Plaintext
Share, Reuse, Remix —
Legally.
N E W S L E T T E R
http://creativecommons.org Issue No. 10 December 2008
A lex R ob er t s. “M elis sa
Reeder.” CC-BY 3.0
Dear Creative Commoner,
This month’s newsletter focuses on ccLearn, CC’s “newest” project
(even though it’s almost 2 years old) dedicated to championing the CC
infrastructure within education, followed by brief updates from the people
on the front lines of Science Commons, Creative Commons International
(CCi), Culture Commons, and CC Core. Education as we know it is
CC Newsletter - Issue No. 10
evolving, and as it changes we need to make sure that it remains open and
free and interoperable. ccLearn was made possible thanks to the generosity
of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, one of the leaders in open
educational resources (OER). I don’t want to say too much though; I don’t
want to spoil what is explained so eloquently below.
Over the past 8 months I’ve brought you information about CCi, Science
Commons, Culture Commons, CC Core (Development), and now
ccLearn. All of these projects have one thing in common—the CC “Core”
infrastructure (legal, technology, and operations). As you probably know,
we’re in the middle of our annual fundraiser. We need to raise $500,000
by December 31st and we have $260,000 left to go. If you’ve already
given to the campaign—THANK YOU. Your support is more appreciated
than you know. But you can still help. Tell your friends and family about
2 CC and encourage them to give. Blog about the campaign and encourage
your readers to participate. Spread the word about CC and our need for
support as far and wide as humanly possible. By supporting CC you will be
sustaining this vital infrastructure.
As you read, you will notice the difference between this newsletter and past
editions. We’re experimenting with a new format, which I think is more
informative and effective, and would like to hear what you think. We here at
CC are open to community feedback and suggestions. We’re writing this so
you have an easy alternative way to stay informed; please let us know what
you think by emailing development@creativecommons.org.
Melissa Reeder
Development Manager
This newsletter is licensed
under http://creativecom-
mons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
— please share and remix!
Feature
ccLearn Ahrash Bissel, Executive Director, ccLearn
What does the future of education look like? built on a pool of open educational resources (OER)
which are available for anyone to use and adapt as
• Compelling lessons on the history of human they see fit.
migration available, for free, in eighty different
languages. But the stories described above do not yet happen so
easily... Even if appropriate hardware and Internet
• Free multimedia presentations on the chemistry of access are available, we already know that just
volcanoes enthralling children all over the United because something can be shared online does not
States, whether or not they are actually in school. make it legal to do so. Many people have suffered the
consequences of this mismatch when they have tried
• Health care instructors in Africa, Europe, and to share music online, for example. In education, the
elsewhere collaborating virtually to adapt medical challenge is to build a truly global learning commons,
school curricula to the specific needs of their which requires a great degree of standardization or
students, improving both the quality and relevance harmonization at the legal, technical, and social
of instruction in their own countries. levels. In addition, there are many concerns specific 3
to education, such as adherence to state-level
What makes these visions of the future possible? standards, attention to quality-control mechanisms,
Open licensing. and facilitation of local creation and adaptation of
OER.
We already know that Creative Commons makes it
CC Newsletter - Issue No. 10
possible for people to share their works with the world These varied and complex concerns are the context
under generous terms – to allow copies, translations, in which ccLearn, the education division of Creative
remixes, and other adaptations to be made and Commons, was founded just over one year ago.
distributed freely. For authors, photographers, ccLearn is dedicated to supporting the growth and
musicians, artists, and other creators, Creative impact of open learning and open educational
Commons licenses have transformed the working resources. Our mission is to minimize barriers to
landscape and galvanized creative communities the creation, sharing, and reuse of educational
worldwide. materials—legal barriers, technical barriers, and
social barriers.
