Update: Shortly after publishing this post, we received word that Judge Hurley today has granted defendant FedEx Office’s motion to dismiss. You can read the order here [pdf]. This is the very result CC advocated for in its motion for leave to file an amicus brief,and we’re delighted with the outcome, the ruling, and the court’s analysis. The court found on the facts as presented by Great Minds, FedEx’s copying is permitted by the “unambiguous” terms of BY-NC-SA. Look for an in-depth post on the decision and its implications for users of the NC licenses and users of NC-licensed works next week.

Earlier this week, Judge Hurley issued an order denying our motion for leave to file an amicus brief at this stage in the litigation between Great Minds and FedEx Office. The central question in that case turns on the proper interpretation of the CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (BY-NC-SA). In our motion, we sought permission to file a brief in support of FedEx Office and to assist the court in its interpretation of the license. As detailed in the motion, we believe it’s clear based on the facts alleged that the conduct engaged in by FedEx Office when it copied educational materials at the direction of school districts, whose use everyone agrees is non commercial, is not a violation of the license. You can read our rationale for this interpretation in our earlier blog post and in our motion [PDF] seeking permission to file an amicus brief, and learn why we’re fighting to protect non commercial uses here.

We’ll be monitoring the litigation for an update on the pending motion by FedEx Office to dismiss the case. We look forward to seeing how the court resolves the issue consistent with its order, and look forward to participating in the litigation if our assistance is needed at a later stage.

A special thanks to Andy Gass and Jonathan Ellis, our pro bono counsel at Latham & Watkins, for their assistance with the motion and amicus brief.

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Via a milestone translation effort, we are happy to announce the official translation of the Creative Commons 4.0 licenses into Arabic. An estimated 420 million people around the world speak Arabic, the sixth most spoken language in the world, making this translation effort the most far-reaching to date.

The Arabic translation is the result of an unprecedented collaboration among more than a dozen translation and technical team members from nine Arab countries. The translation team consulted with members of the CC community in the Arab world to achieve consensus on technical and legal terms. An online public consultation was conducted from July 12-21, 2016, following a face-to-face working session in Istanbul among several of the team leaders. The public consultation resulted in contributions by lawyers, active license users, linguists, translators, librarians, and representatives of cultural heritage institutions. Blogs, social media and a mailing list were used to inform the translation process. The Arabic translation was funded in part with the generous support of the Ford Foundation and Wikimedia Foundation.

Special congratulations go to Riyadh Al Balushi, Hala Essalmawi, Sadeek Hasna, Pierre el Khoury, and Mohammad el-Said for leading this multi-year effort, together with the terrific support of former CC regional coordinator Naeema Zarif.

The Croatian translation is also notable and expected to have significant impact. While using standard Croatian legal terminology, the translation will not only benefit Croatian speakers, but also speakers of affiliated languages across the Southeast Europe. The CC licenses are used by a range of Croatian-language users, from Wikipedia, various online news outlets, political parties, open access repositories, down to individual creators and users of free cultural works.

The public consultation process took place from January through June 2016. The translation team reached out especially to the IP lawyers, professional translators and the Wikipedia community during the consultation process. Special thanks are due to Tomislav Medak, Marcell Mars and Diana Kovačević Remenarić. We want to also thank to Nena Antić from CC Serbia and Ante Jerić for their invaluable help and comments, as well as former CC regional coordinators John Weitzmann and Gwen Franck for supporting the translation.

Please visit our wiki for more details about these new translations. Congratulations to the teams on their work!

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The current dominant public policy discourse on the internet and human rights addresses the importance of the these new technologies to empower civil liberties. There is no better example of this than freedom of speech, traditionally mediated by power structures that do not allow it to flourish. Another important stream of this discourse hinges on the security and surveillance debate – massive surveillance through technology due to security needs is one of the most serious challenges we are facing today in the field.

In spite, or perhaps because of this, there is less attention paid to the way those technologies affect or enhance economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR). Being seen as second class rights (or even third class, in some cases), there is a need to start talking about the importance of them to dramatically improve the live conditions of the least advantaged groups within our societies, both in terms of access to infrastructure, educational resources, access to health care, to work conditions, between others.

Such is the frame of the GISWatch report (Global Information Society Watch) of 2016. The aim of the report is cover to state of the information society from a civil society perspective worldwide. It was been published since 2006 as a collective effort of activists, scholars and academics leaded by the Association for Progressive Communications, and the 2016 report is just about internet and economic, social and cultural rights.

The 2016 report includes the work of several people within the Creative Commons global community trying to address issues related with trade agreements and ESCR, the right to educational resources and the internet, and the digital protection of traditional knowledge. This report is a key document to better understand the connections between technological advances and social empowering of human rights, particularly where access to knowledge and cultural resources is a key element.

