The Venezuelan 3.0 license draft is open for public discussion!

We welcome all those who are interested to view the Venezuela BY-NC-SA draft and contribute their comments this month. The next step for the Venezuela team will be to incorporate changes from the public discussion and to prepare the remaining five licenses for a complete Venezuela 3.0 license suite.

A huge thank you to CC’s Venezuelan Affiliate, Centro Nacional de Tecnologías de Información (CNTI) and to the CC Venezuela Team led by John Piñango for all their hard work!

A reminder to all that Creative Commons is wrapping up the 3.0 porting process. There will be a few more public discussion announcements as the last remaining ports enter this stage. The 4.0 development process is well underway. Contributions can be made at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/4.0.

This post is an adaptation from the COMMUNIA International Association blog and is cross-posted at the Open Knowledge Foundation website. Creative Commons and the Open Knowledge Foundation are institutional members of COMMUNIA. The mission of COMMUNIA is to educate about, advocate for, offer expertise and research about the public domain in the digital age within society and with policymakers.

The European Commission Public Sector Information Directive, which describes the conditions under which European public sector information (PSI) should be made available for reuse by the public, has been in place since 2003. PSI ranges from digital maps to weather data to traffic statistics, and there’s a lot of potential value in making PSI available for reuse for commercial and non-commercial purposes – up to €140bn. The EC says that increasing the reuse of PSI can generate new businesses and jobs – and to this end is planning to update its nine-year-old Directive. The COMMUNIA International Association last week released a short policy document (PDF) in reaction to the to the European Commission’s (EC) proposals, which the OKF’s Daniel Dietrich presented at the LAPSI conference in Brussels to a positive and interested audience.

To give a bit of background: in December 2011 the EC published a proposal (PDF) to update the PSI Directive. The Open Knowledge Foundation already covered the basics of the Commission announcement. The COMMUNIA document draws attention to two areas where these proposals still need improvement: firstly regarding the conditions for re-use of public sector information that falls within the scope of the Directive; and secondly regarding public domain content that is held by libraries, museums and archives.

Conditions for re-use of public sector information

From the perspective of COMMUNIA the way the amended Directive addresses licensing of public sector content remains underdeveloped and as such has the potential to create diverging and potentially incompatible implementations among the Member states. The article of the amended Directive dealing with licensing mentions “standard licenses,” but does not sufficiently clarify what should be considered to be a standard license, and encourages the development of open government licenses. Instead of recommending the use and creation of more licenses, COMMUNIA suggests that the Commission should consider advocating the use of a single open license that can be applied across the entire European Union. Such licenses (stewarded by the Open Knowledge Foundation and Creative Commons) already exist and are widely used by a broad spectrum of data and content providers.

Public Domain Content held by libraries, museums and archives

COMMUNIA is supportive of the Commission’s suggested change to include cultural heritage institutions into the scope of the amended Directive. Access to and re-use of PSI has been one of the issues that has featured prominently in the work of COMMUNIA. For instance, the EC’s amendments to the Directive are aligned with COMMUNIA’s January 2011 policy recommendation #13, which states, “The PSI Directive needs to be broadened, by increasing its scope to include publicly funded memory organisations – such as museums or galleries – and strengthened by mandating that Public Sector Information will be made freely available for all to use and re-use without restriction.”

The South Prospect of the Cathedral of St. Pauls / gallica.bnf.fr/Bibliotheque nationale de France / Public Domain

Including such content under the purview of the Directive will improve citizens’ access to our shared knowledge and culture and should increase the amount of digitized cultural heritage that is available online. But, while the amended Directive makes it clear that documents held by cultural heritage institutions in which there are no third party intellectual property rights will be re-usable for commercial or noncommercial purposes, it does not address the largest category of works held by cultural heritage institutions — those that are not covered by intellectual property rights at all because those works are in the public domain. COMMUNIA thinks that explicitly including public domain content held by libraries, museums and archives in the re-use obligation of the amended PSI Directive will strengthen the Commission’s position with regard to access and re-use of public domain content.