But what about communities where sharing is already
standard practice? What about in education, where How we are overcoming these barriers—
the materials and insights produced by teachers
and curriculum developers are usually intended to License Mapping Report
be adapted as needed to foster the best learning Legal barriers include the use of restrictive
experiences possible? Here, it would seem that the or incompatible licenses, which hinder the
rights granted by Creative Commons – rights to share, ability to access, modify, and share content
adapt, and improve educational resources – are well- in educational settings. We are analyzing the
matched by community practices that have existed for licensing “landscape” for open education, to
a long time. And indeed, this is so – most educators be released as a report to the global open
around the world agree that their primary intent in education community. The goal is to provide
creating teaching and learning resources is for them objective data about the extent to which
to have a positive impact on student learning, and license proliferation is actually a problem,
they therefore tend to share those resources freely and also insights into the extent to which the
with their colleagues. This culture of sharing that learning commons we are trying to build is
already pervades the educational domain has given fractured by incompatible licensing policies.
rise to a movement – the open education movement
– which seeks to realize a global learning commons,
Universal Education Search excellent progress on many fronts. We are
Technical barriers focus on the fact that near completion on several projects and have
open educational resources must be easy to laid the groundwork for significant advances
find and access in order to be useful. For in other areas. On a personal level, I have
instance, many OER repositories were built in been amazed at the passion, drive, and
such a way that their content is inaccessible competence of this global community, which
or difficult to use. ccLearn is benefiting is growing every day. We all share a vision
from the amazing engineering work of of a future where educational opportunities
the Creative Commons team by providing are not limited by place, time, circumstances
leadership on technical standards and of birth, or even by technologies. Clearly, we
architectures that have the potential to solve are some distance yet from achieving this
these problems. Specifically, we are helping vision, but already there is good evidence
people to understand how the semantic web, that existing inequities in educational access
through RDFa (and ccREL) mark-up, enables and quality are eroding. It’s definitely an
the pool of OER to grow organically and to exciting time.
CC Newsletter - Issue No. 10
retain the site-specific properties that make
them valuable and educationally relevant. Open Education Highlights from around
This work stands in contrast to most efforts the Globe
in this area, which either seek to create a The OER movement is a global movement. Education
global centralized repository or a semblance is an issue that crosses borders and spans continents;
of one through direct integration of existing open education—the creation and distribution of
OER silos. OER—empowers people in a global dialogue. The
success of this international effort depends on a great
Because these ideas are fairly abstract, deal, as many issues and barriers to open education
we have undertaken to build a proof-of- are country- and culture-specific. However, despite
concept search engine, which we are calling contextual differences, significant progress has
Universal Education Search (UES). We hope been made around the world. Some specific project
this tool will help people to see the benefits highlights of the year:
of semantic mark-up and of open licensing.
4 If all goes well, we will have a public release Latin America
of a beta version of UES before the end of Latam Commons 2008: The Public Domain,
the year. Creative Commons, and Open Education in
Latin America, held Nov 19-21 in Santiago,
Open Education Community Site Chile, was a great success. The event was
Social barriers require that we recognize co-hosted and excellently managed by the
that OER development and access are only Non-Governmental Organization Derechos
the first steps. Because Creative Commons Digitales, and representatives from all over
licenses are fundamental infrastructural Latin America were present and actively
elements of most OER, ccLearn is naturally participated in the meeting. Project Leads
positioned to serve as a sort of “switchboard” of Creative Commons jurisdictions first
and catalyst for the rest of the community, held a one-day meeting to discuss their
especially on an international scale. In that projects, possible strategic initiatives and
vein, we are currently building an “Open collaborations across the region, and shared
Education Community” site which will enable challenges. These conversations are just the
OER projects to share information and beginning of what is planned to become a
collaborate much more easily. In addition, regular regional gathering to leverage the
the site will showcase the various tools and expertise and resources that are distributed
resources that we and others have created. throughout the region. The next day was
Finally, the site will serve as a landing pad devoted to a highly interactive “unconference”
for people who are interested in learning on open education which brought together
more about the open education movement. leading international advocates for open
education with key figures in libraries and
Reflecting on the past year: Though the ministries of education in Chile and beyond.
