This post was written by Natalia Mileszyk and Lisette Kalshoven of COMMUNIA.

---

Photo by Saša Krajnc, CC BY 4.0.

Last week at the Creative Commons Europe Meeting in Lisbon, COMMUNIA organised a “School of Rock(ing) Copyright” workshop. Creative Commons affiliates from Poland, the Netherlands, and Portugal joined efforts in sharing knowledge about the current European copyright reform. We examined the political process for updating the copyright rules, and asked for help from other CC Europe affiliates in advocating for positive copyright changes. We were pleased to have around 15 participants from as many EU countries attend the session. Since we’re at a crucial stage within the European legislative process, we were eager to discuss the ins and outs on how we can create a better copyright for Europe.

Why does the CC community care about copyright reform? We all stand for creativity, innovation, access to knowledge, and development. Copyright can both boost or limit these goals, so we are actively involved to make progressive changes to copyright to benefit users, education, and the commons.

What we presented at the workshop

At the ‘school’ we focused on four different areas that people need to know about when engaging in advocacy for copyright reform in Europe. First, we provided a quick overview on ‘Brussels’ and how the different institutions such as the European Commission and Parliament interact. Second, we explained how the legislative process works. The Commission proposal is out, but it’s far from the end of the process! Third, we shared tactics and tips for getting involved in advocacy activities. These often seem obvious, but are very important when interacting with politicians. For example: never ask for anything people can’t give you, and come to the table with clear, concise suggestions. Few politicians have the time to read a 200 page research report, no matter how riveting we think it is! The fourth and last part of our workshop dug into a few key topics within the current copyright reform proposal, including areas such as cultural heritage, education, and research.

Photo by Saša Krajnc, CC BY 4.0.

What’s in Commission’s proposed Directive on copyright?

You can read the entire proposal here, and read COMMUNIA’s high level analysis about it here.

In short, the Commission’s copyright proposal fails to meet the needs of citizens, educators, and researchers across Europe. Instead of strengthening the information economy, the proposal preserves a status quo defined in the analog age. In the process, it hinders education, research, and cultural expression.

The Commission’s proposal focuses on a wholly different goal: to minimize the impact of the fundamental changes brought about by digital technologies and the internet on legacy business models. Publishers get an ancillary copyright that already has proven itself worthless in practice. Access to most audio-visual content will continue to be hampered by geo-blocking (which the Commission had earlier committed to end), and online platforms might be forced to collaborate with rights holders on censoring content that is shared by users on these platforms. The whole package lacks forward-looking, innovation-friendly measures that embrace digitization as an opportunity for users, creators, businesses, and public institutions in Europe.

During our workshop, we explored three aspects of the proposal in greater detail: 1) text and data mining (with a limited exception that limits research to official institutions), 2) cultural heritage (which does not solve the problem heritage institutions have with making their collections available online), and 3) education (where the proposal overcomplicates the situation, making it even harder for teachers to focus on providing excellent education.

We need more advocates to push for positive change

Creative Commons is committed to advocating for a better copyright across the globe, including Europe. Several affiliates at the School of Rock(ing) Copyright event stepped forward to help advocate for positive change. We need to engage in a variety of tactics, including educating MEPs about what’s at stake, responding to consultations on the copyright reform, and organising events and actions to raise public awareness. We look forward to collaborating even more with our fellow affiliates to make sure we get a copyright reform for Europe that’s fit for the digital age.

What you can do now!

1. Keep up-to-date with the European Copyright Reform process. Follow along with the COMMUNIA blog and twitter, and CC blog and twitter.
2. Take part in the national consultations now being held in many Member States. Check to see the consultation deadline of your national ministry responsible for copyright. Do your best to motivate other organisations to take part in the consultation.
3. Talk to your representatives within your national government, your European Parliament Representatives, and fellow advocates at other organisations. And remember, the most important is to make your voice heard about why this matters to you.
4. Share information with others. Let’s keep each other in the loop about our advocacy activities, meetings, and best arguments. You can also become a member of COMMUNIA (highly recommended!) Let us know.
5. Engage with your local communities. Inform your friends and social groups about what’s at stake. Organise debate nights, salons, and share interesting resources.
6. Think about how you want to engage: for the topics that you love, create a factsheet, organise a meeting, write happy (or angry) tweets to Commissioners.

Making your voice heard is fundamental, the way you do it is up to you. Let us know how we can help!

The post ‘School of Rock(ing) Copyright’ at the CC Europe meeting appeared first on Creative Commons.

Photo by Maarten van den Heuvel on Unsplash, CC0.

Last month the United Nations released a report with recommendations on how to improve innovation and access to health technologies. The panel’s charge called for it to “recommend solutions for remedying the policy incoherence between the justifiable rights of inventors, international human rights law, trade rules and public health in the context of health technologies.”

Of particular interest are the panel’s suggestions for managing intellectual property generated from publicly-funded research. From the report:

Limiting access to academic discoveries can obstruct follow-on innovation and force taxpayers to pay twice for the benefits of publicly-funded research. Strong, enforceable policies on data sharing and data access should be a condition of public grants.

Public funders of research must require that knowledge generated from such research be made freely and widely available through publication in peer-reviewed literature and seek broad, online public access to such research.

Universities and research institutions that receive public funding should adopt policies and approaches that catalyse innovation and create flexible models of collaboration that advance biomedical research and generate knowledge for the benefit of the public.

The recommendations clearly urge funders and universities to implement policies that ensure broad access to research publications and data produced through public grant monies. The policies should include provisions that clearly communicate liberal re-use rights to publications and data (for example by requiring CC BY for published articles and CC0 for datasets). It’s also crucial for the policies to address deposit and hosting options, training for grantees and program officers, and compliance requirements.