The full COMMUNIA association reaction to the EC’s proposal to amend Directive 2003/98/EC on re-use of public sector information can be downloaded here (PDF).

Arts Engine‘s annual Media That Matters Festival — now in its 12th year — is accepting new entries for short films! In addition to being a “premier showcase for short films with big messages” Media That Matters will give filmmakers the opportunity to connect with educators, activists, and nonprofits around the globe, helping to move communities towards social change. If selected, your film will be screened at the Fall festival and featured via a “multi-platform campaign combining online streaming with personalized screenings,” and made available under CC BY-NC-ND.

Submission criteria from the announcement:

Short Film: Films must be twelve minutes MAXIMUM; the ideal length is around eight minutes.

All Styles: We accept documentaries, narratives, animations, music videos, public
 service announcements, dramas, comedies, hybrids, or a style of your own creation!
 Creativity is always encouraged. The only guideline is that your project must focus on a 
social issue.

All Issues: Any and all issues will be considered.

All Ages: All ages will be considered!

The early deadline to submit is February 23, regular deadline is April 20, and the late deadline is May 1. Submit your film at http://www.mediathatmattersfest.org/submit. Send questions to festival@artsengine.net.

The Open Knowledge Foundation has published a nifty guide on the basics of Finding Interesting Public Domain Works Online. You can skim the guide in well under ten minutes, and it includes useful links and accompanying descriptions to online collections where PD works can be found, including Europeana, the Internet Archive, and Project Gutenberg. It also contains quite a few references to Creative Commons and succinct explanations of the relevant CC tools, such as the Public Domain Mark and the CC0 Public Domain Dedication. The guide, like all articles at The Public Domain Review, is available for reuse under CC BY.

Bibliotheca Buloviana (Ausschnitt) / Georg Daniel Heumann / Public Domain

As you may recall, the LRMI project is creating a educational metadata vocabulary that will hopefully plug into the Schema.org metadata framework to be used by the major search engines.

Last week, the LRMI Technical Working Group released version 0.7 of the LRMI specification and with it, began the last public comment period ending January 31st. Barring any issues that need to be addressed, this will be the version that is submitted to the Schema.org community for review and inclusion.

Please provide any input on the LRMI mailing list or on the web forum at LRMI.net.

In addition to our search for a CTO, we have posted a position for a Senior Accountant. The Senior Accountant will report to the Controller and be responsible for essential duties such as Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, monthly, quarterly, and annual financial reports—and more!

day in the life: lunch money / emdot / CC BY

The position is located in the lovely California Bay Area at our Mountain View office, open until filled.

Open Education Week 5-10 March 2012: Call for participation.

Please fill out the Open Education Week contributor’s form by January 31, 2012.

Join your colleagues around the world to increase understanding about open education! Open Education Week will take place from 5-10 March 2012 online and in locally hosted events around the world. The objective is to raise awareness of the open education movement and open educational resources. There are several ways you and your organization can be involved:

1. Provide a pre-recorded informational virtual tour of your project, work, or organization. This should be focused on the work you’re doing in open education, designed for a general audience. These can be done in any language.

2. Offer a webinar. Webinars are well suited for topics of general interest, such as what’s happening in open education in a particular area or country, or topics that offer discussion possibilities. Webinars can be scheduled in any language, 24 hours a day. Organizers would also like to feature question and answer sessions in a variety of languages and time zones.

3. Pre-record a presentation on open education concepts. Do you have an inspiring presentation about open education? Can you discuss the issues that open education seeks to address in your country, region or globally? Organizers plan to feature short, introductory overviews of open education and OER for different audiences, such as those new to the idea, policy makers, faculty, etc. Presentations in any language are welcome.

4. Create or share text-based, downloadable information. This should be information on the open education movement, in any language, appropriate to introduce the movement and its important concepts to a variety of audiences. Specific information on your project can be linked to from the open education week website.

5. Sponsor or host a local event during the week of 5-10 March. This could be a community discussions, a forum on open education, a challenge and/or a celebration. Organizers invite you to get creative with planning events. Suggestions and support will be available on the open education week web site, and the planning group is happy to work with you to create bigger impact.

