyright Week, a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements of the law, and addressing what’s at stake, and what we need to do to make sure that copyright promotes creativity and innovation.

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Today’s topic for Copyright Week is Public Domain and Creativity: Copyright policy should encourage creativity, not hamper it. Excessive copyright terms inhibit our ability to comment, criticize, and reworkour common culture.

Copyright always builds upon the past. The public domain is our shared cultural commons, a near limitless trove of creativity that’s been reused, remixed, and reimagined over centuries to create new works of art and science. The value of the public domain is impossible to overestimate. Contemporary copyright policy should strive to promote, and not diminish, a robust, accessible public domain.

The legal public domain

From a legal perspective, the public domain is the space where no intellectual property rights exist. This means that works in the public domain may be used without any restrictions whatsoever. Works enter into the public domain in different ways. First, works whose copyrights have expired are in the public domain. In the United States, the length of the term of copyright is life of the author plus an additional 70 years. So, these old works (at least those published before 1923) are in the public domain.  

Second, works can enter the public domain if authors put them there before the copyright expires. This is made possible by using the CC0 Public Domain Dedication. This tool allows anyone to waive their copyright and place a work directly into the global public domain—prior to the expiration of copyright.

Third, some works are in the public domain because they were never subject to copyright protection in the first place. Things like facts and ideas are in the public domain—they cannot be copyrighted.

Forever minus a day?

One common criticism of copyright policy are the incredibly long copyright terms—that is, the length which creators are granted an exclusive monopoly over how their works are used. It didn’t always used to be this way. When the U.S. passed its copyright act in 1790, the term was set at 14 years (with the possibility of another 14-year renewal). But slow since that time, copyright terms have increased in duration, and pretty much solidified at the international minimum term of life of the author + 50 years through the widespread adoption of the Berne Convention.

There is no good reason for copyright to last so long. In a 2009 paper, economist Rufus Pollock estimated the optimal copyright term to be about 15 years. And there have been legal challenges to copyright term extensions, such as Eldred v. Ashcroft. In that case, Lawrence Lessig argued (on behalf of publisher plaintiff Eric Eldred) before the U.S. Supreme Court that the 20 year copyright term extension enacted by the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act violated the Constitutional requirement that copyright should last for a limited amount of time because the Act retroactively extended copyright terms. Supporting Eldred was an amicus brief filed by leading economists, who said the costs of a term extension would outweigh the benefits, and essentially calling Lessig’s approach a no-brainer.  Eldred eventually lost the case, and the copyright term in the U.S. remains at life of the author + 70 years. Jamie Boyle, a preeminent copyright scholar, director of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain, and one of the founding board members of Creative Commons, recently called the current length of our copyright term a “cultural disaster.”

Stepping back from the precipice

So what’s the current thinking regarding copyright terms around the world? To be sure, most of the damage has already been done. Due to international treaties like the Berne Convention and the development of entities like the World Trade Organisation, for most of the world, copyright law is quite similar, with copyright terms set typically at the life of the author + 50 years. But how are some countries approaching copyright term within their domestic copyright reviews? We just learned that Australia is closing a loophole that in the past arguably would have permitted a perpetual copyright on unpublished works.

Canadian ministers responsible for its domestic copyright review have already indicated some support of the public domain, stating that an updated law “should ensure […] that users benefit from a public domain.”

And in the United States, powerful copyright interests in the music (RIAA) and movie (MPAA) industries admitted they are uninterested in pushing for another copyright term extension. The 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act expires next year, meaning that once again content will enter the public domain in the U.S. at the beginning of 2019. Perhaps more surprising was the response from the Authors Guild—typically a copyright-maximalist organisation.  A spokesperson said that the Guild “does not support extending the copyright term, especially since many of our members benefit from having access to a thriving and substantial public domain of older works,” adding, “If anything, we would likely support a rollback to a term of life-plus-50 if it were politically feasible.”

How is the issue being handled within other mechanisms for copyright policy making, such as bilateral and multinational trade negotiations? The situation is a bit of a mixed bag. While originally the Trans-Pacific Partnership called for a 20 year copyright term extension (for countries that do not already have a life + 70 term), once the U.S. pulled out of the treaty and the remaining member countries restarted negotiations, many of the more problematic copyright provisions (like the 20 year term extension) were suspended from future talks.

