Creative Commons is excited to announce the publication of the Romanian language translations of version 4.0 of the CC License Suite and of the CC0 public domain dedication. These translations will enable approximately 30 million people to understand our licenses in their first or second language!
We could not be more pleased to see this effort reach a successful conclusion after one year of collaboration among experts from the European Commission. The translations were provided by official translators of the European Commission, coordinated by Pedro Malaquias (Legal Officer – Intellectual Property). The translations were reviewed by George Hari Popescu, our Translation Assistant.
The translations followed the guidelines set in the 3.0 version and kept the same translations for most of the legal words and phrases. The most important change in the 4.0 version is for the word “Share.” The 4.0 suite is an exact translation of the English original version, without adaptations to national laws. Since “Distribuire” is a word used in the Romanian copyright law, the word “Partajare” was chosen for the 4.0 version.
Over 300 million images are uploaded to Facebook a day. Yes, just Facebook. Once other social media and photo-sharing platforms like Flickr, Unsplash, Instagram, etc. are taken into account, that number quickly grows into the billions.
A lot has changed since the dawn of photography in the 19th century—when Nicéphore Niépce (a.k.a. the “Father of Photography”) peered through his camera obscura from his upstairs window in France and created the oldest surviving photographic image in 1826. At that time, and for over a century, photography was restricted to (primarily white and Western) wealthy hobbyists and career professionals. However, photography has become more democratized, digitized, and open over time. This process began in the 1940s with Kodak’s “Brownie” camera, then quickened with the invention of the digital camera in the late 1980s, and finally culminated with the smartphone in the early 2000s. In 2019, the Pew Research Center estimated that 1/3rd of the world’s population has a smartphone. This means that billions of people have access to a camera!
Niépce’s “View from the Window at Le Gras” (1826 or 1827), the world’s oldest surviving photographic image, made using a camera obscura. Original plate (left) by Niépce; colorized reoriented enhancement (right) by Nguyen. Licensed CC BY-SA.
Along with the democratization and digitization of photography came the rise of open licensing (the CC License Suite was first released in 2002) and “free” photo-sharing and stock photography websites (Flickr was founded in 2004). Although these trends have many benefits, they’ve generally made professional photographers feel uneasy. As photographer and filmmaker Erin Jennings wrote in a 2019 essay, “Not only has accessible digital photography threatened the commercial photography industry, it has also thrown into question the very self-worth of many photographers whose identities were mired in the exclusivity of the analog process.” As a photographer, I understand this uneasiness as well as the apprehension that comes with publishing images under open licenses. I’ve certainly wondered: Is it OK that I’m willingly handing organizations and companies the ability to use my work for “free”? Will this lead to the expectation that photography should always be free? Does this devalue professional photography?
Along with the democratization and digitization of photography came the rise of open licensing and “free” photo-sharing and stock photography websites; although these trends have many benefits, they’ve also made professional photographers feel uneasy.
Luke Beard, Photographer and Designer; CEO and Founder of Exposure.
Over time, I’ve learned more about the purpose of open licenses and the rights photographers are guaranteed under them.For instance, the attribution requirement under CC licenses can actually help maintain the connection between photograph and photographer because the photographer’s name must be attributed if their work is reused. In the age of image theft and image overload, that’s significant. The range of licenses available also gives photographers more freedom to determine how their photography can be used beyond “all rights reserved,” and clarify that to potential users. For up-and-coming photographers, this can be especially useful for building a personal brand and an audience of potential clients. Personally, I try to always openly license my work—something I recently learned was possible on Exposure, a storytelling platform for photographers and visual storytellers. After using the platform for years, it was a pleasant surprise to learn that the company had enabled CC BY-ND as a licensing option. It also made me curious: Why did a platform that serves as a creative outlet for professional photographers and storytellers decide to allow open licensing as an option?
To find out, I contacted Exposure Founder and CEO Luke Beard via email. A photographer himself, I also wanted to know his personal thoughts about open licensing and the democratization of photography. Our conversation below has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
VH: The growing democratization of photography has led to a plethora of images online, primarily through free photo-sharing and stock photography websites. Has this trend impacted your identity as a professional photographer? Do you think it’s harming the industry?