Let Open Education Week organizers know how you would like to participate by filling out the attached form, also available on the www.openeducationweek.org website, or contacting them at openeducationwk@gmail.com. The OCW Consortium is coordinating this community run event. There is no cost to participate. Follow us on twitter at #openeducationwk and facebook at facebook.com/openeducationwk.

Please fill out the Open Education Week contributor’s form by January 31, 2012.

Attribution to OCWC Blog post by Mark Lou Forward.

mlinksva / CC BY

It’s a new year, which means it’s also the perfect time to re-start our search for Chief Technology Officer at Creative Commons! Mike Linksvayer, Vice President and former CTO, says,

“This is a fun job (I was Nathan’s predecessor, from 2003-2007) that offers technical, management, and communications challenges and opportunities for growth and impact… Now is an incredibly exciting time to lead the technology efforts of Creative Commons — be part of a great team, help communities yearning to share better and more effectively (e.g., see our new Learning Resources Metadata Initiative), and engage with developers around the world to help build a better future.”

See the full job description/how to apply at our Opportunities page, and please forward to all interested!

In November we wrote that the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) was soliciting comments on two related Requests for Information (RFI). One asked for feedback on how the federal government should manage public access to scholarly publications resulting from federal investments, and the other wanted input on public access to the digital data funded by federal tax dollars.

Creative Commons submitted a response to both RFIs. Below is a brief summary of the main points. Several other groups and individuals have submitted responses to OSTP, and all the comments will eventually be made available on the OSTP website.

Response to Publications RFI

• The public funds tens of billions of dollars in research each year. The federal government can support scientific innovation, productivity, and economic efficiency of the taxpayer dollars they expend by instituting an open licensing policy.
• Scholarly articles created as a result of federally funded research should be released under full open access. Full open access policies will provide to the public immediate, free-of-cost online availability to federally funded research without restriction except that attribution be given to the source.
• The standard means for granting permission to the public aligned with full open access is through a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.

Response to Data RFI

• If the federal government wants to maximize the impact of digital data resulting from federally funded scientific research, it should provide explicit, easy-to-understand information about the rights available to the public.
• The federal government should establish policies that insure the public has cost-free, unimpeded access to the digital data resulting from federally funded scientific research. Access to this data should be made available as soon as possible, with due consideration to confidentiality and privacy issues, as well as the researchers’ need to receive credit and benefit from the work.
• The federal government can grant these permissions to the public by supporting policies whereby 1) data is made available by dedicating it to the public domain or 2) data is made available through a liberal license where at most downstream data users must give credit to the source of the data. CC offers tools such as the CC0 waiver and CC BY license in support of these goals.

In the next two weeks, the U.S. Congress will take up deliberations on SOPA/PIPA, the Internet censorship bills. We’ve written about it here and here, and we’re writing again to help stop U.S. American Censorship of the Internet.

On a related note, Vice.com notes that the website of the author of SOPA, U.S. Representative Lamar Smith, did not properly attribute its use of a CC BY-NC-SA licensed photo (Mist Lifting off Cedars) by Flickr user dj @ oxherder arts, aka DJ Schulte.

Here’s the photo, with attribution (aka how we normally attribute photos on this blog):

Mist Lifting off Cedars / dj @ oxherder arts / CC BY-NC-SA

As anyone who has read the CC license deeds know, all CC licenses require attribution, which is clearly summarized at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0 (and all CC license summaries):

Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work.

Additionally, the complete license (aka legal code) is linked at the top of all deed summaries. We’re continually trying to help users understand how to properly mark CC-licensed works; to avoid mis- or non-attribution situations like the above, or for more info, see our FAQ and Marking best practices for users of CC-licensed content.

We have done a lot of thinking about data in the past year. As a result, we have recently published a set of detailed FAQs designed to help explain how CC licenses work with data and databases.

These FAQs are intended to:

(1) alert CC licensors that some uses of their data and databases may not trigger the license conditions,

(2) reiterate to licensees that CC licenses do not restrict them from doing anything they are otherwise permitted to do under the law, and

(3) clear up confusion about how the version 3.0 CC licenses treat sui generis database rights.

