-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 6
2: Scope and Strategic Goals
The majority of CC-licensed and public domain works exist on content platforms hosted by third parties. The existence of the public commons as we know it depends on the terms and continued existence of these parties. There also exist millions of works intended for broad re-use on platforms that are not currently in the commons due to lack of CC as a licensing option. Content is not easily moved between these platforms, even where the platforms intend movement. Barriers to movement are legal, technical, and social.
Legal barriers include terms of service inconsistent with permissions granted by CC licenses and improper marking or attribution of CC-licensed content. Technical barriers include effective technological measures inhibiting functionality of CC-licensed works, such as download or reformatting of works; inability to change a license or preferred attribution over time; and a lack of machine-readable discovery of CC-licensed works. Social barriers include confusion about how CC licenses operate; community norms inconsistent with permissions that CC licenses allow; and a lack of visible engagement with CC-licensed materials.
Historically, we have mainly focused on the legal and technical barriers, and much of our existing documentation and best practices have been developed to address these. We've done great work, but because the framing was legal and technical, we missed opportunities to make meaningful social differences for platforms. We need a more holistic approach to improving CC adoption in platforms.
The Platform Initiative adds a social layer and lens to the legal and technical pieces of our work. Being invisible legally and technically because the licenses work like they are supposed to is great, but being invisible socially is not great. Being invisible socially means that no one knows what impact we are having or the current and potential value of the commons!
The Platform Initiative is central to achieving CC's vision for a robust, interoperable and useful commons, along with a powerful movement of creators, users and advocates for this commons. Above, we identified some of the barriers that exist to achieving this vision, but we don’t actually know all the barriers that exist now. We also don’t know what barriers may arise in the future, which may require the development of new tools we can't yet imagine.
The Platform Initiative will be two-pronged in its approach. It will focus immediately on 1) what we can do now to make a meaningful difference with our current arsenal of tools and expertise, while 2) anticipating the full range of possibilities enabled by our current tools and those tools we might yet build, or activities we might yet run, that align to CC's strategic goals.
CC's strategic goals are listed here. The Platform Initiative falls under two of them: Grow the Commons and Build the Movement.
The Platform Initiative aims to Grow the Commons by:
- Providing unique value to platforms and their users, making this value highly visible and understood, and demonstrating the difference we are making in the ecosystem.
- Solving existing legal problems that inhibit the free flow of content and sharing on and across platforms, and improving the technical discovery and reuse capabilities of platforms for a hassle-free sharing experience.
The Platform Initiative aims to Build the Movement by:
- Increasing user interaction with the commons by highlighting CC on platforms’ existing points of upload and use, and by providing clear choices for sharing under our tools.
- Fostering a vibrant community around the commons by inviting and highlighting contributors, connecting creators and users, and encouraging experimentation and creativity with CC-licensed works.
- Partnering with platforms that share content publicly and want to allow content to move on and/or off the platform.
- Helping platforms understand the possibilities enabled by CC through concrete value propositions, creating incentives for CC integration.