Creative Commons for Startups

Today in Cork we held an event on the theme 'Creative Commons for Startups'.

The participants were:

• Dr Andres Guadamuz, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Sussex
• Professor Joseph Feller, Business Information Systems, UCC
• Professor Maeve McDonagh, School of Law, UCC 
• Dr Darius Whelan, School of Law, UCC 

For more information about the background to the event see here. 

The slides are on Slideshare:

Andres Guadamuz - Introducing Creative Commons:



Introduction to Creative Commons from Andres Guadamuz

Joseph Feller - Open for Business:

https://www.slideshare.net/cc-ireland/joseph-feller-open-for-business

[Also: Joseph Feller audio]

Darius Whelan - Creative Commons for Startups:

https://www.slideshare.net/cc-ireland/darius-whelan-creative-commons-for-startups

Photographs are available in this Flickr album.

Event: Creative Commons for Startups

[Update: A report on this event is now available at https://creativecommons-ie.blogspot.ie/2017/02/creative-commons-for-startups.html.]  

Hosted by Creative Commons Ireland in collaboration with Creative Commons UK and the IT Law Clinic, School of Law, University College Cork.

Creative Commons (CC) works to offer creators a way to protect their works while encouraging certain uses of them, to declare "some rights reserved." This is a middle path between absolute copyright protection (all rights reserved) and pure public domain availability.

This event will discuss how Creative Commons can be useful to startups.  For example, startups can make use of images subject to Creative Commons licences in designing a website.  It is also possible for startups to utilise open business models with CC licences at their core.  Two case studies of businesses of this kind are provided at the end of this post – OpenDesk and The Noun Project.

Participants will include:

• Dr Andres Guadamuz, Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Sussex
• Professor Joseph Feller, Business Information Systems, UCC
• Professor Maeve McDonagh, School of Law, UCC
• Dr Darius Whelan, School of Law, UCC

Date: Friday 17 February 2017 

Time: 12.00 to 13.00

Location:  Boole Library, Creative Zone, University College Cork   

This event is open to all.  In order to confirm numbers, please register your attendance at
https://cc-startups.eventbrite.ie.

Funded by the Creative Commons Awesome Fund 2016-2017.

Creative Commons Ireland is hosted at UCC School of Law.  The Public Leads are Darius Whelan and Louise Crowley.  See www.creativecommonsireland.org.

Creative Commons UK – England & Wales - https://europe.creativecommons.org/affiliate/uk_england_and_wales

The IT Law Clinic at UCC School of Law provides free legal information to startups –
https://www.ucc.ie/en/lawsite/currentstudents/it-law-clinic/

Case Studies on use of Creative Commons in Business
(adapted from Paul Stacey’s articles at https://medium.com/@pgstacey  )

OpenDesk – www.opendesk.cc  - London

OpenDesk has curated a collection of digital designs for furniture from a range of international designers. Designs are Creative Commons licensed and can be downloaded and customized by users to fit their specific needs. Users can make furniture themselves from the design for non-commercial use in a do-it-yourself fashion. However, conversion of a digital design into physical pieces of wood usually requires specialized milling tools controlled by computers. OpenDesk has partnered with maker businesses all over the world that have such tools. OpenDesk and their designers make revenue when a user wants a local maker to do the cutting for them.

The Noun Project – www.thenounproject.com – USA

The Noun Project is a platform for visual symbols and icons. The Noun Project aggregates and curates symbols and icons from a global network and profiles the designers of each work. Icons and symbols are licensed under CC licences. There are currently over 150,000 icons available.
Users can download and use the icons and symbols for free as long as they abide by the CC license and give attribution to the original creator. Revenue is generated when users do not want to give attribution. Using the symbols without attribution requires users to pay. In addition, the Noun Project has built out a range of additional tools and services to support bulk use for a fee, integration of symbols and icons to apps using an API, and has released a Lingo app for organizing collections. All these additional tools generate revenue. Revenue is split between designers and the Noun Project.

[Update: A report on this event is now available at https://creativecommons-ie.blogspot.ie/2017/02/creative-commons-for-startups.html.]  

CC Ireland submission on EU Copyright Reform

Creative Commons Ireland has today submitted a letter to the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation concerning the EU's new proposed Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market as follows:



We are the Public Leads of Creative Commons Ireland and we welcome the opportunity to express our view on the EU’s new proposed Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market.

We have been involved in discussions at European level within the Creative Commons (CC) organisation about this proposed Directive.  As a result of that process, a joint letter (attached) has been written and signed by a large number of European CC affiliates.

We fully endorse the contents of the attached letter.

