Diego Gómez, the Colombian student who for the last three years has been prosecuted for sharing an academic paper online, has been cleared of criminal charges. The decision was delivered today by a judge in the Bogotá Circuit Criminal Court.

In 2014 Diego was a student in conservation and wildlife management, with poor access to many of the resources and databases that would help him conduct his research. In conducting his research, Diego found and shared a academic paper online so that others could read and learn from it, just as he did. Gómez was prosecuted for copyright infringement, and faced up to eight years in prison.

The decision to clear Diego of criminal charges is an important move in the interest of the public good. Instead of prosecuting students for sharing knowledge, our societies should be encouraging the free exchange of scientific information by reinforcing positive norms around scholarship and collaboration, promoting open access to research, and toning down out of control copyright remedies that serve no reasonable public interest purpose.

Even with today’s verdict, Diego’s situation is not over. The prosecutor has appealed the ruling, so the case will continue. Gomez’s defense team plans to launch a crowdfunding campaign to support the cost of defending the appeal. Those who wish to help Diego can sign the following petition and will be notified when the crowdfunding campaign launches: http://www.sharingisnotacrime.org

Diego has been supported by individuals and organisations from around the world, with leadership from the Colombian digital rights group Fundación Karisma.

The post Colombian Court Acquits Diego Gómez of Criminal Charges for Sharing a Research Paper Online appeared first on Creative Commons.

“Alike” was directed by Daniel Martinez Lara and Rafa Cano Mende, and was made in collaboration with ex Pepe-School-Land students. The film was developed using the open source operating system Linux and Blender, a free and open source 3D creation suite. The film has debuted at 120 festivals and won nearly as many awards.

Watch Alike:

Alike short film from Pepe School Land on Vimeo.

Interview with the filmmakers: Rafa Cano Mende and Daniel Martinez Lara

Alike is a successful film licensed under CC BY-ND made with Blender. What made you decide to license it under CC? How did you work with the Blender community to make your film more successful?

From the beginning, we were clear. After touring for festivals we wanted the short film to be available and free on internet so the message reaches as many people as possible. The CC license is perfect for that reason.

Alike has been our first short film made in Blender entirely, and we are really happy with our decision. It is not the “free” that matters. We have become part of the “Blender Community” due to the strength of users and programmers – they are always willing to solve and come up with ideas.

You chose to license the graphics under ND and the script under BY. Why did you make that decision? Why did you separate the two?

When we were developing the short film, we wanted to protect the script and characters more traditionally because our work was not finished. When we finished it we wanted to share our project with everybody, and its final form was the Alike short film video, which we shared with a more open license.

Alike is a heartwarming story about the special bond between a father and son as well as the perils of being too busy in an overconnected world. How did you come up with the story?

When you are a father, you usually wonder which will be the best way to raise your children. Alike tries to be a reflection and tries to help you to be aware about letting you go by stress and routine, and always trying to find an answer from the calm.

How did you bring the graphics and the script together so seamlessly?

This convergence is because of Rafa Cano, co-director, art director, and animation supervisor of the film. Cano has had the sensitivity of understanding Alike´s story and designed a world and an animation customized to the story.

You’ve won a number of awards with this short! How does the commons play into this? Why is it important to be a part of the global commons?

On the tour festival stage, we don’t know how the commons license has influenced it. But due to the film’s success, we feel confident to continue sharing films under Commons licenses on the internet.

The post State of the Commons Highlight: An interview with the filmmakers behind Alike Film appeared first on Creative Commons.

This week Wikipedia is urging users in Australia to tell their government representatives to champion fair use. The campaign, organised alongside Electronic Frontiers Australia and the Australian Digital Alliance, advocates for policy makers to update copyright law to include fair use, thus providing a progressive legal framework to support creators and remixers, educational activities, and new business opportunities.

Fair use is the legal doctrine already adopted in a few countries that permits use of copyrighted works without permission for purposes such as reporting, criticism, and research. For example, news broadcasts oftentimes use snippets of copyrighted videos in their programs to illustrate a story. They are able to do this without permission and without having to pay a license fee because of fair use. This exception to copyright provides a crucial balance between the interests of copyright holders and the public interest. It promotes creativity and transformative remix and protects freedom of expression.

The issue is important to the Wikipedia community because around 10% of the English Wikipedia’s 5 million articles incorporate some content under fair use.

Over the last 20 years, the Australian government has recommended several times that fair use be adopted into its copyright regime. The campaign launched during the country’s most recent push for incorporating fair use. Last year, Australia’s Productivity Commission provided a strong recommendation for fair use. Not surprisingly, the big rights holders organisations continue to fight against the adoption of a fair use exception. Just last month it was reported that the Copyright Agency, a copyright collective management group that is supposed to collect and disburse copyright royalty payments to authors, diverted millions of dollars to fund lobbying activities to fight against fair use reforms.

Australians should tell their elected representatives: It’s time for fair use.

 

The post Wikipedia Says It’s Time for Fair Use in Australia appeared first on Creative Commons.

This week, we’ll be featuring stories from this year’s State of the Commons report, which highlights the impact of our global community by exploring the wide array of creativity and knowledge that is freely available to the world under under CC licenses. Read more about why this report marks our biggest year yet.

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GeoNet adopted a CC BY license in order to provide crucial, open information and quick response to earthquakes, volcanic activity, and tsunamis. Its real-time CC BY-licensed and open format data is now reused every day for emergency management, research, industry use, and by the public. GeoNet has become a core tool for global positioning systems, measuring instruments, geotechnical consultancies, local and central government, as well as for national and international universities and research organizations. In 2016, It recorded over 32,000 earthquakes and has changed the way that the public learns about and understands earthquakes through its open format.

On 14 November 2016, the day of the Kaikoura 7.8 magnitude earthquake, there were 250 million hits to the site by third party apps – people around the world wanted to know the strength of the earthquake and what that meant for them. Geonet sent out 206 million advisories that day through its app, website, and social media sites.

Due to the reach of Geonet, there is increasing information on a variety of safety protocols like where one must move to avoid tsunamis and advice about what size after-shock to expect. Worldwide, new knowledge and research has been developed through legal reuse of this licensed data.

The post State of the Commons Feature: Geonet appeared first on Creative Commons.

This week, we’ll be featuring stories from this year’s State of the Commons report, which highlights the impact of our global community by exploring the wide array of creativity and knowledge that is freely available to the world under under CC licenses. Read more about why this report marks our biggest year yet.

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The African Storybook initiative works with organizations and individuals to facilitate access to storybooks and create website tools for users to create, translate, and adapt them. So far, the initiative has created storybooks in 94 African languages with the support of 30 partner organizations across Africa.

Multiple projects in multiple countries use the website and/or storybooks with the intervention of the African Storybook project team: schools or community libraries serve as pilot sites; governments use the content on their platforms to print and distribute; and partners add to and use content in their literacy development programmes. In addition, the project serves educators who integrate the website tools and storybooks into their pre-service training programs, as well as lecturers in higher education institutions stimulating their postgraduate students to experiment with and research use of the African Storybook. The remixable content also inspired the Global African Storybook Project, which translates the stories into other languages with few resources for childhood learning.

As of September 2016 the initiative contained 730 storybooks and 2,754 translations/adaptations. In only two years, 636,803 storybooks were downloaded with an average of 4800 visitors per month, of which 2,800 are new visitors. Further, the Global African Storybook Project has produced 460 translations in 26 languages. Between 30 and 400 African Storybook titles have been republished on a variety of academic and commercial sites.

The post State of the Commons Feature: African Storybook Initiative appeared first on Creative Commons.