By U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 2nd Class Dennis Cantrell [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

We’re happy to welcome the CC United States (CC US) affiliate to the Creative Commons family. The hub for CC US will be located at the American University Washington College of Law’s Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property in Washington, D.C.

CC US team members bring considerable legal and policy expertise to the table. CC US has initial plans to focus on education and outreach on CC licensing for open educational resources at the K-12 and community college levels. This area has seen significant activity in the United States over the last several years, most notably with the Department of Labor’s $2 billion grant program for the creation of worker retraining materials under open licenses. In addition, CC US will help improve the understanding of limitations and exceptions to copyright, including the US-specific concept of fair use. For more information, check out the CC US roadmap.

You might be asking, isn’t Creative Commons already active in the United States? The answer is yes. At the same time, there’s never been a formal CC US affiliate team like there is for the rest of the CC community. Creative Commons was established as a U.S.-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation in 2001, and the headquarters office has historically served the de facto US affiliate. During the 3.0 license development process, Creative Commons relied on a temporary relationship with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society to provide legal support for the 3.0 release, at which time the generic licenses were reworked to more adequately align with international treaties as opposed to United States copyright law. It’s become increasingly apparent over the last few years that interest in Creative Commons in the United States — whether in the cultural, education, government, data and other sectors — has grown beyond the organizational capacity of the headquarters staff. So, by formalizing CC US, we can empower the growth of advocates working on U.S.-centric issues around CC and copyright while simultaneously freeing up capacity for the headquarters office to focus on organization-wide activities and strategic opportunities.

CC US will host a launch party on October 17, 2013. The event will run from 6:00 – 9:00 p.m. at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C. Welcome aboard CC US!