fruits of our efforts are not yet widely visible, The goal of the meeting was to gather
I am pleased to report that we have made information regarding top concerns and key
projects involved in the growth of the open capacity of the issues related to OA to enable
education movement, to be synthesized members to benefit from the content, which
and then leveraged for collaborative is made freely available through OA, as well
opportunities both within and beyond the as ensuring that the local content produced
region. Look for a report on this event in the within their countries is widely distributed.”
coming months. Finally, Derechos Digitales
orchestrated a seminar on the public domain Bloomsbury Academic was recently featured
which included cutting-edge research in our interview with Frances Pinter. Launched
reports and discussions regarding the legal back in September, it is the new imprint
and practical elements of both defining and by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, publisher of
utilizing the public domain in Latin America. the Harry Potter series, based in London.
The philosophical and legal issues pertinent Bloomsbury Academic will publish works
to consideration of the public domain is in the Humanities and Social Sciences
clearly of broad interest in the region, and exclusively under non-commercial CC
we are hopeful that these ideas will continue licenses, some with additional permissions
to serve as organizing themes for ongoing to use in certain commercial contexts.
conversation and action to enhance access They chose CC licenses because “Creative
to knowledge and improved scholarship in Commons is the best known license for this
the future. kind of publishing. There are still some issues
with it, such as defining very precisely what
New Zealand is ‘commercial’. However, we felt that on
New Zealand is the home of Otago balance it was best to go with a license that
Polytechnic, whose default intellectual had such wide recognition. One reason for 5
property policy blasted them onto the OER putting the whole text online free of charge is
map last year. All work created by the to avoid all the fuss and confusion that arises
university and its members are automatically when publishers allow odd excerpts online
available to the world via CC BY, the and free downloads for limited periods etc.
most open license and ideally suited for This may be good PR, but better to have a
CC Newsletter - Issue No. 10
educational purposes. CC BY allows you to policy that is more focused on delivering
freely distribute, derive and adapt the work what authors and readers want – which is
as long as you credit the authors, making it to use the Web as a library. This is especially
easy to reuse and re-mix educational works. true of academic works.”
We hope that more institutions will follow
Otago’s lead and enact similar policies.
Leigh Blackall, at the Education Development
Center of Otago, shares our view: “I think
everyone will come to see the simplicity and
flexibility of CC BY, and that alone outweighs
all other concerns.”
Europe
We have very strong connections in Europe,
two of which are eIFL and Bloomsbury
Academic. eIFL.net, Electronic Information
for Libraries, is a giant component of
the international effort, as it consists of a
“network of 2,220 libraries in 47 transitioning
and developing countries with a combined
population of 800 million people.” Though
it is based in Europe, it is not limited to
European countries. Back in May, eIFL voiced
their commitment to the goal of “[creating] a
world where each and every person on earth
can access and contribute to the sum of all
human knowledge.” “Through the eIFL OA
(Open Access) Program, eIFL members build
Recent Highlights from CC’s Other Programs
CC Core
Annual Fundraising Campaign foremost, this is a crucial step toward
continues: corporate matching de-fracturing the world of free culture
challenges; giveaways and free software, which should have the
impact of greatly accelerating the growth
Safe Creative and WikiHow both issued of that world. The next step will be for the
corporate matching challenges in Wikipedia/Wikimedia community (and
CC Newsletter - Issue No. 10
support of our 2008 campaign, and other FDL-licensed wikis) to decide to
we’re proud to say that we met both offer wiki content under CC BY-SA 3.0,
challenges ahead of schedule, resulting which we hope to see someday soon.
in very generous donations from Safe
Creative, $4000, and WikiHow, $3000. SSRC awards grant for CC license
We are grateful for these and all our research
corporate donors, whose support
helps sustain our organization. This We’re thrilled to announce that the Social
year’s fundraising campaign has also Science Research Center (SSRC) has
garnered exemplary support from CC awarded CC with a grant for the project
founder, Lawrence Lessig, who has “Assessing the Commons: Social Metrics
offered autographed copies of his latest for the New Media Landscape.” Thanks
book, REMIX, for donors giving $500 to the SSRC, George Cheliotis, of CC
and above, and CC-licensing musician Singapore and the National University
Jonathan Coulton, who has teamed of Singapore, will work with Creative
6 up with us to offer his unreleased (CC- Commons to research the “global
licensed) album on customized USB patterns of CC license use, as well as
flash drives to our donors who give $50 developing metrics showing penetration
and above. We weren’t prepared for and impact of open licensing, per
how popular the flash drives would be jurisdiction and globally.”
and ran out of our first batch in less than
three days, but we quickly ordered more
to keep up with demand. Supplies are
very limited, donate soon if you would
like to receive one.
