We are all affected by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In the interests of global peace, whether or not you have family or friends in Ukraine, the brutal aggression by a neighboring state creating a war affecting millions of innocent people has to be condemned in the strongest way possible.

As a global not-for-profit, with a community across the world that believes in democratic values, we stand with those Ukrainians upholding democracy, defending freedom and the rule of law.

In the context of mobile connectivity, this is like no other war that has gone before.  As Thomas Friedman aptly describes in today’s New York Times,  we are “wired together more intimately than ever before by telecommunications; satellites; trade; the internet; road, rail and air networks; financial markets and supply chains…. Welcome to World War Wired-the first war in a totally interconnected world.”

This highlights the importance of openness, so that scrutiny can properly be brought to bear, so that accountability is not hidden from the public. This also casts light on regimes restricting, or otherwise skewing, access to information, news, and knowledge.  Something we strive to overcome. Our community stands in solidarity with Ukraine.

The post Standing in solidarity with Ukraine appeared first on Creative Commons.

Join the CC Open Education Platform on Tuesday, 8 March, 2022 at 9 p.m. UTC / 4 p.m. EST for an Open Education Week round of Open Education Lightning Talks.

By popular demand, the CC Open Education Platform is bringing back our Open Education Lightning Talks Series. We are kicking off the first round of this series on Tuesday, 8 March, 2022 at 9 p.m. UTC / 4 p.m. EST in celebration of Open Education Week. 

What are lightning talks?

Lightning talks are concise presentations that provide a specific update or story. During our open education lightning talks, open education practitioners will discuss their work in 7 minutes and take questions (2 minutes) in a supportive space. Everyone is welcome. Join us!

Speakers and presentations:  

• Kathryn Kure, CEO at STEAM Foundation NPC | Enabling OERs at No Additional Cost
• Dr. Carolyn Stevenson, Faculty Member and Faculty Advisor at Purdue University Global | Promoting Educational Equity through OERs and Open Degree Plans
• Sybil Priebe, Associate Professor at North Dakota State College of Science | The Venn Diagram of OEP and Ungrading is a Circle
• Alan Levine, Director of Member Strategy and Community Engagement for Open Education Global | Still Amazing: True Stories of Openness
• Liza Long, Department Chair of Integrated Studies at the College of Western Idaho | Student Scholars: Publishing Student OER Work 
• Suzanne Wakim, Faculty Member and Distance Education Coordinator at Butte College | Evolution of a State-Wide OER Initiative
• Judith Sebesta, Executive Director of the Digital Higher Education Consortium of Texas and the President of the Executive Council of CCCOER | Deep in the Open Heart of Texas

Date: Tuesday 8 March 2022
Time: 9:00 – 10:15 PM UTC / 4:00 – 5:15 PM EST / 8:00 – 9:30 PST | Check your local time zone
Location: Join us from wherever you are based! We’ll be using Zoom to host the event. If you haven’t installed Zoom, download it here.

Watch our last round of Open Education Lightning Talks here >>

The post Open Education Week 2022: Join our latest round of Open Education Lightning Talks appeared first on Creative Commons.

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Hi friends, we are back with episode eight 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, we’re joined by Giovanna Fontenelle — she’s a journalist, historian, and Wikimedian. She’s also a master’s student in social history at the University of São Paulo. Giovanna works as a Program Officer, GLAM and Culture, at the Wikimedia Foundation. She’s also a member of Creative Commons Brasil (CCBR), Creative Commons Global Network, Wiki Movimento Brasil User Group, and ICOM Brazil. At CCBR, she coordinates the areas of Open GLAM and Wikimedia. Her current work activities are related to GLAM-Wiki, Open GLAM, linked open data, in addition to carrying out projects on diversity and knowledge equity.

Giovanna 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 seven of our Open Culture VOICES series? Catch up here >>

The post Episode 8: Open Culture VOICES – Giovanna Fontenelle appeared first on Creative Commons.

On 23 February, the European Commission published its proposal for a Data Act –  new rules on who can use and access data generated in the EU across all economic sectors. The Data Act is the second legislation in the EU’s data strategy and is in line with the Open Data Directive.

As promised by the Commission, the Data Act is part of the broader EU digital strategy and 2030 digital objectives. The Commission is keen for the EU to retain its global leadership role, driving robust standards for a digital age. The Data Act is designed to rebalance control and power over data and hands more control back to consumers and small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) to more broadly unlock industrial data.

At first glance, the proposal appears to be a step in the right direction of ensuring citizens have power over their own data. Interoperability remains key to empowering citizens and enabling better sharing online. The predominant model of sharing – where content created on large platforms is owned and monetized and where algorithms can foster the spread of misinformation and fake news – is failing citizens and democracies alike.

Core elements of the Act include:

• Facilitating access to and the use of data by consumers and businesses, while preserving incentives to invest in ways of generating value through data:
  • This includes clarifying the application of relevant rights under Directive 96/9/EC on the legal protection of databases (the Database Directive) to its provisions.
• Providing for the public sector use of data held by enterprises in certain situations where there is an exceptional data need:
  • Primarily public emergencies, but also other exceptional situations where compulsory business-to-government data sharing is justified, to support evidence-based, effective, efficient, and performance-driven public policies and services.
• Facilitating the switch between cloud and edge services:
  • Access to competitive and interoperable data processing services is a precondition for a flourishing data economy, in which data can be shared easily within and across sectoral ecosystems.
  • The level of trust in data processing services determines the uptake of such services by users across sectors of the economy.
• Safeguarding against unlawful data transfer without notification by cloud service providers:
  • Following concerns raised about non-EU/European Economic Area (EEA) governments’ unlawful access to data.
  • Such safeguards should further enhance trust in the data processing services that increasingly underpin the European data economy.
• Developing interoperability standards for data reuse between sectors:
  • Remove barriers to data sharing across domain-specific common European data spaces, inconsistency with sectoral interoperability requirements, and between other data that are not within the scope of a specific common European data space.
  • Supports the setting of standards for ‘smart contracts’ – computer programs on electronic ledgers that execute and settle transactions based on pre-determined conditions, which have the potential to provide data holders and data recipients with guarantees that conditions for sharing data are respected.

As the legislative debate heats up it would be good to see more focus on interoperability as it applies to better sharing online. There must be an opportunity to place citizens at the heart of this legislative proposal to ensure we have better sharing online in the public interest. Creative Commons looks forward to being part of this conversation.

An open public consultation on the Data Act ran between 3 June and 3 September 2021 and gathered views on measures to create fairness in data sharing, value for consumers and businesses.

The results were published on 6 December 2021.

 

The post Thoughts on EU Data Act proposal appeared first on Creative Commons.

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New week, new episode 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, we are joined by Larissa Borck, Digital Curator at the Sörmlands Museum. As a trained cultural anthropologist with a strong network in the European digital cultural heritage sector, Larissa is passionate about opening up GLAM institutions by digital means. With a background in research about digitization of cultural heritage and management of museums, Larrissa connects both academic and practice fields.

Larissa 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 six of our Open Culture VOICES series? Catch up here >>

The post Episode 7: Open Culture VOICES – Larissa Borck appeared first on Creative Commons.