LB: I’d argue that Instagram has done more to change photography in the last decade than legacy and fledgling photo communities built around free sharing or stock [photography]. Instagram has a fairly large conversion rate. Its scale, reach, and impact on photography still feels unprecedented. It’s effectively one of the biggest stewards of the medium the world has ever seen.
The “professional photographer” part of my identity has a strong feeling around giving anything away for “free.” There are both potentially good and potentially negative outcomes, but it also depends on the context. You certainly learn a lot about what feels right or worth it by exploring free avenues. The communities that grow around services like Flickr can be incredible, and I’m sure many working photographers today got their start there. The proliferation of ways to discover photography though free, stock, or sharing [platforms] has certainly raised the bar both competition-wise and creativity-wise, and I’d say it has been a net positive.
VH: There’s an ongoing debate within photography circles about open licensing and whether or not it harms professional photographers. What do you see as the benefits and drawbacks?
LB: The value of photography has simultaneously been raised and lowered as the internet economy has grown. As a visual medium—with amazing screens in the hands of ~3.5 billion people—photography has so much to offer for the foreseeable future.
Exposure houses creative works from individual photographers, non-profit organizations, governments, and more.
Open licensing also has a lot to offer photographers who are looking for new and interesting ways to share their craft and earn work. On the one hand, you have platforms with a huge reach that take on the hard work of distributing and hosting your photos in exchange for an open license (e.g. Unsplash). The long-tail upside might be that someone thinks your style of photography is perfect and hires you for a shoot. The flip side is that free and openly licensed photos may lose all concept that there is a photographer behind the photo. This devalues both the photographer and the photo. I personally struggle with the idea of normalizing good photography as something that has no cost or doesn’t require credit—although, it’s important to point out that CC licenses do require attribution. A comparison would be this one: it’s hard to make good software, but free applications normalize the idea that software should cost nothing.
There is still lots of work to be done to reap the benefits of open licensing, and the majority of this work falls to the stewards of the platforms and tools.
Without openly licensed photos, however, we wouldn’t have visually rich Wikipedia pages or great collections like NASA’s image gallery. For individual photographers, I think there still has to be a better way. Maybe the answer is a blockchain solution through micropayments or maybe just a better marketplace platform. There is still lots of work to be done to reap the benefits of open licensing, and the majority of this work falls to the stewards of the platforms and tools. I’m hopeful the benefits will greatly outweigh the negatives.
VH: Can you explain why Exposure decided to offer an open licensing option and if there were any specific challenges when making and implementing that decision?
We have taken baby steps into offering an open license as a feature. For context, it’s a toggle you can switch “on” or “off” for specific stories. As the creator, you agree to a CC BY-ND license for your photography within that story. This idea initially came about because we wanted to give Exposure members the ability to allow their family, friends, or clients to download their photos. Since the launch, however, we have seen it used for academic and non-profit purposes too, so we plan on expanding it this year by adding more licenses and the ability to license entire stories (including written content) and not just the individual photos. Our non-profit customers have expressed how helpful this would be to share their cause.
VH: Does Exposure educate users on this open licensing option or advertise it in any way?
The photo downloads feature is advertised as a paid feature because there is an infrastructure cost associated with allowing photos to be downloaded. When the feature is enabled by the member, we give a full legal description of how the license works and also a “basic” description in simpler terms. When a visitor downloads any photo that is under the open license they also see a similar dialog and download agreement that indicates the requirements of the license, including attribution to the photographer/source. This way, they know how and where they can use the photo before they actually download it.
An example of Exposure’s Download Agreement and use of CC BY-ND. Source: “The Space People” by Victoria Heath (CC BY-ND).
VH: Taking a step back from open licensing, can you share with us one or two of the most impactful stories that have been shared on your platform?
