Brigitte Vézina, the Director of Policy and Open Culture, has facilitated the CC Copyright Platform for the past three years since the Platform’s relaunch in 2020. This year, the CC legal team—Kat Walsh and Yuanxiao Xu—is taking over the facilitator role for the Copyright Platform.
The Creative Commons Copyright Platform is a collaborative space for people who are interested in copyright policy issues. We work in a transparent, professional, ethical and public manner to undertake projects and activities aimed at fulfilling agreed-upon, collaboratively developed goals and principles.
In 2023, we have a fund of $20,000 to support copyright advocates and practitioners to identify, plan and coordinate copyright law and policy-related activities. We are especially excited about receiving community proposals for funded-activities this year, because it is the first year since 2020 that we are able to support in-person activities. To submit a proposal, please request to join the CC Policy Mailing List, and fill out the proposal form by March 20.
In addition to the funded activities, the Copyright Platform hosts monthly meetings where guest speakers are invited to lead discussions on topics of interest, and Platform members share copyright-related news/announcements from across the globe.
“Open Culture gives joy!” What a great message from Siobhan. In this episode we learn about Open Culture in public institutions in New Zealand, how public works are reused in a variety of ways, and what governments can do to promote open policies and copyright laws around the world.
Open Culture VOICES is a series of short videos that highlight the benefits and barriers of open culture as well as inspiration and advice on the subject of opening up cultural heritage. Siobhan is a volunteer for various Wikimedia projects including Wikicommons, Wikidata, and Wikipedia.
Siobhan responds to the following questions:
What are the main benefits of open GLAM?
What are the barriers?
Could you share something someone else told you that opened up your eyes and mind about open GLAM?
Do you have a personal message to those hesitating to open up collections?
Closed captions are available for this video, you can turn them on by clicking the CC icon at the bottom of the video. A red line will appear under the icon when closed captions have been enabled. Closed captions may be affected by Internet connectivity — if you experience a lag, we recommend watching the videos directly on YouTube.
Open Education Week offers a global festival of open education efforts. As we take stock of the offerings, it’s heartening to look at how individual efforts can feed into larger system’s change. In our Open Education Week 2023 blog post, we highlight community members’ approaches and tools, opening access to education and knowledge. Below, we share how a recent CC Certificate Bootcamp strengthens open education in California Community Colleges.
This January, Creative Commons led a CC Certificate Bootcamp, or condensed training for 12 faculty and staff from 11 California Community Colleges implementing Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) degree programs. Building on a successful pilot ZTC Pathways program, the California Legislator invested $115 million to expand Zero Textbook Cost degrees and OER within the California community college system. The California ZTC programs reduce the overall cost of education and reduce the time to degree completion for California community college students. With the average costs of course textbooks estimated at $100/student/course, ZTC programs have the potential to save students nearly a billion dollars in the coming years, offering a more than 800% return on investment, according to SPARC.
The CC Certificate Bootcamp provided needed training and tools for ZTC program staff to legally and effectively implement the open licensing requirements of the $115 investment.
But, beyond open licensing lessons, the CC training strengthened a network of open advocates. The week offered engagement with copyright lawyers, and open advocates, space for collaborative brainstorming, play, and iterative problem solving. From participant-focused brainstorms emerged three clear interventions to address needs in the ZTC program development and expansion. Participant work kickstarted (1) a guide to support faculty in using and integrating LibreTexts OER in Canvas; (2) a ZTC Conversion Faculty Resource guide, sharing resources for both OER liaisons and interested faculty supporting the process of ZTC course development; and (3) the outline of wholistic considerations and needs for roadmapping ZTC programs efficiently and effectively, as the Michelson 20MM Foundation highlighted. In less than two months since the bootcamp, faculty and staff have continued to collaborate and champion for OER in their institutions, by:
Presenting Creative Commons License tutorials, as well as additional needs for adjacent networks, at professional development days, to the Academic Senate and Deans of various departments;
Planning OER conferences;
Launching a survey for the ZTC program;
Setting up mapping to the degrees in smartsheets, which can pull survey data to courses and identify what courses have been converted to ZTCs;
Sharing a guide about what the ZTC funding (with legislation definitions, how is the funding working and more)
CC Bootcamp collaborations moved beyond the initial goals of supporting cost savings for students–faculty and staff worked toward interventions addressing barriers to teaching and learning in their systems. As Cailyn Nagle notes, OERare worth more than their cost savings. “They have the power to free, to be liberatory. When educators are able to craft the ideal materials their students can use without barriers, and librarians are able to curate that knowledge for everyone’s benefit, we come closer to the promise of Open.” We applaud California Community Colleges increased collaborative work–strengthening a foundation for that freedom.
