About

Creative Commons is an international non-profit organisation that provides free licences and tools that copyright owners can use to allow others to share, reuse and remix their material, legally. Releasing material under a CC licence makes it clear to users what they can or cannot do with the material. The six standardised CC licences each allow material to be used in a different way.

Foundation of a Creative Common Chapters in Austria 2020

On 9.7.2020 the CC AT Chapter was founded via video conference. fairkom was the public lead until 2018, but governance was changed internationally. Alexander Baratsits was elected as Chapter Lead and Roland Alton-Scheidl as Representative to CC Global Network. So there is continuity in terms of the people involved. If you want to get involved or take over a role, please contact team AT creativecommons.at. With the foundation of the Chapter we can continue our active role in legislative processes, for example with feedback in public consultations.

History of Creative Commons in Austria

We started in Austria in 2004 with an art project: 1000 “Open Source Water Bottles” were bottled at the Hatler Brunnen in Dornbirn and brought to the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz when Creative Commons won the Golden Nica. Since then, a dedicated team has been taking care of licensing issues regarding content and and questions of how to free content from unnecessary copyright shackles. We promote, take care of translation and demonstrate applications of (digital) common goods.

The greatest success is not only the more than 1 billion works that have been placed under a CC license worldwide, but also Austria’s pioneering role: in their Open Data Initiative, the cities of Graz, Linz and Vienna placed publicly available data under a CC-by license for the first time in 2011. Up until now, more than 23,000 data sets are available in the Austrian Open Government Data Portal and more than 400 data sets in the partner portal OpenData Portal Austria.

The core group of CC Austria members thus have been dealing with copyright matters in Austria for years; submitting statements on reforms of the Austrian copyright law and advising on the use of CC licenses. In 2015, they hosted a German-translation hackathon for the CC 4.0 License Suite in Vienna.

CC Austria, supported by Chapter Lead Alexander Baratsits and Representative to the CC Global Network Roland Alton-Scheidl, will continue to address core issue areas through a variety of activities. CC Austria has already submitted a statement as part of the consultation process led by the Austrian Ministry of Justice on the implementation of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. The Ministry of Justice’s initial draft addresses the issues of text and data mining and offers exceptions for digital uses in teaching and learning. Unsurprisingly, the Ministry of Justice has adopted a rights holder-friendly position. For example, the draft provides remuneration for text and data mining for scientific purposes and the priority of licenses for the educational exception. CC Austria has submitted alternative proposals and intends to intensify the public debate on this issue in the coming months.

Join us!

We are looking forward to branching out further in Austria and encourage interested people to join us! You can find information on the new CC Austria Chapter website! Contact us directly at [email protected] or [email protected], engage with us on Twitter, or visit our public fairchat channel, which you can also just subscribe to as a mailing list. Chances are high that you meet one of us in person at the monthly Netzpolitischer Abend!

Links and more information