Huge Milestone: Free Software
Foundation releases Free
Documentation License 1.3
The Free Software Foundation has
just released version 1.3 of its Free
Documentation License (FDL) containing
language which allows FDL-licensed
wikis to republish FDL content under the
CC Attribution-ShareAlike license until
August 1, 2009. Excepted from this are
FDL documents originating elsewhere
unless they have been incorporated into
the wiki prior to November 1, 2008.
Why is this news important? First and
Science Commons
NeuroCommons RDF distribution Upcoming release of CC0 Waiver
and release of the installer:
We are pleased that CC0 (CC Zero),
This is exciting news for NeuroCommons currently in its third beta, is on track
because it is a prototype of a modular to be released by the end of the year.
scientific knowledge base built on CC0 was conceived over two years ago,
web standards and open data, the beginning with the Science Commons
first system of its kind (of which we’re Open Data conference at the National
aware). The inspiration is GNU/Linux Academies in Washington, D.C. That
distributions such as Debian, which journey has since taken members of our
consist of a large number of open team to the Sorbonne, Paris, where they
software packages that interconnect gathered members of the CC community
using a shared set of interfaces; in the alongside leading legal and scientific
case of Science Commons, they have experts to discuss the problem of data
a distribution of open data packages sharing. From that discussion emerged 7
interconnected using a shared set of the idea that would eventually become
formal terminologies (“ontologies”). CC0. CC0 is a protocol that enables
Using this distribution you can build people to waive to the fullest extent
your own knowledge base for molecular possible under applicable copyright law
biology and biomedicine for personal, all rights they have and associate with a
CC Newsletter - Issue No. 10
lab-wide, or internet-wide use. This is a work so it has no (or minimal) copyright
first step toward scalable practices for or neighboring rights restrictions
making reuseable “data mashups” that attached to it. To the extent the waiver
would eventually cover all of science. is not legally effective in any jurisdiction,
The installer project started about a year then the protocol takes the form of
ago, and was released in September. a nonexclusive worldwide license to
The data packages themselves have exercise all copyright and neighboring
been in the works for almost two years, legal rights in the work. Specifically,
and are under steady development. CC0 is a tool targeted at scientific data
sharing. Factual data in databases
This project is significant because it are covered by many conflicting and
carries CC work on the legal and confusing copyright regimes throughout
technical aspects of sharing and the world. Even lawyers have a hard time
mashups into a scientific domain. Even reconciling all these laws. With CC0, we
after solving the problem of access to will make it simple. CC0 returns data to
data, there still remains the problem of the public domain and makes it “safe
using it. As it stands, data integration for science”— that is, free of restrictive
is widely acknowledged to be an copyrights, contracts, and other IP
enormous source of inefficiency in the that restrict sharing and reuse of data.
research cycle, and any contributions Stay tuned for more news on the launch
or improvements we make have great of CC0.
potential to make the world a better
place. Visit www.neurocommons.org for
more information.
CC International
Two new CC jurisdictions launched, the banner of “Free Society” at the
more in the works! Free Society Conference and Nordic
Summit (FSCONS) in Götheborg,
Creative Commons and CCi proudly Sweden in September to build ties
announce the launch of ported CC and bridge projects among their
licenses in Guatemala on October 23 respective communities.
