Unsplash, a photo sharing startup, has launched their own branded license and updated their terms to add new restrictions and remove CC0 from their platform. As a result of the changes, Unsplash images are no longer in the public domain. The permissions offered can be revoked at any time, and Unsplash now has the right to pursue infringement on behalf of their users. Also, in some cases, attribution is now required. The terms of the new Unsplash-branded copyright license may create issues for users who hope to re-use the images, and for those who shared using the service and wanted their works available under unrestricted terms.

Background

We feel it’s important to inform the CC community, as many have been supporters of Unsplash and we have been receiving questions from users in the open content and free software movements. We reached out to Unsplash and then also, with their consent, spoke to their legal counsel to understand the new license and terms.

Our intention is to ensure that CC community members understand what has happened to a service they have been using that incorporated CC tools, and to protect the content that was dedicated to the public domain. We don’t want to oppose a startup’s business and marketing decisions, nor deny them the IP they might now want to claim to protect their business model.

We understand from Unsplash that they felt that copycat services were detracting from their offering and upsetting their users. We are sympathetic to that challenge — the predominant players in photo sharing like Flickr, 500px, and Wikimedia Commons all use CC0 in their platforms, and have faced those issues with their users. But it’s also clear that Unsplash wanted to extend their brand to have their name incorporated into the license. That’s a perfectly valid business and marketing decision.

We’ve outlined some issues for consideration in more detail below for the benefit of contributors to Unsplash, and those who wish to re-use their images:

Revokability

The new Unsplash-branded license is revocable. This means that Unsplash or the author could, at any time, change their mind about how people can use the images they have previously downloaded. This is a significant change from CC0.

Irrevocability is a fundamental feature of CC tools, designed to ensure that anyone who uses the image can do so with the confidence that the author can’t withdraw the permissions they’ve previously granted. We believe that is essential to building a commons that people can rely on, and use permissively.

Attribution

CC0 does not require attribution, though we encourage users to do so because it gives gratitude to the creator, and can support further re-use by linking to the original work and its license. The new Unsplash-branded license doesn’t require attribution, but the Unsplash API guidelines do require attribution. So depending on how a user, a developer, or their app retrieves the image from the Unsplash service, they are subject to different terms.

Copyright and sub-licensing

The new Unsplash terms of service require users who share to grant a copyright license to Unsplash, which permits them to sub-license their work. Unsplash also requires users to grant them the authority to enforce copyright on their behalf. Beyond the compilation of photos in a competing service, it is not clear if there are other scenarios under which Unsplash would enforce copyright against reusers.

CC0 Collection and Archive

Following the switch to the new Unsplash-branded license, there is no marking of works that were previously shared in the public domain using CC0. The Unsplash API restricts/obscures the full CC0 collection, which we believe to be about 200,000 images, but it isn’t possible to access the complete archive. In order to ensure that the commons is maintained, we hope that Unsplash will either a) properly mark all the works shared using CC0 and/or b) make available a full archive of the CC0 works so they can be shared on a platform that supports open licensing and public domain tools. Previous platforms that have gone under or abandoned open license tools have shared their CC archives for this purpose. We hope Unsplash will follow the same path.

The post Community update: Unsplash branded license and ToS changes appeared first on Creative Commons.

What does it mean to exhibit prosocial behavior? For our purposes, we mean behavior that leads to healthy collaboration and meaningful interactions online. Specifically, we are interested in prosocial behavior around online content sharing. How can we help people make the human connections that make sharing meaningful?

In this post, we distill learnings from the “How to encourage prosocial behavior” session at the recent CC Global Summit in Toronto, and outline the next steps for CC in this space. Specifically, Creative Commons will launch an investigative series into the values and behaviors that make online collaboration thrive, in order to embed them more deeply into the experience of sharing with CC.

Read on for all of the glorious details, or skip to the end for next steps.