To develop FAQs to meet these goals, we focused on the following considerations:

• We cannot answer the question of whether and to what extent data and databases are subject to copyright as a general matter. Instead, we can arm licensors and licensees with the questions to ask to make their own determination.
• Complex legal questions about copyright law are not unique to data and databases. (Copyright exceptions and limitations raise similar quandaries, as does the question of what constitutes an adaptation, etc.) We should keep this in mind before we over-complicate and over-explain the nuances of CC licenses as they relate to data. On the other hand, it is important to acknowledge there are significant limitations of copyright law as it applies to purely factual data and databases, so CC licensors are not misled about what they get by applying a CC license to their works.
• We need to make clear that, unless the licensor chooses to delineate, CC licenses don’t distinguish between data and databases. All copyrightable content within the scope of the license is treated the same; the only difference is how the law operates with respect to different types of content. Nonetheless, if we over-emphasize this point we risk misleading the public about the practical application of CC licenses to data and databases.
• CC’s interpretation of how its licenses apply to data and databases raises intricate policy decisions for CC. Specifically, CC has to navigate the inherent tension between, on the one hand, arguing against the current international regime of overly restrictive copyright control and, on the other, advocating an interpretation of copyright law that maximizes proprietary control over factual data. CC has made policy decisions about data in the past after extensive deliberation with our community. Now, as we prepare for version 4.0, we ask our community to help us re-examine prior decisions in light of policy developments over the past five years. Please contribute to the discussions about licensing database rights in 4.0, as well as other related issues.

For those of you who have watched or participated in CC’s work in the data arena over the years, these FAQs update and now fully replace the original data FAQs published by Science Commons. While the law has not changed materially since those original FAQs were first published, Creative Commons (which now fully integrates Science Commons) has worked to clarify how its 3.0 licenses work with databases in practice, rather than focusing on the normative question of whether and how users should apply (or not apply) our licenses in that regard, which was clearly the focus of the earlier FAQs.

We hope this new resource will be useful to those of you grappling with data licensing and helps to clarify how our licenses operate in practice. We welcome your feedback.

A new pilot project between Creative Commons, Creative Commons’ legal affiliate in France, and the French collecting society SACEM allows SACEM members to license their works under one of the three non-commercial CC 3.0 licenses. Previously, authors and composers of musical works represented by SACEM (the biggest French collecting society) were prevented from using any of the CC licenses, as SACEM requires that its members transfer their rights to the collective on an exclusive basis.

This is the fourth major collecting society pilot supported by Creative Commons. CC maintains ongoing pilots with BUMA/STEMRA (Netherlands), KODA (Denmark), and STIM (Sweden). Each pilot provides the opportunity for members to take advantage of CC licenses in connection with their use under the terms of the agreements reached with each society.

The CC/SACEM pilot makes it possible for SACEM members to apply one of the three non-commercial licenses to (some of) their works. These works can then be shared (and remixed if the license allows derivative works) for non-commercial purposes under the terms established by the agreement negotiated with SACEM. At the same time SACEM will continue to collect royalties for commercial uses of these works.

Bernard Miyet, President of SACEM’s Management board, points out that this approach balances the desire to share music non-commercially with the need for renumeration for commercial uses of the works in question:

“This agreement shows the willingness of SACEM to adapt to the practices of some of its members, particularly as regards digital uses. It’s an advantage for authors, composers and publishers, who, if they wish to, can promote their works non-commercially in a defined legal framework, while retaining the possibility of receiving a fair and effective remuneration for the exploitation of their creations. I am proud to have reached this balanced agreement that meets the expectations of many creators.”

Creative Commons is pleased to see SACEM allowing its members to make use of CC licenses, giving them more flexibility to adapt to the digital environment. We hope that this pilot will be embraced not only by creators in France, but also serve as inspiration to collecting societies in other jurisdictions, many of whom still block their members from using CC licenses altogether.