That’s a tough one, as there have been thousands over the years, but right now I’m extra proud to host and share stories on climate change, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, this story from Doctors without Borders (MSF) which shares the struggle to get the supplies needed to fight COVID-19 in Yemen; this piece by the United Nations Development Programme’s Climate Office telling the story of climate-resilient farming and food security in the outer islands of Kiribati; and this story of Black Lives Matter protests in Cobb County, Georgia by a local photographer.
VH: The goal of the open movement is to build a more equitable, inclusive, and innovative world through sharing—do you believe sharing photography, and creative content more broadly, has a role in achieving that goal?
Openly sharing information has always happened within communities. I strongly believe the open movement has achieved great things since the first few days of ARPANET and the birth of the modern internet. Creative content still has room to mature to be a truly accessible, inclusive, and equitable medium as more people get access to the internet. But as a whole, visual content has had a huge impact by engaging most of the world—now more than any other time in history. There are things that worry me about our ability to achieve any sort of “open web” goal, these include the consolidated power of “Big Tech,” eroding net neutrality, and the disparity of access to reliable and affordable (if not free) internet connections—as recently seen with the impact of COVID-19 on students without a reliable internet connection at home.
VH: Photography as a profession has suffered from a lack of racial, ethnic, and gender diversity which has led to a mirrored lack of diversity in the images created (e.g. stock photos). What actions do you think individual photographers like yourself, and platforms like Exposure, can take to help increase diversity in the industry?
A quote mentioned in Ibram X. Kendi’s book, How to Be an Antiracist has recently been very impactful in my thinking about just this. The quote is credited to Harry A. Blackmun from the 1978 Supreme Court case, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. Blackmun wrote, “…in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently.”
There is no progress without change and the status quo of taking a neutral stance does not allow for oppressed voices to be heard.
When I think about how this could be implemented in photography and the platforms that support it, I see several paths to a more equitable community: actively raising, promoting, and empowering the work of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) and gender diverse photographers; giving resources to those same communities to enhance their ability to work, and; public platforms taking a zero-tolerance policy for hate speech and racism of any kind. There is no progress without change and the status quo of taking a neutral stance does not allow for oppressed voices to be heard. Exposure, as a platform, can do more on all these fronts, but the future looks bright for more giving and more empowering initiatives. Our Black Lives Matter support statement outlines what we are doing right now, and there is more to come in the future.
VH: Luke, thank you for speaking with me! By the way, there are a growing number of openly licensed collections that are working to increase diversity in stock photography. These include Nappy, the Gender Spectrum Collection, Disabled and Here Collection, and Women in Tech. Check them out!
Did you know that the Creative Commons Global Network (CCGN) consists of 43 CC Country Chapters? Spread across the globe, these CC Chapters are the home for a community of advocates, activists, educators, artists, lawyers, and users who share CC’s vision and values. They work to implement and strengthen open access policies, copyright reform, open education, and open culture in the communities in which they live.
To help showcase their work, we’re excited to introduce our blog series and social media initiative: CC Network Fridays. At least one Friday a month, we’ll travel around the world through our blog and on Twitter (using #CCNetworkFridays) to a different CC Chapter, introducing their teams, discussing their work, and celebrating their commitment to open!
First up is CC Italy!
The CC Italian Chapter was formed in December 2018. Its Chapter Lead and representative to the CC Global Network Council is lawyer Deborah De Angelis. From the beginning, the Chapter has been involved in many fields of the open movement but over the last year, in particular, it has enhanced its activities covering almost all CCGN Platforms. To learn more about their work, we reached out to CC Italy to ask a few questions. They responded in both English and Italian!
CC: What open movement work is your Chapter actively involved in? What would you like to achieve with your work?
CC Italy: The Italian Chapter is involved in advocating for CC licenses, in the process of the DSM Directive implementation in Italy, and has formed an Open GLAM group and an Open Education group. Our goal is to achieve more openness and the widespread adoption of CC licenses in Italy.
Il Capitolo italiano divulga le licenze CC, è coinvolto nel processo di implementazione della Direttiva DSM e recentemente ha costituito al suo interno due gruppi di lavoro, uno dedicato all’Open GLAM e uno dedicato all’Open Education.
