2005 - 2013
With the present-day internet speed and the unlimited data amounts, sharing creative works has never been easier. The creations of others are being downloaded, remixed and edited on an unprecedented scale. But the current copyright laws are not geared for this new way of sharing work. The solution is offered by the Creative Commons licenses.
Creative Commons offers authors, artists, scientists, teachers and other creatives the freedom of managing their copyrights flexibly. With one of the six standard licenses the creative decides to what extent his/her work is allowed to be spread and edited, and under which conditions. Providing works under a Creative Commons license does not mean that the creative gives up his/her copyrights; only certain user rights are granted in advance. That way, for using the work under the conditions stated in the license third parties do not explicitly need to ask for permission.
There are currently over half a billion works on the Internet that are licensed under Creative Commons. Millions of photos are shared via the photo sharing website flickr.com. Everything that is published on Wikipedia. Numerous academic publications and a growing volume of teaching material. All information from the Dutch Government on rijksoverheid.nl and on data.overheid.nl. Since the summer of 2011, a growing number of YouTube videos are also available under Creative Commons licensing.
Creative Commons Netherlands (CC-NL) is a cooperative project of Waag Society, Knowledgeland, the Institute for Information Law (IViR) and Creative Commons International. CC-NL aims to develop, promote and provide information about the Creative Commons licenses in the Netherlands.
In this cooperation, Knowledgeland holds the position of “Public Project Lead” and coordinates the public activities of Creative Commons in the Netherlands. The IViR is positioned as “Legal Project Lead”, and is as such responsible for the translation of the American licenses to Dutch law.
An up-to-date overview of our activities and what we focus on is available at creativecommons.nl. But if we must summarise our activities in a number of categories, this classification is most appropriate:
- Providing information about and supporting the use of the Creative Commons licenses in the Netherlands.
- Researching the application of the licenses in specific sectors and the existing limitations of license use.
- Performing pilot projects and experiments in cooperation with third parties.
As Public Project Lead of CC-NL Knowledgeland mainly focuses on informing and developing pilot projects; KL has made an important contribution to the realisation of the pilot with Buma/Stemra (Dutch organization for music rights) and the pilot with VPRO (Dutch broadcasting company). Furthermore, KL stimulates the use of educational material with a Creative Commons license. Please find more information about the activities of Creative Commons on www.creativecommons.nl
For more information, please contact Paul Keller (pk@kl.nl).