Creative Commons: Remix by Creative Commons / CC BY-SA

When we launched our new strategy in 2016, we focused our work with user-generated content platforms on increasing discovery and reporting of CC-licensed works. Since the majority of the 1.2 billion CC-licensed works on the web are hosted by third parties, re-establishing relationships with them (e.g. Flickr, Wikipedia) was important, as was establishing relationships with newer platforms like Medium.

In year 2 of our strategy, we are broadening our focus to look more holistically at sharing and collaboration online. We are investigating the values and behaviors associated with successful collaboration, in the hopes that we might apply them to content platforms where CC licensing is taking place.

As a first step, we asked the question — How can we help people make the human connections that make sharing meaningful? — at this year’s CC Global Summit in Toronto. (This question is also central to our 2016-2020 Organizational Strategy, where we refocused our work to build a vibrant, usable commons, powered by collaboration and gratitude.) In a session entitled, “How to encourage prosocial behavior,” our peers at Medium, Wikimedia, Thingiverse, Música Libre Uruguay, and Unsplash shared the design factors they use to incentivize prosocial behavior around CC content, particularly behavior that helps people give credit for works they use and make connections with others. Programming diversity expert Ashe Dryden shared additional insights into how current platforms often approach design from a position of privilege, unwittingly excluding marginalized groups and potential new members.

We structured the discussion into three parts:

Part 1 – The Dark Side, or defining the problem. We asked our peers to detail examples of negative behaviors around content sharing and reuse.

Part 2 – What Works, or identifying solutions. We asked for technical and social design nudges that platforms have implemented that work to increase sharing and remix. We also discussed community-driven norms and behavior “in the wild.”

Part 3 – What can we do? We wrapped by discussing what we might do together to design and cultivate online environments conducive to healthy and vibrant collaboration.

Part 1 – The Dark Side

In part 1, we heard the standard issues one might expect around CC licensing, and also negative behaviors that occur with online content sharing more generally, regardless of the © status of such content. Specific to CC were issues such as: users claiming CC0 public domain works as their own and monetizing them; misunderstanding what it means to share under a CC license vs. just posting it online; and lack of clarity on when or how a CC license applies. More generally, negative behaviors around online content sharing included harassment based on gender, ethnicity, and other identities, which discourage potential new members from joining a community.

The behavioral tendencies and tensions we surfaced that were most relevant to the question — How can we help people make the human connections that make sharing meaningful? — were:

1. Users prefer real people (user identities with a history of credible content contributions) to automated accounts. CC users are smart and can quickly recognize the difference between a real user and a bot.
   • Example: On Thingiverse, a 3D design sharing platform, a bot called Shiv Integer crawled the platform and automated bizarre remixes of users 3D designs, which were posted automatically to the site as remixes. Though the bot’s remixes respected the CC license conditions, the community still felt it was an inappropriate use of their content.

1. Harassment marginalized groups face is more subtle than one might expect, and often serves to reinforce norms previously set in a space that does not account for diversity of gender, ethnicity, or geography. Overreliance on data or AI may also serve to reinforce these norms (that unintentionally discriminate) because data on which design is based is faulty or not representative of marginalized groups. Ultimately, this prevents the community from obtaining new members, particularly those from more diverse backgrounds, and from evolving into a truly open, inclusive environment inviting to “creators across sectors, disciplines, and geographies, to work together to share open content and create new works.”
   • Example: 80-85% of current Wikipedia editors are males from North America and Western Europe. 38% of Wikimedia users reported some level of harassment, including stalking, doxing, attacking off the wiki on other platforms, such as Facebook, based on gender, ethnicity, and other identities.
2. On platforms, users enter into legal contracts and social contracts that are separate and often in direct tension with one another. This plays out specifically in the world of copyright, where people’s desires and expectations about how content will be used are often different from the rules dictated by copyright law (which are therefore, embedded with CC licenses).