CC: What exciting project has your Chapter engaged in recently?
CC Italy: The Chapter participated in the hearing at the Italian Senate for the DSM Directive implementation. It is working on a common appeal for the free re-use of cultural heritage images in the European Union and writing a proposal to the Italian Ministry for the Open Education policies implementation.
Il Capitolo italiano ha partecipato alle audizioni al Senato per l’implementazione della Direttiva DSM. Attualmente sta lavorando ad un appello per il libero riuso delle immagini dei beni culturali nell’Unione Europea e ad una proposta indirizzata al Ministero italiano dell’Istruzione e dell’Università e della ricerca per l’implementazione di politiche di Open education.
CC: What projects in your country are using CC licenses that you’d like to highlight?
You can find some Italian private and public organizations that share their works with CC licenses, here. We would like to mention that the National and Central Library of Rome (not present in the list above) shares its digital content under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.
Potete trovare qui alcune realtà italiane pubbliche e private che condividono le proprie opere con le licenze CC. Vorremmo citare anche la Biblioteca nazionale Centrale di Roma (non presente nell’elenco) tra coloro che condividono i propri contenuti digitali con licenza CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.
CC: What do you find inspiring and rewarding about your work in the open movement?
CC Italy: We strongly believe in the importance of sharing knowledge and culture in order to create a fairer world through a democratic and safe digital space. We work very hard for this purpose and we are rewarded by every small step forward we’re able to achieve.
Crediamo fortemente che la condivisione della cultura e della conoscenza siano fondamentali per la creazione di un mondo più equo anche attraverso uno spazio digitale sicuro e democratico. Lavoriamo molto in questa direzione e ci sentiamo pienamente ricompensati da ogni passo avanti che riusciamo a raggiungere con il nostro lavoro.
CC: What are your plans for the future?
CC Italy: The future is now! We are deeply involved in so many projects and we really hope to achieve even just a part of our goal, and to enlarge and strengthen the Italian CC community. For updates about the CC Italian Chapter’s activities, visit our website or contact us!
Il futuro è adesso! Stiamo lavorando su tantissimi progetti e speriamo di raggiungere anche solo una parte dei nostri obiettivi e di ingrandire e rafforzare la comunità italiana di Creative Commons. Per aggiornamenti sulle attività del Capitolo italiano CC, visita il nostro sito Web o contattaci!
Thank you to the CC Italy team, especially Laura Sinigaglia and Deborah de Angelis for contributing to the first CC Network Fridays feature, and for all of their work in the open community! To see this conversation on Twitter, click here. To become a member of the CCGN, visit our website!
I’m delighted to announce that Creative Commons has selected Catherine Stihler to be its next CEO.
Catherine has been a champion for openness as both a legislator and practitioner for more than 20 years. She currently serves as CEO of the Open Knowledge Foundation, an organization whose work is fully aligned with the values and mission of Creative Commons. During her tenure, she has successfully redefined OKF’s vision and mission, reengaged its global chapters, and increased its international profile.
Prior to her work with OKF, Catherine was a longtime Member of the European Parliament. As one of Scotland’s most respected legislators, she was active on digital policy issues including copyright reform, citizen privacy and data protection, and improving public access to digital tools. Among her many achievements, she founded the Parliament’s All-Party Library Group, promoting and advocating for the importance of libraries in the digital age.
It’s been a pleasure getting to know Catherine, and hearing her ideas for how Creative Commons can make a meaningful and long-lasting impact in a moment of tremendous global change. The CC Board has been so impressed by her inclusive and collaborative leadership skills, her vision for the future of our organization, and her passion for CC’s mission of eliminating legal obstacles to the sharing of knowledge and creativity to address the world’s pressing challenges. We, along with the CC staff, are truly thrilled to begin working together with her.
