The Board of Directors of Creative Commons (CC) is pleased to announce the appointment of Anna Tumadóttir as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of CC.  “The CC Board universally supported Anna’s appointment as CEO,” says CC’s Board Chair Delia Browne. “Anna has been a source of stability as well as a catalyst for CC’s future direction throughout her time at CC. The Board is looking forward to her leading the team with her experience, thoughtfulness, and commitment to removing barriers, improving workflows and effectiveness, and sharing openly as part of a robust knowledge commons,” continu ..read more

Our work on copyright has long focused on supporting libraries and archives in the service of their missions to preserve and ensure access to culture. Our 2022 copyright reform agenda centers those sorts of institutions (and more generally GLAMs) and the critical role they play in society. Among other things, that agenda calls attention to the ways in which copyright might impede libraries and archives who wish to make their collections available for research uses, including use for AI training in order to fulfill their public interest missions. That issue – AI training – has become ever more ..read more

“The Artist’s Father, Reading a Newspaper” by Albert Engström – 1892 – Nationalmuseum Sweden, Sweden – Public Domain. What are the EMFA’s objectives? The proliferation of digital services has exponentially changed the way in which we engage with information, bringing both opportunities and challenges. In an increasingly digital world, the dual threats of mis- and disinformation are a huge challenge for democratic societies, especially at a time when almost half of the world will hold elections in 2024. And as we look at how media consumption evolves over time, many more citizens are now consum ..read more

Yesterday, the European Parliament (EP) adopted the Artificial Intelligence Act  (AIA), the world’s first piece of legislation comprehensively regulating artificial intelligence (AI). Creative Commons (CC) has been actively engaged with EU policymakers on the AIA for the past years, especially as copyright issues arose front and center in the negotiations last June. In this blog post, we share a few high-level assessments of where the text landed across various key aspects impacting the commons as well as some thoughts on what lies ahead. Open source software We welcome the fact that the ..read more

“Irises, 1889” by Vincent van Gogh, The J. Paul Getty Museum is dedicated to the public domain by CC0. The J. Paul Getty Museum just released more than 88 thousand works under Creative Commons Zero (CCØ), putting the digital images of items from its impressive collection squarely and unequivocally into the public domain.  This is in line with our advocacy efforts at Creative Commons (CC): digital reproductions of public domain material must remain in the public domain. In other words, no new copyright should arise over the creation of a digitized “twin.” According to the museum’s press re ..read more

In February, we hosted a webinar in our Open Culture Live series titled “Maximizing the Value(s) of Open Access in Cultural Heritage Institutions.” In this blog post, we summarize the key points raised in the discussion and share a link to the recording. Webinar highlights One of the most common concerns we hear about the decision to go open is the impact on an institution’s revenue through selling licensed images. With this webinar, we aimed to shed light on those concerns and imagine alternative models that both support openness to collections  while preserving institutions’ financial s ..read more

+ Today, Creative Commons (CC) joins the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) as a new member. The DPGA is a multi-stakeholder initiative with a mission to accelerate the attainment of the sustainable development goals in low- and middle-income countries by facilitating the discovery, development, use of, and investment in digital public goods (DPGs). “We are thrilled to welcome Creative Commons to the Digital Public Goods Alliance. Their licenses and legal tools are pivotal for enhancing the sharing of DPGs, enabling more open, accessible tools to tackle global challenges. Similarly, Creati ..read more

Greetings to the CC Community! A lot of exciting and critical work awaits us in 2024. While I steer Creative Commons as interim CEO, I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself and share details of our key priorities in the upcoming year. I joined Creative Commons in late September 2019 as Director of Product and partnered with our former Director of Engineering, Kriti Godey, to lead our work on building CC Search. That project was transitioned to OpenVerse, stewarded by the WordPress Foundation, and subsequently I stepped into the role of COO. My background and education have spanned multip ..read more

We are delighted to share the latest version of our Creative Commons Certificate Course content, available on our Certificates website as an OER (open educational resource) in multiple formats. The Creative Commons Certificate program launched in 2018 to strengthen our global communities’ efforts to share open knowledge and culture. To date, we have over 1700 graduates of the Certificate program from 65 different countries.  The program was built for iteration and adaptation.  We regularly revise and update the CC Certificate materials based on direct feedback from our community of p ..read more

“Sharing Public Domain Collections CC-BY ?!!?” by Brigitte Vézina is a remix of “The Scream” by Edvard Munch (1893), Public Domain, National Museum Oslo. Licensed CC BY 4.0 Today, Creative Commons is releasing new guidelines for open culture: Nudging Users to Reference Institutions when Using Public Domain Materials. These guidelines have been developed by CC’s Open Culture Team in collaboration with the Open Culture Platform Working Group to investigate use of CC BY to designate holders of public domain collections, led by Deborah De Angelis and Tomoaki Watanabe, and members of the Open Cultu ..read more