Creative Commons (CC) applauds the landmark agreement reached late last week by EU legislators on the Digital Markets Act. Given the increasingly prominent role large ‘gatekeepers’ play in the daily lives of citizens and companies, CC believes it is important that a robust legislative and regulatory framework is in place to ensure a fair and competitive EU single digital market can flourish.

Reflecting on the trilogue deal, CC CEO Catherine Stihler stated,

“I am pleased to see the EU’s political leadership stepping up to some of the many challenges digitalization brings. Whilst acknowledging the many benefits for consumers and end-users of digital products and services, it is only right that legislators seek to ensure the right balance between enabling citizens and businesses to reap the benefits of technological innovation while also serving to protect from manifest unfair competitive advantages enjoyed by a small number of global players.”

CC particularly welcomes the focus in the agreement on interoperability – an essential feature to mitigate the barriers to sharing, enabling the free flow of information and helping advance innovation and access to knowledge. Keeping this element under regular review is also a sensible approach and will help to ensure that as markets evolve, the principle of the widest possible access and greatest sharing possibilities of information online is maintained for all.

CC was also pleased to see EU legislators were not persuaded by last-minute lobby attempts by press publishers to unpick some of the carefully crafted compromises reached in previous EU legislation.

Stihler stated, “I applaud the fact that the final text ensures the fairness obligation refers to ‘conditions of access’, but that there are no further references to ‘remuneration’ or ‘digital content.’”

CC supports fair, transparent and healthy market competition that generates and supports digital environments conducive to creativity and cultural diversity. We strongly believe the DMA is a step in the right direction in this respect and will help sharing of knowledge in the public interest in a way that protects people’s privacy rights and fundamental freedoms.

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Welcome to episode 16 of Open Culture VOICES! VOICES is a vlog series of short interviews with open GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) experts from around the world. The Open Culture Program at Creative Commons aims to promote better sharing of cultural heritage in GLAMs collections. With Open Culture VOICES, we’re thrilled to bring you various perspectives from dozens of experts speaking in many different languages on what it’s like to open up heritage content online. In this episode, Neal Stimler, President of Stimler Advantage and Consulting Executive Advisor at the Balboa Park Online Collaborative. With international experience at the intersections of business, culture, education, and technology, Neal brings critical thought leadership with market-driven insights and trends.

Neal responds to the following questions: 

1. What are the main benefits of open GLAM?
2. What are the barriers?
3. Could you share something someone else told you that opened up your eyes and mind about open GLAM?
4. 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.

Episodes will be released twice a week until June 2022. Missed episode 15 of our Open Culture VOICES series? Catch up here >>

The post Episode 16: Open Culture VOICES – Neal Stimler appeared first on Creative Commons.

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Welcome to episode 15 of Open Culture VOICES! VOICES is a vlog series of short interviews with open GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) experts from around the world. The Open Culture Program at Creative Commons aims to promote better sharing of cultural heritage in GLAMs collections. With Open Culture VOICES, we’re thrilled to bring you various perspectives from dozens of experts speaking in many different languages on what it’s like to open up heritage content online. In this episode, Rebecca Giblin, an ARC Future Fellow and Professor at Melbourne Law School, and the Director of the Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia. Her work sits at the intersection of law and culture, focusing on creators’ rights, access to knowledge and culture, technology regulation and copyright.

Rebecca responds to the following questions: 

1. What are the main benefits of open GLAM?
2. What are the barriers?
3. Could you share something someone else told you that opened up your eyes and mind about open GLAM?
4. 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.

Episodes will be released twice a week until June 2022. Missed episode 14 of our Open Culture VOICES series? Catch up here >>

The post Episode 15: Open Culture VOICES – Rebecca Giblin appeared first on Creative Commons.

CC welcomes the adoption of this comprehensive report by the AIDA special committee with strong, cross-party support. 

On Tuesday, the European Parliament’s (EU) Special Committee on Artificial Intelligence in a Digital Age (AIDA) adopted its final recommendations for a Roadmap, laying the groundwork through 2030.