More information about the pilot including a list of SACEM-related Frequently Asked Questions can be found on our wiki, the website of Creative Commons France and on the SACEM website.

Stay up to date with CC news by subscribing to our weblog and following us on Twitter.

Happy New Year! We head into 2012 with exciting new CC developments from all over the world.

CC Kazakhstan and CC Rwanda

At the end of 2011, we announced two new CC Affiliates from Kazakhstan and Rwanda. Led by Rauan Kenzhekhanuly and including Almas Nurbakytov, Nartay Ashim and Balashov Talgat, the Kazakhstan team is supported by Wikibilim, a non-profit organisation which also operates as the local representative of Wikimedia. The Rwanda team, led by Jacques Murinda and including Fred Byabagabo and Prosper Birama, is working in conjunction with the Open Learning Exchange (OLE), an NGO supported by the Rwandan Ministry of Education, which aims to provide universal access to basic education by 2015. We welcome both these teams to our Affiliate Network, and look forward to working with them as they develop the CC community in their regions. This brings the total number of official CC Affiliates to 72, the highest level since the project launched in 2002. Read more.

Ugandan 3.0 Licenses now open for public discussion

Many of you already know that we have begun working on the next version of licenses, the 4.0 suite. Even while this process has begun, we are finishing a few remaining, important 3.0 ports. One of these is the Uganda 3.0 license suite, which we are pleased to announce is now open for public discussion. This is particularly noteworthy, as the Ugandan license suite is only the second tailored suite from the Sub-Saharan Africa region to reach the public discussion stage (after South Africa). These new licenses will be useful to many Anglophone African countries that share similar copyright laws and legal histories. We welcome all those who are interested to view the Uganda BY-NC-SA draft and contribute their comments this month. Read more.

CC and the 3D Printing Community

With the exception of CC0, the Creative Commons licenses are only for granting permissions to use non-software works. The worlds of software and engineering have additional concerns outside of the scope of what is addressed by the CC licenses. 3D printing is a new medium which encompasses both the creative domains of culture and engineering, and often 3D printed works do not fall neatly into either category. The purpose of the following article is to explore the similarities between the community that has grown around 3D printing and that of the commons which CC strives to empower. A later article will explore problems with adopting CC in the 3D printing community. Read the article here.

In other news:

• Our campaign is still going on through January 15. If you haven't donated yet, now's your chance! (Thanks a million to those of you who have. We could not continue to exist without you.)

• The Creative Commons Board of Directors held its year-end annual board meeting on December 9, 2011.

• One week later, CC celebrated the 9th birthday of its license suite.

• We are still protesting SOPA and PIPA. You can, too.

• You can also apply for a 2012 Google Policy Fellowship with us. Deadline to apply is February 3, 2012.

• Or you can apply to be the CC Director of Strategic Partnerships! And be responsible for building and executing a comprehensive fundraising strategy.

• CC’s Russian affiliate Institute of the Information Society (IIS), in collaboration with the UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies, organized an international seminar and expert meeting last month in Moscow.

• Lastly, we'd like to give a shout-out to some recent developments at Mozilla: the release of Mozilla Public License 2.0 and a great publication called, Learning, Freedom & the Web, based on Mozilla’s eponymous festival in Barcelona last year, published under CC BY-SA.

Banner photo: Early morning in Almaty by Irene2005 / CC BY (left) Volcano by johncooke / CC BY (right)

Many who follow Creative Commons and its work already know that we have begun working on the next version of licenses, the 4.0 suite. Even while this process has begun, we are finishing a few remaining, important 3.0 ports.

One of these is the Uganda 3.0 license suite, which we are pleased to announce is now open for public discussion. This is particularly noteworthy, as the Ugandan license suite is only the second tailored suite from the Sub-Saharan Africa region to reach the public discussion stage (after South Africa). These new licenses will be useful to many Anglophone African countries that share similar copyright laws and legal histories.

We welcome all those who are interested to view the Uganda BY-NC-SA draft and contribute their comments this month. The next step for the Ugandan team will be to incorporate changes from the public discussion and to prepare the remaining five licenses for a complete Uganda 3.0 license suite.

