Disclaimer/Heads-up: This is a short post connected to my work on the Creative Commons Workshop (aka “mini book report” or “homework”). It’s not meant to be an exhaustive copyright analysis, nor legal advice. Reader discretion is advised. Oh yes - this is also licensed under CC-BY 4.0 😃

For this final post for CC-Cert will look briefly at Greece, specifically with regard to Copyright and Creative Commons usage. Πνευματική ιδιοκτησία (intellectual property) or πνευματικά δικαιώματα (intellectual rights) are the Greek terms for denoting copyright, as well as the borrowed term “copyright” itself. The entity, in Greece, that “guards” the rights of IP holders is the Hellenic Copyright Organization (OPI) “ supervises the operation of the system for protecting the authors and the related rights rightsholders; safeguards the rights of the users and the public; balances the interests of copyright sectors with those of industrial property sectors; incorporates and adjusts in Greece the latest evolutions in community and international level, contributing in this way to the promotion of creativity and culture” [source].

Greece’s copyrights, similar to the US, are enshrined in the country’s constitution, more specifically addressed in Articles 2, 5, 14, 16, and 17 dealing with personal and intellectual property [source]. Greece is one of the signatories of the Berne Convention, as well as a member of the WTO, and a signatory to the WIPO Copyright Treaty [source]; as such adheres to the rules and regulations of that treaty. Just like in the US, copyright is bestowed upon the creator when their intellectual work affixed to a tangible medium [source]; examples of such media are books (physical and digital), paintings, drawings, music, photographs and so on [source].

Creative Commons does exist in Greece as an organization but there doesn’t seem to be a good way of discovering content that is CC-Licensed via their portal, or an affiliated portal. If you know where to look, you can find a decent amount of CC-licensed content in Greek. For instance, Kallipos is a repository of Greek textbooks geared toward a higher education audience. Kallipos also includes various learning objects such as exercises, videos, tests, and slides. OpenCourses is Greece’s take on MOOCs, and OCW broadly, where courses and course materials were available under CC-licenses. I consider this a hybrid OCW/MOOC platform because courses offered can range from an “A-” grade level (course notes and other text materials like exams), to an “A” grade level (text notes and audio lectures or notes), to an “A+” grade level (text notes and video lectures or notes). The “A+” level is typically what we see with xMOOC platforms. As of this writing, 26 institutions across Greece participate in this initiative. This initiative is supported by the Greek Universities OCW network. Another initiative is Photodendro, which I would describe as an OER Educational YouTube type of network. The network hosts educational OER videos across a variety of topics in Greek.

Finally, it appears that textbooks for K-12 (which are produced by the Greek Government) are now available for free through the ministry of education. Even though these books are free to download, when I was looking at the front matter of a random sample of textbooks I did not see any CC-licensing information, which means that this material is under traditional copyright! I think this is an area where improvements can be made. If the course texts (and associated teacher resources) become available as OER (they are paid for by public money after all) they can be used globally. One use case that I can think of are bilingual schools where Greek can be one of the language pairings. Making these texts OER would allow local educators to tailor the materials created to be adapted to local needs. I do understand that some of the materials need to be under traditional copyright (e.g., anthologies for language arts often contain excerpts or whole short stories that are under traditional copyright), but I would guess that some exceptions can be made, either by seeking permission from the relevant rights holders, or by crafting legislation for fair use (which apparently isn’t a thing in the EU).