Some of the main points in the letter are as follows:

• The proposed ancillary copyright (“link tax”) would have a negative impact on online sharing and should be removed.  
• The education exception should be broadened beyond formal educational establishments. 
• The Text and Data Mining exception should be available to the private sector as well as to non-profits.
• Rather than a licensing system for use of out-of-commerce works by cultural heritage institutions, a better solution would be an exception for the use of such works.
• The proposal to require internet platforms to monitor content should be removed.
• There should be a mandatory exception regarding freedom of panorama. 
• A general exception should be introduced to make copyright law more adaptable to new uses and technologies over time.

In addition, we note that many of the submissions in the CC letter attached are in keeping with proposals in Ireland’s Copyright Review Committee (CRC) report on Modernising Copyright, published in 2013.  The CRC report was a progressive report at national level and we look forward to its implementation in due course.  It would be a real pity if, at EU level, a Directive were adopted which was not as progressive as our national review committee report.  

We also support the recent open letter by EU academics on the proposed Directive.  This letter is available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=2850483. It focuses on the proposed action in relation to content monitoring by intermediaries in the context of the so called 'value gap' proposal.  The academics ask for a public and transparent discussion on the interplay between the proposed copyright directive and the Electronic Commerce Directive.  

We are available to discuss any of the above points at any stage.

Yours sincerely


Darius Whelan   Louise Crowley

d.whelan@ucc.ie l.crowley@ucc.ie

Some Open Internet organisations in Ireland

CC BY SA Jessica Duensing from Flickr

I thought it would be interesting to do a quick list of Open Internet organisations in Ireland.

I use the term 'Open Internet' loosely, to cover organisations which promote openness and sharing online.

Comments and additions welcome.


Creative Commons Ireland -
www.creativecommonsireland.org.

Wikimedia Community Ireland -
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Community_Ireland

Digital Rights Ireland -
www.digitalrights.ie

Open Knowledge Ireland -
http://openknowledge.ie

Irish Free Software Organisation -
www.ifso.ie

Mozilla Ireland -
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/contact/communities/ireland/

Ireland's Open Data Portal -
http://data.gov.ie

Ireland chapter of the Internet Society:
www.internetsociety.org/node/511315

Maximising Digital Creativity, Innovation and Sharing

Photo CC BY Conor McCabe 

Our event in the National Gallery of Ireland on 17 January went very well and here's the blog post from the main Creative Commons site:

Creative Commons Ireland held an awareness-raising event in Dublin on “Maximising Digital Creativity, Sharing and Innovation” in January 2014. The event took place in the National Gallery of Ireland and was attended by 100 people working in technology, libraries, academia, galleries/libraries/museums, media and education. The speakers represented a cross-section of perspectives, and the event was an opportunity for CC Ireland to develop relationships with organisations such as the Open Knowledge Foundation, Digital Rights Ireland, and Ireland’s Copyright Review Committee. Eoin O’Dell of the Law School, Trinity College Dublin talked about copyright law reform and its impact on Creative Commons licences. The Copyright Review Committee, which was chaired by Dr O’Dell, published its proposals for change in Ireland in October 2013 (see http://www.djei.ie/press/2013/20131029.htm). O’Dell said his committee’s report had provided the first legal definition of metadata, which particularly aimed to protect the rights of digital photographers. The report also proposed that parody and linking should be allowed without any infringement of copyright, as well as a nine-point ‘fair use’ doctrine. Kristina Alexanderson of CC Sweden spoke about how she uses CC licences in her work and her work has been accessed by very large audiences as a result.

Alek Tarkowski, European Policy Advisor, CC, discussed open policies for user rights and freedoms, and highlighted a Polish project for providing open education textbooks. Gwen Franck, CC Regional Co-ordinator, highlighted the work of CC Affiliates throughout Europe. Professor David Post, of Temple Law School, Philadelphia, USA said there were between 400 million and 800 million Creative Commons licences in use today, and Creative Commons represented people “taking the law into their own hands.” He said copyright law had “run amok,” with copyright protection running for too long and being too wide. The event was chaired by Darius Whelan and Louise Crowley of CC Ireland and the Faculty of Law, University College Cork. Photos, videos and slides are available at www.creativecommonsireland.org.

Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/114281612@N04/
Videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/creativecommonsirl
Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/cc-ireland

David Post

Gwen Franck

Eoin O'Dell

Adrian Acosta

Alek Tarkowski 

Marie McFeely

Antoin O Lachtnain

Denis Parfenov

Kristina Alexanderson

Aidan McCullen

“Science, Data and Creative Commons”

Puneet Kishor with Darius Whelan and Louise Crowley
Picture:  Pat Rice 

At a recent Creative Commons Ireland talk, hosted by the UCC Faculty of Law, Puneet Kishor spoke on the topic of “Science, Data and Creative Commons” (click here to see the talk in full). Mr Kishor is manager of Science and Data Policy at Creative Commons (CC) in Mountain View California where he works on all aspects of the scientific information lifecycle to make it systemically open and collaborative.