A huge thank you to CC’s Ugandan Affiliate, the National Book Trust of Uganda (NABOTU) and the Centre for Health, Human Rights and Development (CEHURD), and the large CC Uganda Team led by Moses Mulumba for all their hard work!

Time-Lapse of a RepRap Printing Interlocking Rings by Jonathan Palecek / CC BY.

With the exception of CC0, the Creative Commons licenses are only for granting permissions to use non-software works. The worlds of software and engineering have additional concerns outside of the scope of what is addressed by the CC licenses. 3D printing is a new medium which encompasses both the creative domains of culture and engineering, and often 3D printed works do not fall neatly into either category. The purpose of this article is to explore the similarities between the community that has grown around 3D printing and that of the commons which CC strives to empower. A later article will explore problems with adopting CC in the 3D printing community.

3D printing is still very much a niche, and so a brief explanation is in order before discussing the culture behind it. 3D fabrication technologies are essential in contemporary manufacturing, and a wide variety exist. 3D printing generally speaks of what is called an “additive” process; in which an object is realized by building up layers of solid material. RepRaps and Makerbots – two types of 3D printers discussed in this article – are additive printers that typically print in plastic.

The role of 3D fabrication in our society is wide reaching, from being an essential stage in developing molds of parts for mass production, to enabling contemporary architects to produce novel designs that would have been impossible to construct only a few decades ago. It is a process that is so pervasive behind the scenes of every day life, yet entirely invisible to most individuals. Up until recently the cost of the machinery involved had limited the use of the technology. And so despite the incredible flexibility of the medium, it remains to be fairly obscure.

In 2004, the RepRap project set out to produce a low cost design for a 3D printer capable of printing all of its own parts. While the current designs are able to print some of their own parts – about 40% for the Prusa Mendel – the rest of the parts consist of generic standard hardware, most of which is available at local stores. The project has been successful in accomplishing the low cost goal – a RepRap costs about $700 or so to build. A large portion of why the RepRap is so interesting is that the schematics are released under the GNU GPL copyleft license. This means that anyone can copy and improve the project as long as they share alike their modifications, just as one must with GPL’ed free and open source software.

RepRaps are notorious for requiring some technical skill – and a good deal of patience – to build and operate. This is especially true with the project’s earlier designs. Makerbots were derived from the early RepRap designs, but were refined to be more accessible. Makerbot kits are available for about $1300 and are said to be only as complex as an Ikea furniture set. One can purchase a fully assembled Makerbot for about $2500. Widespread home adoption is still unlikely in the near future due to cost. However, these printers are affordable for small businesses and schools, potentially giving them a much greater social impact than their significantly more expensive ancestors.

Makerbot – the company that produces Makerbots – is a wonderful example of open hardware done right in a business. The free and open hardware designs from the early RepRap project made Makerbots as we know them possible. In turn, the accessibility of Makerbots allowed the low cost 3D printing community to grow rapidly in numbers. Because the designs for the printers were released under an open license, individuals in the community were free to design their own upgrades. Many of these upgrades were adopted back into the standard product design. Perhaps the single greatest contribution by Makerbot to the RepRap project was developing a stronger 3D printing community, bringing in new talent to the RepRap project.

If Makerbot were ran like an old-school business – one with clandestine trade secrets and which considers its customers to be consumers and not kin – the community could not have grown as it did. Makerbot’s customer base would have been severely limited. Similarly, if the RepRap project had chosen a non-commercial approach to licensing, it would not have been able to empower Makerbot to bootstrap the community as it did. This feedback loop between community and commerce is what powers this new medium’s ability to change the world as we know it. The phenomena observed here is not unique to open hardware; it is often seen at work in the free software realm, and can work well with free culture.