As we revel in the offerings of Open Education Week and our collaborations, I hope we can draw from the energy of California Community Colleges’ faculty and staff, striving toward increasingly liberatory structures in the future.
At Creative Commons, we offer an array of learning and training opportunities to support our global community in developing open licensing expertise and a deeper understanding of recommended practices for better sharing. Visit the CC Trainings page to learn about our workshops, consulting options, lectures, and our CC Certificate courses.
Over the last year, innovation and use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has proliferated, providing new ways for people to create content from art to zines, and everything in between. At CC, we’ve been watching these experiments in creativity while considering what it all means for what we call better sharing: sharing that is contextual, inclusive, just, equitable, reciprocal, and sustainable. What will generative AI mean for CC’s mission to overcome legal obstacles in sharing knowledge and creativity to address the world’s most pressing challenges?
Like the rest of the world, CC has been watching generative AI and trying to understand the many complex issues raised by these amazing new tools. We are especially focused on the intersection of copyright law and generative AI. How can CC’s strategy for better sharing support the development of this technology while also respecting the work of human creators? How can we ensure AI operates in a better internet for everyone? We are exploring these issues in a series of blog posts by the CC team and invited guests that look at concerns related to AI inputs (training data), AI outputs (works created by AI tools), and the ways that people use AI. Read our overview on generative AI or see all our posts on AI.
Supporting community-driven solutions has always been at the heart of CC’s approach to sharing and creativity. In February, we held open meetings with our community to start to explore what CC might do new or differently in a world filling with AI-generated creations. Over 65 people registered to participate in the conversation from all over the world, including artists, educators, lawyers, librarians, policymakers, scholars, scientists, students, technologists, and more.
To get the conversation started, we asked participants to consider some framing questions:
How can CC and its community help to ensure AI participates in better sharing for all and contributes to a public interest commons?
How can CC best enable creators to shape how their works contribute to training AI?
How can CC clarify the copyright status of works generated using AI?
The conversations were wide ranging, touching on some of the specifics of how generative AI actually works, how current copyright laws intersect with AI inputs and outputs, and ideas around where CC and our community might focus, including expanding CC’s educational offerings and policy advocacy on AI topics, mechanisms for rightsholders to opt in and/or out of AI training datasets, and mechanisms to better record and cite the provenance of works generated both by humans and AI. You can read and comment on the raw notes from all three community meetings.
Going forward, CC will house community conversation about generative AI within our Copyright Platform, where you can learn more about how anyone can join and contribute to work at the intersection of generative AI, better sharing, and CC’s mission.
We thank everyone who has contributed to the discussion so far, not only in these meetings, but in the AI webinars we held during Nov 2022, and all the other ways we’ve been in touch. We encourage you to keep helping us think through the complex questions that AI technologies and practices raise for all of us who are working to support a commons in the public interest.
Angie shares that “…if memory does not pass from one person to another then it is forgotten.” In this episode we learn about the unique barriers faced by institutions and organizations in an Argentinian and South American context as well as the unique ways Wikimedia Argentina supports efforts to open up collections of cultural heritage and memory.
Open Culture VOICES is a series of short videos that highlight the benefits and barriers of open culture as well as inspiration and advice on the subject of opening up cultural heritage. Angie Cervellera is the Program Manager of Open Culture and Knowledge at Wikimedia Argentina and works with local organizations and institutions to open up collections.
Angie responds to the following questions:
What are the main benefits of open GLAM?
What are the barriers?
Could you share something someone else told you that opened up your eyes and mind about open GLAM?
Do you have a personal message to those hesitating to open up collections?
Closed captions are available for this video, you can turn them on by clicking the CC icon at the bottom of the video. A red line will appear under the icon when closed captions have been enabled. Closed captions may be affected by Internet connectivity — if you experience a lag, we recommend watching the videos directly on YouTube.
