The Creative Commons Global Summit is each year one of the key events for the open community. Next week, we are packing our bags and joining over 500 open activists and copyright reform advocates in Toronto. Communia has been founded largely by Creative Commons activists, who wanted to support the Public Domain and do something about European copyright reform. We share with CC the values of the (digital) commons and strive for a more equitable, accessible, and innovative world where creativity can blossom.
The Summit is for us first of all an opportunity to plan collaboration with other activists for the coming year. This year, the Summit program has a strong focus on copyright reform and we are excited to build together the Creative Commons Copyright Reform Platform. We will also contribute to discussion about global copyright reform, copyright and education, copyright and cultural heritage and users’ rights.
You can track all our sessions in the Summit’s Sched system. And follow us on Twitter for live updates from the event.
Copyright reform
One of most pressing issues in the European Union for us is the copyright reform and the progress around the DSM proposal. However, copyright reform does not only take place in the EU. Therefore we have dedicated multiple sessions to exchange information on the different challenges, activities and victories.
The World Intellectual Property Organization Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights is considering a possible treaty on exceptions and limitations for education and research. Members of the Copyright Reform Platform are invited to meet as a legislative drafting committee and ‘mark up’ a draft proposal during the ‘WIPO Workshop: Education Treaty Mark-Up’ (14th of April, Saturday, 09.00-10.00).
During the ‘Copyright Reform Platform Session’ (15th of april, Sunday, 16.00) we will examine what is going on around the world and whether we need to organise ourselves globally when it comes to copyright reform. We will dive in the same topic during the session ‘Advocacy campaign – sharing experiences, failures and victories’ (13th of April, Friday, 14.45) especially focussed on advocacy campaign and how to make talking about regulations and legal changes appealing.
Copyright and Education
Communia has been heavily involved in improving copyright for education through our project “Copyright reform for education” – Fixing copyright for teachers and students that aims at reforming the copyright system in the European Union, in order to provide better support for educational freedoms. As part of this project we have conducted research on educational licenses, worked on making a vocal education community and conducted ongoing advocacy activities.
During the CCSummit we will lead two session on copyright and education. Friday we will start the day with the session ‘Fixing copyright to meet the needs of educators – global state of play’ (13th of April, Friday, 09.30) in which we will discuss legislative process concerning copyright and education around the world.
The following day shine a light on different successes across the globe such as the 2nd OER Congress and the Open Gov Project action plans. What did we learn from these wins and how can we leverage these accomplishments in your country? Find out in the session ‘Leveraging Global Open Education Achievements + Next Steps’ on the 14th of April, Saturday at 14.45.
Cultural Heritage and Copyright
The COMMUNIA association is built on the eponymous Thematic Network, funded by the European Commission from 2007 to 2011, which issued the Public Domain Manifesto and gathered over 50 members from academia and civil society researching and promoting the digital public domain in Europe and worldwide. Up to the present day we work on improving copyright for the cultural heritage sector.
During the CC Summit we will discuss how Rights Statements relates to the CC licenses, how it serves the need of aggregation platforms like the DPLA and Europeana and how CC licenses and statements work together to allow cultural heritage institutions to describe copyright status in the session ‘Why do GLAMs need their own Rights Statements? Aren’t Creative Commons licenses enough?’ (13th of April, Friday, 09.30).
On Saturday we will discuss practical solutions for the misuse of Creative Commons licenses by Cultural Heritage Institutions(CHIs) in the session ‘What good are CC licenses if they are applied incorrectly?’ (14th of April, Saturday, 16.00).
User’s rights
Contractual restrictions, including contractual definitions that purport to restrict the extent of concepts of the law, are a threat to users rights. Only a small number of countries have provisions to make contractual terms that prevent or restrict copyright exceptions unenforceable. In ‘(Re)defining users rights through licenses’ (15th of April, Sunday, 9.00) we will present examples of such terms contained in educational licenses in Europe.
Open licenses create the opportunity for creators to communicate how they want their work to be used. Despite standard open licenses created by CC and Open Knowledge International (via the Open Definition), many organizations develop their own ‘open’ licenses. This poses challenges for users, because they can’t be sure that these are truly open, preventing us from moving towards a legally compatible data commons. The ‘State of open licenses – forging a path ahead in the open licensing jungle’ (15th of April, Sunday, 13.30) workshop is to discuss open licensing and how we can make progress so that the promise of being able to combine and share freely can be accomplished.
The Big Picture
The Open Movement has strong partners sharing the same objectives such as Wikimedia, Creative Commons, and Mozilla. As Communia, we work closely with all of them and aim to shape a network of collaboration between big and small organizations in the movement. We’ll be discussing the future of the Open Movement at ‘The Big Open: How do we make the open internet revolution irresistible?’ (14th of April, Saturday, 16.00 – 17.30).
Finally, one of the last sessions at the Summit will be a debate on “Creative Commons and the Value Gap” (15th of April, Sunday, 16.00 – 17.30), which will look at sharing, user rights and compensation schemes. It is a discussion that we initiated during our 1st Communia Salon in March in Brussels.
Do you want to join us in Toronto? Registration is now open for the Creative Commons 2018 Global Summit. You can register here.