Thingiverse – a social site run by Makerbot – provides a basic framework for tracking derivative work from project to project. Some works on the site see little interest from other members. Other works spawn an endless tree of variations. “Screwless Heart Gears” by [Emmett] is a popular model on thingiverse which exists in one of the branches of such a tree of derivative works. Thingiverse’s framework assumes that a derivative work only has one ancestor, which is not always accurate. And some times the ancestor is off site. Judging from the comments, the root of this tree would be this video. From this inspiration, [Greg Frost] created a program – released under the GNU LGPL license – that generates similar gears, and his own version of the “Broken Heart” model, also released under the LGPL license. [Emmett] used this program to generate the “Cube Gears” model (released under the CC-BY-SA license), from which there are many derivatives by a variety of individuals. The broken heart model ended up going through a variety of revisions just as well as it spawned many interesting variations.

The broken heart model illustrates both the new potential for incredible works to be produced. Artists and engineers are able to collaborate to produce objects with both cultural value and dynamic mechanical aspects. The variations of the broken heart model happened candidly – people worked on it for the fun of it. The broken heart model also illuminates legal gray area. The legal dangers of this sort of gray are very well covered by the paper “It Will Be Awesome if They Don’t Screw it Up: 3D Printing, Intellectual Property, and the Fight Over the Next Great Disruptive Technology“, written by Micheal Weinberg.

3D printing is an incredible new medium which has great potential to change the world as we know it. The ways it can empower us are in line with the philosophy of the read/write culture that Creative Commons works to support, and we should all be very excited about this.

Congratulations to Mozilla on the release of the Mozilla Public License 2.0 after a two year versioning process. As Mozilla chair Mitchell Baker writes “Version 2.0 is similar in spirit to the previous versions, but shorter, better, and more compatible with other Free Software and Open Source Licenses.”

MPL 1.1 is one of the more popular free and open source software licenses, most famously used for Mozilla’s own Firefox browser. That MPL 2.0 is now compatible with the GPL, the most popular free and open source software license, is a big step forward for software. Why? Read Make Your Open Source Software GPL-Compatible. Or Else. which we link to in our FAQ explaining why CC licenses shouldn’t be used for software (except CC0). But the principle of lessening incompatibility among licenses is a general one, and applies to licenses used for cultural and scientific works, public sector information, databases, and more, as well as software. Thus one of our highlighted goals for version 4.0 of the CC license suite:

Interoperability – maximize interoperability between CC licenses and other licenses to reduce friction within the commons, promote standards and stem license proliferation;

This is a difficult goal, requiring long-term thinking and collaboration with other license stewards. We have a number of other goals for version 4.0 of the CC license suite as all; we hope the cumulative effect will make for a much better license suite than 3.0. Of course each license (e.g., BY-SA) will also remain similar in spirit. Shorter? We’ll see, balanced with everything else.

As the MPL 2.0 announcement notes, numerous people made valuable contributions to the development of that license. Possibly a first for a software license, even making the license look nice was addressed — something CC thinks is important, and another opportunity for people with different skills to help make licenses more useful. With a far greater diversity of projects using CC licenses, our need for community-wide feedback is even greater. We urge you to get involved in the CC 4.0 process.

Anya Kamenetz and Mozilla have released a great book called Learning, Freedom & the Web. It details many of the activities and ideas generated at Mozilla’s eponymous festival held last year, “a 500 person meta-hackfest that took place in a Barcelona city square,” says Ben Moskowitz from Mozilla. The book features participant interviews, project highlights, photographs and blog posts from the festival, as well as related content from across the Web reflecting on ideas around learning, freedom and the Web. One CC-related project conceptualized at the Festival is OpenAttribute, a browser plugin that makes it simple for anyone to copy and paste the correct attribution for any CC licensed work. Learning, Freedom & the Web is available as PDF download, HTML5 web version, or printed book. The book is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) license.

Early morning in Almaty by Irene2005 / CC BY (resized) Volcano by johncooke / CC BY (resized)

As CC headquarters starts to wind down for the end of the year, it gives me great pleasure to announce two new CC Affiliates from Kazakhstan and Rwanda.