• Example: A user may post discriminatory, harassing, or violent speech on a platform under the guise of parody. As a copyright matter, parody is clearly a fair use. As an ethical matter, whether the parody constitutes harassment may not be so clear, since a parody, as a satirical imitation, essentially mocks or belittles some aspect of the original work, and possibly the author. As a result, parody can often generate confrontation and controversy in a community. With the legal and social contracts in tension, the platform must decide which to uphold for its users, with either decision potentially alienating one segment of its community. This example also raises the issue that many users expect a platform to be the enforcer of ethical norms, a position not all platforms hold.

1. When different values are in tension with each other, it is hard to design community rules that can be applied both consistently and fairly. Some rules may even serve to disproportionately affect one group of people over others.
   • Example: Medium has an “all-party consent” rule with respect to posting screenshots of personal 1:1 exchanges, such as text messages. This policy is designed to protect everyone’s expectation of privacy related to personal communications. It is also designed to apply to all users equally, with some exceptions for situations involving public figures or newsworthy events. In some cases, however, this policy can mean that a person with less power in an exchange is prevented from fully telling their story, since it is often when a powerful or privileged person behaves badly in private that the other person involved wants to publicly expose that behavior. As a result, this policy may allow some users to keep evidence of their private bad acts out of public exposure or scrutiny, while preventing users from a marginalized group (who may benefit from exposing the interaction or fostering public discussion of it) from being able to show the details of an exchange they think is important to show.

Part 2 – What Works, or identifying solutions.

In part 2, we learned about the different platform approaches to both incentivizing contributions of content to the commons and to incentivizing prosocial behavior around the content that made it personal and meaningful to users.

Platform approaches included:

• a prosocial frame to license selection, asking creators the kinds of uses they envision for their works, versus what license they might want to adopt
• a curated public space for licensed works, such as a radio channel, where the platform facilitates distribution to other users and potential fans

• collaborative education projects facilitated by the platform, such as an FAQ about music licensing and distribution built with the community
• foregrounding the reuse and remix aspect of CC content in a variety of ways, such as: featuring remixes on the platform’s home page, displaying an attribution ancestry tree on the work’s page, sending alerts when a creator’s content is reused, and reminding users of the license on a work upon download
• remix challenges and related competitions, run by the platform to foster reuse

We also learned about approaches to disincentivize the negative behaviors and tendencies we discussed in part 1. These included:

• crowdsourced tracking of misuses and misbehaviors
• redirecting license violations to the community to handle (e.g. community forums), utilizing community pressure to behave well
• a safe space for new users to practice contributing before moving into the actual project, especially for projects with contribution rules and norms that are difficult for new members to get right the first time, e.g. Teahouse space for Wikipedia

• follow-on events or projects to retain new members after initial engagement, such as face-to-face edit-a-thons
• allowing for flexibility with regards to many community rules, noting that some rules may disproportionately affect marginalized groups
• emphasizing a personal profile or identity for each user, so that other users recognize that these contributions were made by a real human being and not an anonymous internet entity
• adding friction into certain workflows, such as at the moment of publication of a post or comment, to discourage negative behaviors and remind the user that there is a real human being at the other end of the exchange
• making community rules more visible at the appropriate steps in the sharing process, so users are more likely to respond and adhere to them

Part 3 – What can we do?

In part 3, we discussed the importance of designing for good actors. Despite the examples of negative behaviors, the platforms in the room noted that the majority of CC uses have a positive outcome , and that people in content communities are passionate about Creative Commons as a symbol of certain values, and about sharing and remixing each others works. We shared positive examples that were completely community-driven, such as unexpected reuses of a particular 3D design that led to the creation of a prosthetic hand, and a sub-community of teachers that split off to bring 3D design to students in the classroom.