Next year we will celebrate the 20th anniversary of Creative Commons. That’s two decades of making the world a more open and equitable place through sharing. It’s a huge milestone for CC and the perfect time to welcome a new leader to guide us into our next era. It coincides with events that make the need to remove unnecessary obstacles to the sharing of knowledge and creativity clearer and more urgent than ever. Our current health and environmental emergencies, including the emergency of systemic racism and inequality, are global crises that require collective action and wisdom. CC’s modest but critical role in addressing these crises is to facilitate the sharing of knowledge and creativity that empower that collective action and nourish that collective wisdom.
We enter this next chapter at Creative Commons with gratitude to our Interim CEO Cable Green, who will resume his critical leadership role as Director of Open Education; to former CEO Ryan Merkley, now a key collaborator in his role at the Wikimedia Foundation; and to the Open Knowledge Foundation, with whom we look forward to continued collaboration. Thanks also to the Creative Commons staff, CC Global Network, funders, and Board of Directors; as well as Kathleen Yazbak and her team at Viewcrest Advisors. All of their insights shaped our search process and will lay the foundation for our future success.
Catherine will officially join us on August 17. Until then, please join me in welcoming her to Creative Commons.
Image: Jonathan Poritz, Director of Teaching and Learning and an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Physics, both at Colorado State University-Pueblo.
Creative Commons provides educators and the expertise they need to harness Open Educational Resources (OER). We strive to make education more accessible to more people around the world. One way we do this is through our CC Certificate training, which is licensed CC BY 4.0 and available for use.
Today, we’re delighted to announce our training materials are now available as audio files licensed CC BY 4.0. Thanks to the fantastic work of Jonathan Poritz, we can now offer materials in another format for learners. Jonathan Poritz has been contributing to open education efforts for nearly a decade* and facilitates CC Certificate courses regularly.
To celebrate the recent additions to our open licensed CC Certificate resources, we asked Jonathan a few questions. Our interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
CC: Thank you for your hours of work making the CC Certificate OER available in a new format, and improving the accessibility of our resources. What a gift. Can you tell us about your process for this?
Poritz: So the process was pretty simple: I just went into my clothes closet and read the whole thing to my laptop. The clothes closet seems to be the place with the best acoustics in my house.
Editor’s note: Jonathan elaborated in a conversation with CC Certificate participants, noting: “I would go in there, close the door, and record for a while. … when I was too hot…I’d take a break out in the world!”
I’m actually not being facetious here. I work a lot in Open Educational Resources (OER) at my university and in my home state (Colorado, USA). When I talk to people about making and using OER, one thing I like to emphasize is that only OER gives teachers and learners real agency: because of the open licensing—Creative Commons licensing, which enables OER—a teacher can retain, reuse, redistribute, revise, and remix OER. In other words, only OER allows for real pedagogical academic freedom, real autonomy, and agency for teachers and learners.
I think of myself as a “Z-professor,” in that I only use OER in my teaching. The “Z-this” and “Z-that” terminology is used in the OER world to describe things like zero textbook cost degree programs, also called “Z-Degrees” or “Zed Creds.” These programs use entirely OER or other zero-cost resources, so I’m used to having that kind of agency. When it occurred to me that an audio version of the CC Certificate materials should be made and that it would enable more learners to access this fantastic resource, I just went into my closet and recorded it!
A Zed Cred/Z-Degree is a “set of courses in a specific program area that allows a student to earn a credential, such as an associate degree or certificate program, with zero textbook costs by way of using open educational resources and/or free library materials.” Source: BCcampus Open Education program.
I knew I didn’t need to ask permission to do this because the CC Certificate materials are licensed CC BY 4.0, so I have all the permissions I need. Regarding the technical process, I happened to already have a pretty good external microphone, and the Audacity audio editing software, which is FLOSS (free/libre/open-source software).
CC: Do you have other ideas for how CC might increase the accessibility of our training resources? Or, ideas for people who are curious about accessing the CC Certificate course content?
Poritz: Another version of the audiobook! When I got to the end of the full reading, I had more experience doing this than when I started, so I will do a better job the next time. Fortunately, the CC team around the CC Certificate course regularly revises and improves the course materials, so I will have a chance to do a new audio version in a few months.