Led by Rauan Kenzhekhanuly and including Almas Nurbakytov, Nartay Ashim and Balashov Talgat, the Kazakhstan team is supported by Wikibilim, a non-profit organisation which also operates as the local representative of Wikimedia. Wikibilim in turn is supported by the Government of Kazakhstan and personally by the Prime-Minister Mr. Karim Masimov. The members of Wikibilim have a great deal of experience in the open community, and are working actively to promote open knowledge and free culture values in Kazakhstan, with a particular focus on increasing the quantity of Kazakh-language material available under open licences. Those who attended the recent Global Summit in Warsaw may have met Rauan and Almas, who were enthusiastic participants on behalf of their team.

The Rwanda team, led by Jacques Murinda and including Fred Byabagabo and Prosper Birama, is working in conjunction with the Open Learning Exchange (OLE), an NGO supported by the Rwandan Ministry of Education, which aims to provide universal access to basic education by 2015. The Rwandan team has been active in the CC Africa community for some time and is particularly focused on promoting open educational resources (OER) and open courseware (OCW) initiatives in the region.

We welcome both these teams to our affiliate network, and look forward to working with them as they develop the CC community in their regions.

This brings the total number of official CC affiliates at the end of 2011 to 72, the highest level since the project launched in 2002. A good start for our tenth birthday celebrations next year — see you all there!

Get Creative! (video)

Happy Birthday CC! Today marks the 9th birthday of the CC license suite, as Version 1.0 was launched in 2002. Since then, more than 500 million works on the web have been made available under one of the CC licenses, free for the public to reuse, remix, or redistribute.

This year we saw CC adoption or policy integration by some major organizations, including Europeana, YouTube, Wired.com, the U.S. Department of Labor, national and local governments in Brazil, in addition to many others. We also published The Power of Open, a book featuring successful stories of CC creators sharing knowledge, art, and data using Creative Commons, and held a global summit for CC affiliates and community members from around the world in Warsaw. There, we kicked off the initial Version 4.0 discussion for the CC license suite, the public discussion for which was announced last week and is now underway. Currently, we are joining efforts with many other open organizations to prevent SOPA from passing.

I could go on, but I’ll stop here to say, Happy Birthday CC! To celebrate, watch the video we launched with our license suite in 2002: Get Creative! — and consider donating to our Annual Campaign, going on now! Remember: Your CC donation will be matched through December 25.

Picture of Светлана Князева, Дендев Бадарч and Юрий Хохлов during the opening of the seminar / Михаил Федин / CC BY-SA

Creative Commons’ Russian affiliate Institute of the Information Society (IIS), in collaboration with the UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies, organized an international seminar and expert meeting on the 6th of December in Moscow. As the CC Regional Project Manager for Europe, I participated in the event together with representatives from Creative Commons in Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine.

The seminar was attended by industry participants, organizations and representatives from Russian governments and federal agencies, including the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications, Ministry of Education and Science, Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communications, Federal Antimonopoly Service, State Duma of the Russian Federation, Research Center of Private Law at the President of the RF and the Chamber of Commerce.

IIS legal experts have prepared an analytical report, Use of Creative Commons Licenses in the Russian Federation (pdf), which was presented at the seminar. It contains conclusions and recommendations for future activities aimed at introducing Creative Commons in Russia, including discussion of potential legislative changes aimed at enabling the licence locally. It also contains an annex with information and results from the CC Global Summit 2011 in Warsaw in September 2011.

Other sessions at the seminar included presentations by representatives of each of the CC jurisdiction teams present, as well as critiques of the CC licences by local academics and the local Wikimedia chapter, with much of the discussion focusing on 4.0. The day finished with a special UNESCO-hosted session on OER.

For Creative Commons, the seminar was an excellent starting point for our future work in Russia, and the participation of Creative Commons affiliates from the CIS countries shows that there is a clear interest in working together in the regions. As part of its work, IIS will now start providing input to the recently launched Version 4.0 process, as well as continuing its work to raise awareness of Creative Commons with Russian authorities.

It’s very exciting to see this region grow; I’m very happy to see that there’s now a discussion around the upcoming Version 4.0, its relevance for Russia and the possibility for Russia to participate in the shaping of this important license suite for sharing culture globally!