The report is CC BY licensed as well!

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During Fair Use Week organizations and individuals are publishing blog posts, hosting workshops, and sharing educational resources about the implementation and importance of this essential limitation to the rights endowed by copyright. Fair use (and in other countries, the related “fair dealing”) is a flexible legal tool that permits some uses of copyrighted material without permission from the original rights holder, such as for use in news reporting, criticism, teaching, and other reasons.

Fair use and fair dealing are both a part of the larger constellation of limitations and exceptions to copyright. These limitations are a necessary check on the exclusive rights granted to copyright holders, and it’s important to expand and strengthen limitations and exceptions through fundamental copyright reform in order to protect the rights of the public in accessing and using creativity and culture.

We continue to support ongoing efforts to reform copyright law to strengthen users’ rights and expand the public domain. Last year the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, introduced its proposal for a Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market. We’ve been working with Communia and other organisations to support positive changes to the EU copyright regulation, especially in promoting limitations and exceptions to the copyright rules that benefit users’ rights and the public interest.

How well does the Commission’s proposal balance the rights of content creators with the rights of the public? The answer: poorly. There are well-intentioned but flawed proposals for exceptions on digital education and text and data mining. Now the relevant committees are providing feedback and amendments to the original proposal, and the Committee on Culture and Education might be listening to the suggestions from civil society organisations. Its draft opinion suggests the introduction of additional exceptions for User-Generated Content, and Freedom of Panorama. These could help correct some of the imbalance in the Commission’s plan.

But perhaps the most troubling aspect of the proposal is Article 13, the section of the Commission’s legislation that would set up a preemptive copyright filtering mechanism for user contributed content. The Commission proposes that information society service providers (ISSP) that store and give access to copyrighted materials that their users upload must take specific measures to ensure that these materials do not contain other rightsholders’ works. In other words, ISSPs will need to adopt technology that would effectively recognize and prevent uploads of any content that includes even fragments of videos, music, pictures, and any other type of work that belongs to someone other than the person sharing it.

The filter mechanism would apply to all user-uploaded content. It would operate blindly—which means it couldn’t tell the difference between a piece of content being shared improperly and a piece of content being shared under an existing exception to copyright. As Communia wrote last week, upload filters don’t—and can’t—respect user rights:

Upload filters cannot recognize existing freedoms such as the right of quotation or parody. The draft opinion ignores case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union that states that monitoring content is in breach with freedom of expression and privacy.

This type of “shoot first, ask questions later” filtering approach is detrimental to users and could lead to a chilling effect on those who would otherwise attempt to use copyrighted content under an exception to copyright. The Commission’s proposal and the draft opinion of the Committee on Culture and Education suggests that the responsibility should be on users to complain if their content is taken down. This is an unfair burden.

The collateral damage to user rights associated with filtering mechanisms is not a new problem. For years platforms such as YouTube have struggled with how to fulfill their legal obligations to remove protected content posted without the permission of the copyright holder, while at the same time attempting to take into consideration that some uses of works are made under fair use or another exception to copyright.

As we continue the fight for sensible copyright reform in Europe, we know that any EU legislative requirement aimed at addressing the unauthorized use of third-party content needs to fully respect the freedoms enshrined by exceptions and limitations to copyright.

The post Copyright Filtering Mechanisms Don’t (and can’t) Respect Fair Use appeared first on Creative Commons.

Yesterday, the European Space Agency announced an Open Access policy for images and data under a Creative Commons BY-SA license. ESA has made various moves toward making data and images more open in the past, but this announcement is a major milestone for the organization’s commitment to openness.

Previously, ESA released individual images under Creative Commons licenses, but this organizational shift marks a substantial change in the way that ESA shares with the world. The choice of CC BY-SA clears ESA’s content for use in larger repositories like Wikipedia (and Wikimedia Commons), as well as by any individual member of the public. It also reaffirms the organization’s commitment to widely sharing open data and imagery across the web.

“This evolution in opening access to ESA’s images, information, and knowledge is an important element of our goal to inform, innovate, interact, and inspire in the Space 4.0 landscape,” said ESA Director General Jan Woerner in the organization’s announcement about the new policy.

Because many ESA images are created in collaboration with partners, this first release under CC BY-SA is limited to content that is completely owned by ESA (or for which any third-party rights have been cleared). The organization plans to release other sets of images under CC BY-SA in future phases of this new Open Access project.

The full repository includes the Rosetta images, “Sounds from Space,” Earth Observations from the agency, Hubble images and video, and the Planetary Science Data Archive.

Ground Control to the ESA, you’ve really made the grade! Check out the entire archive.

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