More importantly, we discussed what we could do next, together. Here is the short list of ideas that emerged in the last half hour of our discussion:

• Prosocial behavior toolkit for platforms, a “prosocial” version of the CC platform integration toolkit we created in year 1 of our new strategy
• Reinvesting in the tools that make it easier to comply with CC license conditions, e.g. one-click attribution in browsers, WordPress, and other platforms
• API partnerships that bring CC media into platforms more easily, e.g. Flickr + Medium or WordPress
• Supporting the good actors and amplifying their voices
• Explore areas like reputational algorithms, possibly community-driven, to discourage bad behaviors
• Explore the role of bots in trolling and antisocial behavior, and how that affects human behavior on a platform
• And more!

What’s next

Asking the simple question — How can we help people make the human connections that make sharing meaningful? — elicited exciting discussion and surfacing of issues we had not considered before this summit session. Informed by the overwhelming response and interest from our platform partners and community, we will forge ahead with the next phase of our platform work, focusing on collaboration, in addition to discovery.

As a next step, Creative Commons is launching an investigative series into what really makes online collaboration work. What does it take to build a vibrant sharing community, powered by collaboration and gratitude? What are the design factors (both social and technical) that help people make connections and build relationships? How do we then take these factors and infuse them into communities within the digital commons?

The series will include:

1. A series of face-to-face conversations on how to build prosocial online communities with CC platforms, creators, and researchers. To kick off the series, we are hosting a private event in San Francisco this June; stay tuned for public follow-on events in the series in a city near you!
2. Research and storytelling of collaboration as it occurs over time through interviews and thought pieces.
3. A prosocial platform toolkit that distills all of the applicable design factors into one comprehensive guide.
4. Reporting of the most impactful stories in the next State of the Commons.

If any of this of interest to you, join the conversation on Slack.

If you would like to be invited to a future event, sign up for our events list.

The post Toward a Better Internet: Building Prosocial Behavior into the Commons appeared first on Creative Commons.

For the first time, the CC movement has completed a comprehensive and collaborative effort to renew and grow its network, finalized at the recent Global Summit in Toronto. It’s important to acknowledge the hard work of all the people involved from the beginning, which included research (the Faces of the Commons is a 300 page multi region report with recommendations and insights), an open consultation with the broad CC community including Affiliates, partners, funders, and the CC Board, and 22 online and in-person meetings and more than the eighty percent of the active members of the network involved. This bottom-up process included discussions, proposals and specific edits and changes, reflecting the dynamic global community we have built together around Creative Commons during all this years. We all should be proud of all this process.

This new Strategy has a lot of benefits:

1. Global collaboration. Connected with the work of the Platforms, communities will work together to set priorities, goals, objectives and strategies.
2. Resilience. The previous model for Affiliate involvement was focused on institutional relationships. Today, we are focusing on individuals and supporting organizations instead. We are providing a path to create a network of trust and real collaboration for the future.
3. Growth and inclusion. The new strategy is meant to include new and diverse global voices in the conversation and to provide more capacity and agency for teams working locally. We are creating a strategy focused on supporting and activating people.
4. Shared decision-making, goal-setting, structure for collaboration. The new strategy creates new governance bodies to provide space for the community to identify priorities for the global work. This is a first for CC: the network takes care of the network.
5. Resource allocation. The strategy creates two funds specifically focused on the network to support community activities, actual project work and identified movement priorities.

It has been a long road, but now the strategy work is complete. For the transition period, we are planning to focus on Country Teams, Platforms and Governance.

Chapters (formerly Country teams). The local work is key for the new Network Strategy. To coordinate this efforts we will trust in Chapters as units for the governance and to coordinate local work. After concerns from several affiliate teams, we’ve decided to use Chapters instead of a reference of a “country” or “nation”. However, it will be those borders that we use to organize each team (with some exceptions, for example in Mainland China and Taiwan). These Chapters are made up of people, with individuals whose work is focused on the place where they live, have accepted the Creative Commons Charter and have been vouched by two actual members. The membership recruiting process is starting in the coming weeks. More details of this process will be published very soon.