CC Newsletter - Issue No. 10
and Hong Kong on October 25, neither
of which would have been possible Creative Commons and COMMUNIA,
without the dedicated hard work of local a growing European network
Project Leads and volunteers. In another
part of the world, Jordan continues to COMMUNIA, the European Thematic
discuss its license draft, the first Version Network on the Digital Public Domain,
3.0 draft available in Arabic. You funded by the European Commission, is
can follow the discussion here: www. greatly helping to increase awareness of
creativecommons.org/international/ Creative Commons throughout Europe.
jo. You can also contribute your own At a workshop in Amsterdam in October,
ideas, read discussion archives, and get attendees explored the theme Marking
updates by visiting: http://lists.ibiblio. the public domain: relinquishment
org/mailman/listinfo/cc-jo/. In related & certification, and the CC0 beta/
news, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia discussion draft 3 (see section: Science
continue to surpass the call of duty in Commons) was one of the main items
8 preparing to bring CC licenses to their on the agenda. We are also thrilled to
jurisdictions. Thanks to the generous announce that COMMUNIA will host its
support of the Eurasia Partnership first workshop of 2009 on January 23
CC Hong Kong: Image
selected from “CCHK Launch Foundation (EPF), Project Leads from with the European Broadcasting Union,
Programme (.pdf)” (http:// the three jurisdictions came together in bringing together many of the major
hk.creativecommons. October with EPF representatives and European public broadcasters to talk
org/wp-content/
CC Serbia’s Legal Project Lead, Nena about how to implement alternative
uploads/2008/10/cchk-
launchprogramme1.pdf) Antic, in Tbilisi, Georgia for a workshop licensing schemes, especially CC.
by Creative Commons to discuss the CCi license porting process
Hong Kong (http:// in their jurisdictions.
hk.creativecommons.
org/), available under a
CC-BY 3.0 License (http:// International conference brings
creativecommons.org/ together Free Culture, Free
licenses/by/3.0/). Software, and Free Content
Communia: Image from COMMUNIA Conference
2008 (http://communia-project.eu/node/142)
Creative Commons Sweden, Free
by Politecnico di Torino (http://www.polito.it),
Software Foundation Europe, and available under a CC-BY-SA 3.0 License (http://
Wikimedia Sverige joined forces under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)
Al Jazeera and Creative Commons:
groundbreaking event set for
2009
Creative Commons is organizing,
together with Al Jazeera satellite channel,
a special CC-Al Jazeera day on the
14th of March 2009. The event will be
followed by the Al Jazeera Forum, on the
15-16 of March, an annual gathering of
more than 500 journalists and media
experts coming from all over the world
to Doha, Qatar.
CC Salons continue to pop up 9
around the globe
We are delighted to announce that CC
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia: “Tbilisi Old District”
Austria and CC France each hosted their (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tbilisi_Old_District.jpg)
first salons in October, bringing together in the public domain
CC Newsletter - Issue No. 10
members of their respective communities
to talk about CC licenses and the shift
towards openness and sharing. Watch
for more salons to come, and remember
- anyone can start a CC Salon, no matter
where you live! Check out our resources
for starting a salon in your region: http://
wiki.creativecommons.org/Salon
CC and pop music in Romania
Hi-Q, the hugely successful Romanian
pop group, announced the first CC
remix competition in Romania. Hi-
Q’s unreleased song “Eu+Tu=Iubire”
(”Me+U=Love”) will be included on the
band’s upcoming album.
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/)
barackobamadotcom) CC BY-NC-SA (http://
20081104_Chicago_ IL_ElectionNight1265
Barack Obama (http://flickr.com/photos/
barackobamadotcom/3009093116/),
(http://flickr.com/photos/
Culture Commons
Barack Obama:
U.S. President-elect Barack Obama casual listeners, all the while protecting
CC-licenses election night photos ISGM’s commercial rights.
on Flickr
The Designers Accord, a community
Barack Obama and his staff have posted of more than 100,000 designers who
CC Newsletter - Issue No. 10
photographs to his Flickr photostream are committed to environmentally-
since early 2007, and their most recent friendly and socially-responsible design
set from election night, November 4th, practices, has launched an online
offers an incredible behind the scenes platform for sharing design ideas and
look at a historic point in American has chosen to publish all of the site’s
history. All of the photos are released submissions and materials under a
under a CC BY-NC-SA license, making Creative Commons Attribution license.
it easy for anyone to share and reuse. The Designers Accord Web Community
is a repository of case studies, resources,
CC licensing encourages openness, methodologies, and best practices that
sharing, and innovation in the have been created by designers and are
cultural realm intended for public use.