This Roadmap concludes that artificial intelligence (AI) has enormous technological potential and should be used to benefit humans. Creative Commons commends the EP on its thorough, preparatory work undertaken over the past 18 months by the AIDA special committee and which culminated in this detailed and thoughtful report.

 AI already plays a big part in our lives and as technological innovation continues to develop at pace, the importance of AI is only likely to increase.

MEPs identified policy options that could unlock AI’s potential in health, the environment, and climate change, to help combat pandemics and global hunger, and enhance people’s quality of life through personalized medicine.

AI, if combined with the necessary support infrastructure, education, and training could increase capital and labor productivity, innovation, sustainable growth, and job creation.

CC recognizes that developments in AI present a host of opportunities to address global challenges through better sharing in the digital world. While these opportunities are likely to stimulate innovation and accelerate digital transformation, they also raise questions in copyright, especially regarding the use of data to train AI and the copyright treatment of AI-generated outputs.

 In the Roadmap, paragraph 116 mentions a need to “clarify whether AI will be able to hold intellectual property rights in itself.” CC believes that there should be no copyright on AI-generated content in the absence of human creative choices.  AI systems are not authors, cannot have human rights, and cannot be held liable for their actions as the law currently stands, so AI should not be able to hold copyright in itself. 

AI-training uses of creative content should not be considered infringing. They should not implicate an exercise of a copyright exclusive right, but if so, they should be considered fair use or allowed under an exception. 

Beyond copyright, CC is aware that several issues affecting better sharing and related to ethics, privacy and data protection need to be better understood to bring clarity to the rapidly evolving role that AI is playing in society and to ensure sharing ultimately benefits the public. 

CC will continue to holistically explore issues at the intersection of AI and copyright to support better sharing of copyright content in the public interest.

Once adopted by the plenary in May, we hope it will serve as a solid basis for ensuring the EU’s nascent legislative framework (AI Act) provides a robust regulatory regime that supports better sharing.

 We look forward to continuing to work with EU legislators and policymakers over the coming months to create a framework for AI that fosters creativity and innovation and upholds the public interest, underpinned by the EU’s values and principles of freedom of speech, non-discrimination and the rule of law’.

To know more about AI, copyright and CC licenses, visit our FAQ page.

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Last Friday, United States (US) senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced the “Strengthening Measures to Advance Rights Technologies (SMART) Copyright Act of 2022.”

Their bill proposes to have the US Copyright Office mandate that all websites accepting user-uploaded material implement technologies to automatically filter that content. We’ve long believed that these kinds of mandates are overbroad, speech-limiting, and bad for both creators and reusers. (We’re joined in this view by others such as Techdirt, Public Knowledge, and EFF, who have already stated their opposition.)

But one part of this attempt stands out to us: the list of “myths” Sen. Tillis released to accompany the bill. In particular, Tillis lists the concern that it is a “filtering mandate that will chill free speech and harm users” as a myth instead of a true danger to free expression–and he cites the existence of CC’s metadata as support for his position. 

Creative Commons is strongly opposed to mandatory content filtering measures. And we particularly object to having our work and our name used to imply support for a measure that undermines free expression which CC seeks to protect.

CC licensing is designed to let creators choose to share their work beyond what copyright allows by default–to grant more permissions, not impose more restrictions. And while our license metadata does let reusers know critical information about licensed rights, this metadata exists to convey important information about licensed works, not to restrict their use. Critically, CC licenses were never designed or intended to override the limitations and exceptions to copyright that allow for free expression. 

We believe in giving creators choices about how to share their work, and the importance of respecting those choices. But those rights to choose extend only as far as copyright does. Limitations and exceptions are a crucial feature of a copyright system that truly serves the public, and filter mandates fail to respect them. Because of this, licensing metadata should not be used as a mandatory upload filter–and especially not CC license data. We do not support or endorse the measures in this bill, and we object to having our name used to imply otherwise.

The post CC opposes mandatory copyright filters, as well as using CC to justify them appeared first on Creative Commons.