We expect Country Teams to have their first team meeting no later than January 2018, primarily to appoint a coordinator (which will be the main point of contact for the movement), elect a representative to send to the Global Network Council, and draft a plan of work for the rest of the year.

Platforms. Platforms are areas of work, a collaborative space for individuals and institutions to organize and coordinate themselves across the broad network. Platforms will be the way we will create and communicate spaces of strategic collaboration to have worldwide impact. They will be the way our network will work collaboratively.

The conversation on platforms started at the Global Summit. So far, community members have organized around:

• Copyright Reform Platform
• Open Education Platform
• Open GLAM Platform
• Community development Platform

You can learn more about it and how to get involved and participate on our wiki and directly on Slack.

There may be more platforms in the future, but during this transition period -before the new Governance structure is set up by the next Global Summit on 2018- the work of the platforms will be oriented to fill a specific need and requirement from the network on each area, being particular activities, documentation or products.

These platforms will set specific priorities and plan of work in the coming months, to develop their plan of work until next Global Summit on 2018.

Governance. The main governance body for the new Strategy is the Global Network Council, and it’s important to us to focus on establishing the new Country Teams (or Chapters) as soon as we can, and to make that happen we will be opening the membership process in the coming weeks for anyone to join. For the transition period, during the coming days there will be an open call to constitute an Advisory Committee, to advise on this transition and provide support to the Country Teams, with global and diverse representation.

 

The post Network Strategy: What’s next appeared first on Creative Commons.

Without a refocus on user rights, transparency, and meaningful public input, the agreement will become a bonanza for copyright maximalists

This week Creative Commons submitted comments to the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) regarding negotiating objectives for the modernization of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

NAFTA is the controversial trade pact between Canada, Mexico, and the United States that went into effect in 1994. It aims to eliminate barriers to trade and investment in a variety of sectors including goods and textiles, agricultural products, and petrochemicals. NAFTA also attempts to protect intellectual property by including provisions to enforce copyrights, trademarks, patents, and similar rights. The Trump administration has officially notified Congress of its intent to negotiate changes to the agreement. Last month USTR opened a formal request for comments regarding the objectives for updating NAFTA.

Copyright is global, and held by nearly every single person in the world, enabled by today’s online services and the ubiquity of technology to create new works. With that in mind, copyright laws rightly belong in international agreements, negotiated and debated in public fora, and should consider everyday citizens’ needs and uses along with those of industry and professional creators. Still, governments never seem to miss an opportunity to add additional terms to individual side agreements, ratcheting up restrictions and making a confusing, secretive mess for users.

We urged USTR to ensure that the copyright provisions in NAFTA should not be expanded to create new (and likely more onerous) rules than those that already exist in the agreement. If the copyright provisions must be reconsidered, a negotiating objective should at a minimum be to advocate for stronger protections for copyright limitations and exceptions; user rights should be granted a mandatory and enforceable standing alongside the rights of authors. In addition, the negotiations should be made through procedures that are transparent to the public and which include all stakeholders, especially the public.

Copyright

NAFTA uses as its baseline existing and widely agreed upon international copyright treaties, which already contain extensive requirements that ensure the protection and enforcement of copyright and related rights. Therefore, the NAFTA copyright provisions should not be expanded to create new rules than those that already exist in the agreement. The recent negotiation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) showed that when intellectual property is put on the table, there’s a significant push to drastically increase enforcement measures for rights holders, lengthen copyright terms, and demand harsh infringement penalties. 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. While the demands of rights holders are addressed, there’s little consideration given to the rights of the public. Limitations and exceptions to copyright are downplayed, or not present at all.