Culture Commons focuses most of its Into Infinity, the CC-licensed art and
10 energy on encouraging content platforms music exhibition produced by dublab in
and organizations to properly implement collaboration with Creative Commons,
and adopt Creative Commons licenses. is going strong, with regular additions
The result: myriad gratifying examples by artists and musicians from all over
of bottom-up CC usage that enable any the world. We’ve already seen some
and everybody to successfully achieve great remixes of the works, which we’re
proper CC integration, creating a looking forward to presenting publicly
baseline feature for future development soon - we’ve got an installation lined
of communities and laying the necessary up for CC’s 6th Birthday Party in San
groundwork for another potential Francisco on December 18. For now,
Flickr or Wikipedia to come along. we’re pleased to announce the debut
Here are some recent fruits of Culture of the Into Infinity Audio Mega-Mixer, a
Commons’ labor: soundboard that lets you create in-the-
moment sound collages from all of Into
“The Concert,” a classical music Infinity’s 8-second audio loops. Check it
podcast produced by the Isabella Stewart out on http://intoinfinity.com
Gardner Museum (ISGM) and released
under a Creative Commons Music SoundCloud, a new media sharing site
Sharing license, reached its 54th episode that allows musicians to post their works
and 1 millionth download in October. easily, share them securely, interact
While the content of the podcast - lush with other musicians in a collaborative
arrangements of beautiful compositions fashion, and check stats on song listens/
- is at the heart of why “The Concert” has comments, has integrated CC licensing
done so well, the Music Sharing license into its framework by giving users the
employed by ISGM makes that content choice to upload their works under a CC
immediately sharable by stripping away license or a public domain declaration.
legal hurdles that might otherwise inhibit
Aviary, whose mission is to “make MuseumPods has collaborated with
the world’s creation accessible,” has CC to produce the “Podcast Publishing,
baked Creative Commons licensing Access, and Rights Survey,” which
into their platform of live image editing will gather insight from museum and
applications. The site has launched with education communities about their
three distinct tools so far that help artists interest in Creative Commons and CC
create and share fantastic images with licenses, as well as attitudes towards
the intention of eventually creating a sharing in general.
new kind of market place to encourage
commercial licensing of their CC licensed
work through our new CC+ protocol,
which is basically a Creative Commons
license + some other agreement which
provides “morePermissions.”
11
CC Newsletter - Issue No. 10
AVIARY: http://aviary.
c o m / a p p s / w e b v 2 /
creation.aspx?u=meowza
&seoname=unzippedkitty
creativecommons.org
We rely on our supporters to continue our work
enabling stories like those listed above. Check it out
Donate:
http://support.creativecommons.org/join
CC Store:
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CC Newsletter - Issue No. 10
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Creative Commons was built with and is sustained by
the generous support of organizations including the
Center for the Public Domain, the Omidyar Network,
The Rockefeller Foundation, The John D. and
Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and The William
and Flora Hewlett Foundation, as well as members of
the public.
12
Creative Commons newsletters are also posted to the
CC Weblog. For back issues please visit
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CCNewsletter
Cover: “Photo text” © 2008. Lairaja. Some Rights Reserved. Except when otherwise noted,
this work is licensed under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
ph/ This remixed image incorporates Creative Commons Newsletter article (see
pages 3 to 5 of this issue), under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license; the ccLearn
logo; and Gavin Baker / naufragio (“The XO Inspires” http://flickr.com/photos/
naufragio/635759795/), and Alexandre Duret-Lutz / gadl (“Bookshelves” http://flickr.
com/photos/gadl/91539531/), both under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0
licenses (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en).