The talk began with a brief introduction to CC for those who were unfamiliar. Mr Kishor outlined the vision of CC for the attendees namely; “Our vision is nothing less than realizing the full potential of the Internet — universal access to research and education, full participation in culture — to drive a new era of development, growth, and productivity”, and explained the “open by default” vision for CC over the course of the next 10 years. In outlining CC Mr Kishor explained that CC is in fact based on copyright. He stated that the 6 licenses lie somewhere in between ‘no rights at all’ and ‘all rights reserved’ and give users permission based on certain conditions. As to where exactly on the spectrum it falls depends on the combination of the “building blocks of licenses” used that CC has created. The three layers of the licenses were then outlined. From the perspective of the human observer CC can be seen through the various badges which visually  represent the licences. However, there is also the machine readable html code and tags as well as the associated legal code. Mr Kishor ended this section of the talk by stating that his own personal philosophy on CC is that it is “not just tweaking the law it is also tweaking the culture of sharing.” Essentially, he opined that the CC licences are part of a fundamental change in the way that society thinks about sharing.

In the second part of the lecture Mr Kishor discussed the latest version of the CC licences which were launched in November 2013. This new version took approximately two and half years to develop and are a product of crowdsourced consultation. The uptake of CC licenses was then explored with the speaker coming to the conclusion that there is no good way of measuring their use but that when platforms incorporate licenses their uptake increases dramatically. However, it was made clear that this use is indeed extensive (over 305 million licenses on Flickr alone was a standout statistic). A key development introduced by the CC 4.0 licenses was that the licenses are now finally appropriate for data sets. More specifically; “‘Makers’ of databases can use CC licenses to license sui generis database rights (SGDR).” As an explanation Mr Kishor summarised that; “This means that if you see a CC license on a database, you know how you may use the database without worrying about what jurisdiction you are using the database in or where the database was created.”   

In the third part of the talk Mr Kishor outlined some key elements and concepts behind the CC structure. He outlined the nature of the license and stated that one can only license rights which one holds. Mr Kishor further distinguished the concept of a license from that of a contract and concluded that a key point is that contract remedies do not apply. Interestingly he also observed that; “A license is a signal to the good folks, a guide to the unsure, and meaningless to the bad folks” and also noted that less open licenses do not necessarily do what would be expected. As a final point in this section Mr Kishor also noted that when using several differently licensed works in a new work, all individual pieces must be marked individually. This requirement presents obvious challenges however, until there is one standardised license it will be necessary.

In the final part of the seminar Mr Kishor outlined his work as head of the science programme. He highlighted the increasing popularity of text and data mining because of increased computer power. Mr Kishor expressed his plans regarding the setting up of various workshops to discuss the practicalities and legal intricacies of text and data mining. This area is clearly dominated by a tension between privacy and openness. The speaker proffered that instead of focusing on the importance of protecting privacy the benefits of openness could be communicated and that thus access to information could be granted through informed consent. This raised an interesting issue in relation to the use of personal data for a public good and hence the finding of an appropriate balance. 

To end the talk Mr Kishor expressed his desire to establish a network of scientists to increase awareness and to involve the scientific community in CC. He expressed his wish to appeal to the developing countries as the open science and open data movements are dominated by developed countries. The idea behind this move is that by involving scientists they may become advocates and hopefully may be able to make a constructive difference in the structures around scientific funding. The lecture ended with an interesting Q&A session that involved some thought provoking debate.  

Damian Clifford (UCC Student - LLM IP and E-Law)

Click here to see Mr Kishor's talk in full  (Panopto Version) 

Save the date - Maximising Digital Creativity, Sharing and Innovation - National Gallery, Dublin, Fri. 17 January

National Gallery of Ireland CC BY by
yisris from Flickr

SAVE THE DATE

Friday 17 January 2014:

Maximising Digital Creativity, Sharing and Innovation
Event organised by Creative Commons Ireland and Faculty of Law, University College Cork
Lecture Theatre, National Gallery of Ireland, Clare Street entrance, Dublin 2
Friday 17 January 2014, 9.45 a.m. to 1 p.m.
[Note:  the Merrion Square entrance to the gallery is closed due to construction.  Entrance is via Clare Street - the street with Greene's bookshop- only ]

Supported by Creative Commons Corporation

Supported by E Law Summer Institute, Faculty of Law, University College Cork

#ccIRL

Webpage –
http://www.creativecommonsireland.org/events/