The Free Music Archive, a long-running Creative Commons music platform, is running its first-ever fundraising drive. It will run from mid-November until mid-December 2015, and is offering donors shirts and stickers at various pledge levels. The Free Music Archive has existed for many years and has provided millions of users with curated, ‘some rights reserved’ audio tracks. Artists are recognizing the value of a progressive approach to distribution and licensing in the digital era, and the Free Music Archive seeks to promote their work with intent to support artists, and those who want to experience the Commons as it continues to grow.

The Free Music Archive began with a generous grant, and has been grant-supported in the past. This fundraising campaign is designed to engage its various communities: users, contributors, curators, artists, media producers, and more. The website has not seen significant changes since its launch, and is in need of upgrades to make it easier to use.

Specifically, FMA plans to make its in-page player more like other ubiquitous audio players, including scrub bars, waveform displays and volume control; to enhance search and allow users to browse by artists and albums, not just tracks; to support a wider variety of audio formats (the site currently only accepts MP3 files); and to release a new version of the FMA API for its dev community.

The money raised in this campaign will be used in hiring the Free Music Archive’s part-time developer on for a full-time year of work, in which time FMA will roll out these improvements. To donate, please visit www.freemusicarchive.org/donate.

The final text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was released earlier this month. The gigantic agreement contains sweeping provisions regarding environmental regulation, pharmaceutical procurement, intellectual property, labor standards, food safety, and many other things. If adopted, it would be the most sweeping expansion of international restrictions on copyright in over two decades. Over the last five years, the TPP has been developed and negotiated in secret. With the text now locked down, participating governments will decide whether to ratify it.

The TPP is a direct threat to the public interest and the commons. It downplays the importance of the public domain and exceptions and limitations, increases the term of copyright protection, and demands harsh infringement penalties.

The TPP must be rejected.

In our initial analysis, we examine several issues that would be detrimental to the public domain, creativity and sharing, and user rights in the digital age.

• 20-year copyright term extension is unnecessary and unwarranted: The agreement requires member nations to increase their term of copyright protection to life of the authors plus 70 years. Six of the twelve participating countries will have to increase their copyright terms 20 years past the baseline required by existing international treaties.

• The mention of the public domain is lip service, at best: Text has been removed which more actively supported the public domain as a key policy objective.

• Enforcement provisions are mandatory, while exceptions and limitations are optional: Instead of securing mandatory limitations and exceptions for uses of copyrighted works under TPP, all of the provisions that recognize the rights of the public are voluntary, whereas almost everything that benefits rightsholders is binding.

• Potentially drastic infringement penalties, even for non-commercial sharing: The agreement allows for infringement penalties that are disproportionate to harm, providing for the possibility of imprisonment and excessive monetary fines for lesser infringements.

• Criminal penalties for circumventing digital rights management on works: The agreement adopts a mechanism that would prohibit the circumvention of technological protection measures (DRM) on works, and treats this type of violation as a separate offense regardless of any copyright infringing activity on the underlying content.

• Investor-state dispute settlement mechanism may be leveraged for intellectual property claims: Copyrighted materials can be subject to the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism, meaning that a private company could bring a lawsuit against a TPP country if that country adopts a law that the company claims would harm its right to exploit its copyright interest.

Statement from Creative Commons on copyright-related aspects of the TPP

It’s been a very frightening evening and a sombre morning. We are all worried for our friends around the world who are at risk. Last night we saw the attacks in Paris in Beirut, but we also know that this kind of violence is sometimes a daily reality in countries around the world not so fortunate to even merit coverage by the mainstream media. That’s not meant to diminish the horror of what happened yesterday, but to acknowledge that we have friends everywhere who are at risk, and who may need our help.

As news of the Paris attacks was breaking, CC was publishing a post to bring attention to new rumours that our friend Bassel may have been sentenced to death in Syria, and to invite him to become a CC fellow — which only highlights for me that the world is a dangerous place, even for those who only wish to do good things.

Last night, as Parisians fled the attacks, the hashtag #PorteOuverte was being used for those who didn’t feel safe to go home. Strangers took each other in. Even in the face of evil and fear, people helped. The desire to take care of each other is so much more powerful than the urge to harm.

To all of you, take care of each other. My hope is that we will respond to hatred with love, and combat fear with openness.

Ryan Merkley
CEO, Creative Commons

Bassel Khartabil by Joi Ito, CC BY 2.0.

Bassel Khartabil is the lead of Creative Commons Syria. He’s been has been imprisoned in Syria since March 15, 2012. Bassel has been a key contributor to projects that digitize, preserve, and share cultural heritage works. The #NEWPALMYRA project was launched last month, which is an online community platform and data repository dedicated to the capture, preservation, sharing, and creative reuse of data about the ancient city of Palmyra. The project features 3-D models of ruins from Palmyra created by Bassel.