There doesn’t seem to be much interest in suggesting a term extension within the context of the renegotiation of NAFTA, either. The U.S. is already at life + 70 years, and Mexico has an even longer term at life + 100. It’s become increasingly clear that Canada won’t be bullied into extending its copyright term via NAFTA. The New Democrat Party provided an opinion, saying “The Canadian government should reject any proposal to extend copyright terms beyond its current term of 50 years after the author’s death, knowing that current Canadian copyright terms are already largely in compliance with international copyright treaties.”

The EU-Mercosur trade agreement is another interesting case. Based upon a November 2016 draft of the intellectual property chapter, we criticised the suggestion for a 20 year term extension for countries that don’t already have a life + 70 term. A more recent text provides a bit more detail, making it clear that the EU is pushing for the increase, while the Mercosur nations prefer the international baseline of life + 50. The Mercosur bloc also suggested the addition of text that would promote collaboration between the member nations in “preserv[ing] a robust, rich, and accessible public domain,” and “cooperat[ing] with each other in identifying subject matters that have fallen in to the public domain.” The EU proposed text merely calls for a joint recognition of the “importance of the public domain.” But activists from the Mercosur nations are rightly concerned that any minor improvement regarding access to and preservation of the public domain should not come at the expense of forcing Mercosur countries into adopting a more restrictive copyright environment across the board.

The turn of the tide: what happened?

Copyright policy making is subject to the same political machinations of most other legal, social, and cultural issues whose outcomes are the result of a struggle of power between competing interests. And for too long, the incumbent power in the copyright space laid with the gatekeepers of popular content—oftentimes corporations and their industry associations with deep ties to the politicians steering law and regulation around copyright (there’s a reason the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act also was called the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act”). So what’s changed now? Why aren’t we seeing these companies and their lobbying groups continue to pursue copyright term extensions? Why doesn’t copyright last “forever minus a day”?

As a recent ArsTechnica article argues, “the rise of the Internet has totally changed the political landscape on copyright issues.” When the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) was introduced in 2011, major websites like Wikipedia went dark to protest the potential negative effects of the legislation. Millions of people protested online and via social media. Essentially, the public didn’t let it happen. Policy making can be incredibly complex, and it’s difficult to ascribe a single reason why a particular piece of legislation comes out as it does. But one incredibly significant change we’ve seen over the last several years: new (and better organised) communities of users pushing for a free and open internet are making their voices heard in the political sphere.

The term of copyright is still far too long; life of the author + 50 years is nothing to write home about. But the simple fact is that there are communities of people who wish to work for a more fair copyright—and fight for better access to knowledge, fast and reliable technology and connectivity, and a robust shared public domain. This mobilisation should be continued and strengthened so creators, users, and the public interest can begin to take back the levers of policy to create a balanced copyright that truly rewards creators, and upholds the rights of users to access, reuse, and further contribute to our knowledge and creative commons.

The post Is Copyright Term Extension Finally Done? appeared first on Creative Commons.

Today marks day one of the beta version of the Creative Commons Certificates program, a project designed to provide people the skills and expertise they need to implement and advocate for open licensing around the world. We are thrilled to have 50 remarkable people from nearly 20 countries in the beta cohort. The group includes: university librarians, Wikipedians, digital rights activists, educators from all levels, lawyers, and more. This diverse cohort with varying expertise will help us shape the CC Certificate program for its official launch later in 2018.

The beta will be led by David Wiley, a long-time CC fellow and all-around expert on all things open. The cohort is divided into two tracks — one for educators and one for librarians. The program will be run as a private online course on Canvas. The course content includes a mix of reading, videos, quizzes, and creative assignments staggered over a 12-week period. We’ll also be asking the cohort to give us weekly feedback on the course, so we can improve it as we go. At the end of the 12 weeks, the cohort will be the first people officially “CC Certified.”

The CC Certificates program has been under development for more than two years and involved extensive work by many on the CC staff and beyond. Special thanks to Paul Stacey, David Wiley, Alan Levine, Kelsey Merkley, Olga Belikov, Kamil Śliwowski, Diane Peters, Eric Steuer, Cable Green, Rob Myers, Jennie Rose Halperin, and Ryan Merkley for their work and leadership. Special thanks to the Gates Foundation and Institute for Museum and Library Services for their project support.

And of course, thank you to all of you in the beta cohort for taking time out of your busy lives to participate in this process and help us make the CC Certificates program as good as it can be when we open it to the world.

For news about the CC Certificates program as we prepare the official launch, please join the CC Newsletter.

The post Kicking off the CC Certificates Beta appeared first on Creative Commons.