In a larger sense, it might be a good idea to get a real accessibility expert to look over the materials—I certainly do not have such expertise! I knew about reading books out loud because I used to read math books for Reading for the Blind when I was a university student myself (100,000 years ago), but a real accessibility expert might have things to say.
Image: Jonathan Poritz recording audio in his closet at home! This image is licensed CC BY 4.0.
It seems to me that another thing CC can do is along the lines of that periodic revisit and improvement of the CC Certificate course materials. It means that the materials are always tracking the best and most current knowledge about law, practices, policies, resources, etc. I know that there are also discussions about how to improve the course in other ways (e.g. to use more methods of open pedagogy, to make it more relevant to a very international audience, etc.). This is a highly non-trivial task! There are so many different legal systems around the world, and so many local traditions of educational and cultural production and consumption, it is hard for CC to make something that is localized to every one of those situations. But (as you know!) there are some steps in this direction already. For example, facilitators accept assignments from participants in their local languages, when the facilitators can read the languages, or when the participant attaches an automatic translation which they have checked for reasonable accuracy. And, I understand, there are some additional translations of the course materials into other languages coming out soon!
To your second question: CC has given the world an amazing gift by releasing these materials with a CC BY license. It should go a long way to making this knowledge more widely accessible, across geographic and economic barriers. The cost of formally taking the CC Certificate course does remain an obstacle, although the scholarship program has made tremendous inroads into that.
I do believe that taking the course provides benefits that just reading the CC BY licensed materials does not. Aside from the direct interaction with the other participants (and the section facilitator), there is always a sense of joining an absolutely amazing global community around openness that comes from working together on the course. I’m humbled by the privilege of meeting and learning about these truly amazing groups of people and what they are doing, every single time I facilitate a course.
CC: After so many hours sweating in your clothes closet, what’s next? What do you hope to see in Open Education efforts given the “great pivot” to online teaching we’ve seen?
Poritz: I have great hope, but also great fear about what’s happening right now in this great pivot. As should be clear from the things I’ve said above, I think Open Education has a lot of solutions to offer to many issues in education. In fact, as a “Z-professor,” I think “open” is the only way to go with education!
This crisis could help educators work (rush!) toward more open practices, or move in the opposite direction. We in open communities must work to clarify and promote the solutions that open education offers—and a great many of us already are. We also need to highlight how problematic the closed approaches are to learners.
If I had to list the issues which bedevil open education right now, my list might include:
General lack of knowledge of open practices with which things like the CC Certificate course can help enormously.
Lack of ancillary materials (automatic homework systems, test banks, etc.) for many OER, which many people are working to overcome.
Difficulty in finding existing OER for particular purposes, which again, people are improving. For example, there are various OER search tools, and CC Search is getting better all the time.
Complex platforms to create and remix OER: also an area of rapid work and improvement.
Spotty record on accessibility for OER, although commercial resources are actually not all that much better!
I think the community can step up to improve accessibility, similar to how a random person with a quiet clothes closet can record any work with an open license and make it accessible to more people.
I’m headed back to the closet to record! Maybe I’ll tackle a math OER textbook I wrote next—it should be an interesting challenge to try to describe all the equations, graphs, and diagrams!
*In addition to his work with the CC Certificate, Jonathan is the Director of Teaching and Learning and an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Physics, both at Colorado State University-Pueblo. He is also a member of the Colorado Department of Higher Education’s Open Educational Resources Council. Learn more about Jonathan here.
The CC Certificate is an in-depth course about CC licenses, open practices, and the ethos of the Commons. The course is composed of readings, quizzes, discussions, and practical exercises to develop learners’ open skills. We provide personalized engagement with expert facilitators and copyright lawyers in the field.
We could not be more pleased to see this effort reach a successful conclusion after one year of collaboration among experts from the European Commission. The translations were provided by official translators of the European Commission, coordinated by Pedro Malaquias (Legal Officer – Intellectual Property). The translations were reviewed by George Hari Popescu, our Translation Assistant.
: Featured image by 