One aim of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals is “to achieve universal health coverage and provide access to safe and affordable medicines and vaccines for all.” Improving access to and re-use of publicly-funded scientific and medical research is an important step toward realizing this global goal.

The post United Nations Report Calls for Open Access to Research to Improve Global Health appeared first on Creative Commons.

18FDG Synthesis by Brookhaven National Laboratory, BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Vice President Biden is leading the National Cancer Moonshot Initiative, which seeks to make ten years’ worth of progress on cancer research in half that time. We think an important part to finding cures is changing policy to improve access to cancer research.

Our recommendations include:

1. Make open access the default for cancer research articles and data. All government-funded cancer research articles should be fully open and reusable, which means they must be published under an open license such as CC BY. Datasets should be shared in the public domain under CC0.
2. Take embargo periods on research articles and data to zero. All government-funded research articles and data should be made available
   immediately upon publication.
3. Build and reward a culture of sharing and collaboration. Agencies funding cancer research should incentivize researchers to share their data and articles widely by actively rewarding this behavior in their promotion and funding processes.
4. Share cancer education and training materials as open educational resources. Beyond research and data, there’s a huge opportunity to provide access to the best, most up-to-date, most effective cancer education resources for teaching and training medical professionals, developed in a collaborative environment.

After collecting feedback from the public about actions that would speed up the probability of discovery for new cancer treatments and cures, the Blue Ribbon Panel presented its report to the Moonshot team in September. It offers 10 recommendations for accelerating progress against cancer. The suggestions are quite diverse and expansive, including building a national cancer data ecosystem, intensifying research on the major drivers of childhood cancers, and developing new cancer technologies.

The Cancer Moonshot Initiative is now well-positioned to offer strong recommendations for progressive policy changes that will ensure that researchers have broad, open access to publicly-funded cancer research, datasets, and tools.

Creative Commons has committed to provide open educational resources and tools that will support researchers, funders, medical professionals, professors, and patients as they build open and collaborative communities for cancer research. We will engage, educate, and support federal departments and agencies, cancer research centers, universities, nonprofits, and foundations that fund cancer research to adopt and implement open policies that require knowledge to be openly licensed and freely-available without restrictions or embargoes.

Congratulations to the Blue Ribbon Panel for pushing this important work ahead. Now it’s up to the Moonshot team to show its commitment to supporting innovative practices, projects, and policies that will lead to improved cancer treatments, and eventual cures.

The post Cancer Moonshot Should Prioritize Open Access to Publicly-funded Research appeared first on Creative Commons.

Since 2014, CC has published an annual State of the Commons report that tracks the growth of CC-licensed content on the web. Last year, we reported a milestone of 1 billion CC-licensed works in the commons. This year, we are shifting our reporting focus to align with our new strategy.

Quantitatively, we will still report on growth of CC-licensed content for year-over-year comparisons. Qualitatively, we want to offer a meaningful reflection of the year by providing short, digestible impact stories tied to real creators around the world working in various mediums and domains to surface vibrancy and usability of the commons and its contributors.

This is where you, our community, comes in. We are opening a public call for submissions of commons content, its creators, and the creative uses that have resulted.

The submission form is below and asks for the relevant details we need to start visualizing an impactful statistic tied to real use. Strong submissions include all three features of the Creative Commons story: 1) the creator/entity and the choice to openly license, 2) the user and the act of adapting and remixing, and 3) the resulting positive impact for a broader public.

The deadline for initial submissions is the end of the month: 31 October. We’ll be shaping the best submissions with their contributors in November.

Please submit your idea below.

---

<script type='text/javascript'> if(typeof gf_global == 'undefined') var gf_global = {"gf_currency_config":{"name":"U.S. Dollar","symbol_left":"$","symbol_right":"","symbol_padding":"","thousand_separator":",","decimal_separator":".","decimals":2},"base_url":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/wp-content\/plugins\/gravityforms","number_formats":[],"spinnerUrl":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/wp-content\/plugins\/gravityforms\/images\/spinner.gif"};jQuery(document).bind('gform_post_render', function(event, formId, currentPage){if(formId == 10) {if(typeof Placeholders != 'undefined'){ Placeholders.enable(); }} } );jQuery(document).bind('gform_post_conditional_logic', function(event, formId, fields, isInit){} );<script type='text/javascript'> jQuery(document).ready(function(){jQuery(document).trigger('gform_post_render', [10, 1]) } );

The post 2016 State of the Commons: Call for submissions appeared first on Creative Commons.

Braille soon coming to Visual Libraries Project by Claire Sambrook, CC BY-NC 2.0.

Today the Marrakesh Treaty—the international agreement to improve access to copyrighted works for the blind and visually impaired—goes into effect.

The treaty has been discussed at the World Intellectual Property Organization since 2008 and was signed in Marrakesh in June 2013.  It was finally ratified by the required 20 states , and today, three months later, it goes into effect.

Countries that have ratified the treaty must provide for a domestic copyright exception law that allows for the creation of accessible versions of books and other copyrighted works for visually impaired persons. In addition, the treaty permits the import and export of accessible versions of copyrighted works.

According to the World Blind Union, only 1-7% of the world’s books are ever made available in versions accessible to the visually impaired. Copyright law has contributed to this problem because the default rules typically prohibit such adaptations.

The implementation of the Marrakesh Treaty is a vital step to improve access to books and other copyrighted material for those who are blind, visually impaired, or otherwise print disabled. These protections are long overdue; the right to read should be guaranteed for everyone.

The post Securing the right to read for the visually impaired appeared first on Creative Commons.