Creative Commons

Creative Commons works to "port" the core Creative Commons Licenses to different copyright legislations around the world. The porting process involves both linguistically translating the licenses and legally adapting them to particular jurisdictions.

This work is led by CC General Counsel Diane Peters (email) with Project Manager Michelle Thorne (email) and volunteer teams in each jurisdiction who are committed to introducing CC to their country and who consult extensively with members of the public and key stakeholders in an effort to adapt the CC licenses to their jurisdiction.

A complete overview of the porting process can be found at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/International_Overview.

Completed Licenses

We have completed the process and developed licenses for the following jurisdictions:

Project Jurisdictions

The process of developing licenses and discussing them are still in progress for the following jurisdictions:

More Information

Our unported licenses are jurisdiction-agnostic: they do not mention any particular jurisdiction's laws or statutes or contain any sort of choice-of-law provision. This means that, though we have no reason to believe that the licenses would not function in legal systems across the world, it is at least conceivable that some aspects of our licenses will not align perfectly to a particular jurisdiction's laws.

Our licensing model includes three levels: the human-readable Commons Deed, the lawyer-readable Legal Code, and the machine-readable Digital Code or metadata. The International Commons project will port the Legal Code to accommodate a specific jurisdiction's legal background rules, while the Commons Deed and Digital Code will remain the same.

After the ported licenses are launched, CC continues to collaborate with the international affiliates to maintain the legal framework and to adapt later versions of the licenses. In this way, CC works to maintain an international license architecture and a network of legal experts around the globe.

Translating our videos

One of the best ways to learn about Creative Commons is to watch one of our videos. Translations are available, and if you are interested in helping us build more multilingual resources, please see our wiki page on translating.

Creative Commons Brazil Video In the spring of 2004, a documentary film crew followed Creative Commons staff to Brazil. This ten-minute video covers the launch event, the impact on the country, and the people behind the project. It's a great look at how a country adopts the licenses and what it means to them.