It’s crucial that these rights be recognized and protected, as digital technology and the web has turned everyone with a digital footprint into a copyright user (and content creator) on a daily basis. Protecting and promoting these user rights support not only freedom of speech and access to information, but also educational activities, creative remix, and innovation. Re-negotiating the NAFTA provisions having to do with copyright would do more harm than good if there’s not a significant shift in the balance in favor of the rights for users and the public to reflect the reality of today’s digital users. If the copyright provisions will be reconsidered, a negotiating objective should be to advocate for stronger protections for copyright limitations and exceptions, and to endorse the expansion of a flexible exception such as fair use. User rights should be recognized as a legitimate and productive aspect of the copyright environment, and granted a mandatory and enforceable standing alongside the rights of authors.

Transparency and public participation in negotiations

It’s imperative that NAFTA negotiations be transparent and participatory. The secrecy demonstrated in the recent negotiation of the TPP left civil society organizations like Creative Commons and the broader public at an extreme disadvantage, as only a privileged few stakeholders invited into the closed negotiation circle have had their interests fully considered.

The NAFTA 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. We agree with the specific and actionable recommendations put forward by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and OpenTheGovernment.org to improve the transparency of U.S. trade negotiations and their accessibility to a diverse range of stakeholders. These recommendations urge USTR to:

1. Publish U.S. textual proposals on rules in ongoing international trade negotiations
2. Publish consolidated texts after each round of ongoing negotiations
3. Appoint a “transparency officer” who does not have structural conflicts of interest in promoting transparency at the agency
4. Open up textual proposals to a notice and comment and public hearing process
5. Make Trade Advisory Committees more broadly inclusive

Now USTR will evaluate the extensive feedback on NAFTA negotiating objectives (over 12,000 comments have been submitted). Canada has already opened a similar public consultation, and it’s expected that Mexico will do the same. It’s a fair question whether these sweeping agreements can actually promote trade and economic activity that is beneficial to a majority of citizens as opposed to a few powerful multinational corporations. But assuming we’re going down this path again, it’s important that negotiators rethink the copyright provisions to protect users and the public good. And it’s absolutely crucial that negotiators lift the un-democratic and counterproductive secrecy that has pervaded most of the recent discussions.

The post Is Re-negotiating NAFTA Opening Pandora’s Box? appeared first on Creative Commons.

Inspired by the Awesome Fund, we are excited to announce the Community Activities Fund as part of our ongoing efforts to support the activities of CC communities and beyond. Through this fund, and in conjunction with the Global Network Strategy, Creative Commons is taking a leap towards a truly open and collaborative community of individuals and organizations committed to building and fostering a vibrant global commons.

The Community Activities Fund is a mini-grant program aimed at supporting individuals and communities pursuing activities aligned with the network values and principles stated on the new Creative Commons Global Network Strategy. These grants are meant to provide quick, practical-level support for activities, projects, and events done by supporters and advocates of Creative Commons – from kickstarting projects, facilitating travel and mentorships, to supporting the organization of CC-themed events around the globe.

We’re looking to help fund salons, campaigns, translations, e-books, printing, collaborations, and more. Need the funds for something small and impactful? This fund is for you.

Basic information about the Fund:

1. Anyone can apply. We’d love to support projects from any individuals, teams, or organizations advancing the mission and work of CC.
2. There’s a maximum amount, not minimum. The maximum amount that one can request per project is USD 1000. There is no minimum.
3. Light and fast procedure. The applications will be reviewed weekly and feedback relayed within 2 weeks of application.
4. Language. Applications can be sent in English, Spanish, French or Arabic.
5. Criteria. We support projects that help grow the global commons and foster the benefits of openness around the world at the local level. This fund is aimed to support efforts at country, city or community level to advance into the Creative Commons mission, providing support for activities.

Application and reporting process
To apply, please fill out this application form. You will receive feedback within 2 weeks of your application.
The reporting process is important, but we are keeping it lightweight – all we ask for are a brief narrative report and the minimum requirement of making your project outputs available under CC BY.
If you have any questions or clarification requests, please email Simeon Oriko, CC Network Manager, at network@creativecommons.org or do it in our #general channel at the CC Slack. You can also post on the #creativecommons IRC channel, just connect via Freenode.

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