Post written by John Weitzmann

Creative Commons and the European group of CC Affiliates are proud and happy to announce the launch of the official Polish translation of CC0 version 1.0.

Translation is an essential part of our efforts to be a truly global project, offering legal tools that work for everyone regardless of language and origins of the respective legal system. Our tools aren’t finished until everyone who wants to use them has the ability to understand the license in the language they know best. The Polish CC0 translation exemplifies how our affiliates, in this case Centrum Cyfrowe in Warsaw as hosting organization of Creative Commons Poland together with other volunteers, are achieving that goal. Together with the Polish Coalition for Open Education, CC Poland had engaged in extensive analysis of the usability of CC0 under Polish law in advance of conducting the translation, this included engagement with the Polish Ministry of Culture and Heritage and the wider community of legal experts in Poland and abroad.

The Polish CC0 translation has passed the various internal and external stages of the standard process divised for this and is now complete. Further info on the public discussion that forms part of this process can be found here (in Polish). Key contributors in the process were Helena Rymar, Marcin Serafin and Katarzyna Strycharz, and further expertise and comments were provided by Krzysztof Siewicz and Adrian Niewęgłowski. Alek Tarkowski of CC Poland and Piotr Wasilewski presented on CC0 in October 2015 at a meeting organized by the Department of Intellectual Property Law of Jagiellonian University in collaboration with Creative Commons Poland, focussing on CC0 and the boundaries of copyright law.

Polish cultural institutions for a long time had been interested in CC0 as a tool, particularly because of their collaboration with Europeana. The team of CC Poland therefore expects a large increase in the use of the CC0 by libraries, archives and museums. We are proud to hear that for example the Polish National Institute for Museums and Public Collections (Narodowy Instytut Muzealnictwa i Ochrony Zbiorów – NIMOZ) in a brochure recommends the use of CC0 for digitized museum resources.

From now on, CC0 in Polish is available on the CC server at https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode.pl.