In recognition of this work, Creative Commons is offering Bassel a position as Digital Cultural Preservation Fellow. His numerous and impactful contributions to the open web and the commons has always inspired collaboration, community, and the sharing of culture and knowledge. As a Creative Commons Fellow, Bassel can continue the important work he started years ago.

The Creative Commons Board of Directors called for Bassel’s immediate and safe release in a resolution at its most recent meeting.

The stakes have been raised even higher for Bassel. In October we heard that Bassel had been transferred from Adra Prison to an unknown location, with no other information provided. Now, there’s even more dire news. Noura Ghazi Safadi, Bassel’s wife, wrote on Facebook yesterday that his life is in immediate danger. English translation from Arabic provided here:

I’ve just gotten disturbing and shocking news that Bassel has been sentenced to death. I think this means that the transfer to military prison was very dangerous. I really don’t know other news. May God help him, we hope it’s not too late. We are worried sick about his life.

The EFF published this call for Bassel’s release at the Internet Governance Forum in João Pessoa, Brazil:

The Internet community calls on the governments of the world to reach out to the Syrian authorities immediately and urge them to reveal Bassel’s condition and location to his family and legal representatives, and to exercise clemency in his case.

Bassel’s detention is arbitrary and in violation of international human rights law. The refusal of the authorities to reveal his whereabouts is an enforced disappearance. His prosecution do not meet the standards of a fair trial. Bassel can and should be unconditionally released to the care of his family.

Guest post by Fátima São Simão, CC Portugal Public Lead; Teresa Nobre, CC Portugal Legal Lead

CC Toolkit for Business Handouts
CC Toolkit for Business Posters
CC Toolkit for Business Videos (ENG + PT)
CC Open Business Model Canvas

At the 2013 CC Global Summit in Buenos Aires, Creative Commons launched the CC Toolkits Project, an initiative aimed at developing, collecting, and organizing informational and support resources about CC. As part of that project, CC Portugal proposed to develop a toolkit to help promote the use of CC licenses in business. And last month at the 2015 Global Summit in Seoul, we presented the first “tools” to be included in the business-focused toolkit, including a handout, poster, and short video.

We were particularly interested in developing this project for two main reasons:

• Portugal is a European country in a deep economic crisis for the last several years. Being a small economy (our population is about 10 million), its companies need as many resources as possible to gain and maintain their access to international markets.
• We are an economist and a lawyer with experience, respectively, in business development and legal consultancy for the creative industries.

We’re very thankful for the contributions and valuable input from Paul Stacey, Eric Steuer, Sarah Pearson, Ryan Merkley, John Weitzmann, and Gwen Franck.

Why a CC Toolkit for Business?

Even if the uses of CC seem relatively clear to artists and creators, the licenses have been more difficult to justify when the authors’ activities involve commercial interests. The main goal of the CC Toolkit for Business is to allow companies to understand why the use of CC licenses can be an interesting instrument to consider in their business model.

Why Use CC Licenses in Business?

As Paul Stacey puts it, Creative Commons licenses amplify the affordances of digital technology and provide an enhanced means for social production in the networked economy. CC licenses do this by:

• removing artificial scarcity constraints;
• removing barriers to access;
• enabling rapid distribution and use;
• allowing for customization, personalization, adaptation, translation, and localization;
• providing a means for mass participation: fellow creators, end users, customers, and partners can contribute their expertise, suggest improvements, add new features, make enhancements, create derivatives, and ensure currency;
• distributing production, and making it possible to produce work faster, generate work of greater breadth and depth, innovate, and increase quality; and
• creating materials that are part of a shared global commons from which resources can be extracted for local use and to which local resources can be contributed.

The 6 Economic Benefits Identified

The toolkit materials focus on the 6 economic benefits of using CC licenses that we have identified so far: 1) reduce production costs, 2) reduce transaction costs and legal uncertainty, 3) increase access to innovation and reduce marketing costs, 4) increase first mover advantage, 5) increase “opportunity benefits” and build a reputation, and 6) promote sustainability. We examine these benefit further in this document. They are a work in progress–we think there is still room for improvement and additional discussion. If you are interested on helping us continue developing these tools, please send us your feedback to creativecommons.pt@gmail.com.

What’s Next?

• The CC Toolkit for Business should also include practical tools (like the different open business model canvases CC has been developing), case studies from different sectors and countries, and a list of Frequently Asked Questions that will help to explain the pros and cons of CC licenses for business. CC Portugal will continue to work on developing the FAQ and other materials we find relevant to the project.
• Creative Commons will soon publish the book Made with Creative Commons: A book on Open Business Models, as the result of an extremely successful Kickstarter campaign.