The Creative Commons Legal Database is a collection of case law and legal scholarship to help our users learn more about legal issues surrounding Creative Commons (CC) licenses and legal tools. This information has been contributed by many dedicated members of the CC Global Network and the CC Legal Team. It was shared in a public beta site, and we have been working to release a new version to finally graduate the project as an official CC product.

What did we want to improve on the beta site? First, we wanted to integrate Vocabulary, the CC’s design system, and through this unify the look and feel with other CC websites and applications undergoing the same process. Second, the management of the information by CC Legal Staff (reviewing and publication) was a cumbersome process, so we wanted to reimplement it providing a friendly administration interface.

Explore the new site

Now you can access the revamped CC Legal Database site and enjoy the smooth experience. Browse resources that aim to help you understand the enforceability and precedents set by courts around the world concerning Creative Commons licenses, including legal scholarship discussing the CC licenses and public domain tools.

On listings, you can search specific content by keywords or filter by topics clicking on tags. See details by clicking on the case name or scholarship title.

You can also contribute relevant information to the database within the site, a project that the CC Legal team will be rolling out in the near future. Once active, you can submit a legal decision or article with a link and other basic information. Many fields are optional but the more you fill in the better. 

In case of doubts, check the Frequently Asked Questions or contact our Legal team.

Also, as mentioned before, we reimplemented the whole site to make the information management easier by the Staff.  Although this is something not everybody can see, we hope the automation of tasks and a cleaner admin interface will help speed up the process of providing more information for the public.

What’s next?

There is always room for improvement. For this project, these are some points where we can still improve on a technology level:

• Improve the search─Currently, the search feature is quite limited on the terms that can be queried, which means if users make a mistake, i.e. exchanging two letters, they probably will not find what they wanted. Additionally, the search can be improved by showing recommendations when nothing is found.
• Make tables sortable by columns─Give more power to the user to explore and scan the resources. It would be nice to have features to provide more interactivity with data.

If you are interested in the process it took to reimplement the site, there is a series of posts on the Open Source blog that walks through it.

How can I contribute?

The CC Legal Database is an open-source project, so community contributions are welcome. You can find the code on a Github repository and report bugs or suggest new features there. Please read the contribution guidelines before doing so. We also have a Slack channel to discuss the specifics of the project, you can join #cc-dev-legal-database if you want, we will be waiting for your valuable feedback. Finally, please stay tuned for an announcement by the CC Legal team that will include a call for contributions.