This year marked the first year of a new strategic cycle for Creative Commons, and it began amid profound change.

The ground beneath the open internet continues to shift. Powerful technologies, driven largely by multibillion-dollar companies, are reshaping how knowledge and creativity are shared online, concentrating power in the hands of a few and testing long-standing assumptions about openness and access. To call this a David vs. Goliath moment would be an understatement. Yet, buoyed by a global community of advocates, creators, and partners, our small but determined team of 20 continues to stand up for the public interest and for access to knowledge worldwide. 

This year, our three strategic goals served as anchors in this rapidly evolving environment:

• Strengthen the open infrastructure of sharing: We will know we’ve been successful when a strong and resilient open infrastructure empowers sharing and access in the public interest.
• Defend and advocate for a thriving creative commons: We will know we’ve been successful when a thriving creative commons exists to solve the world’s greatest challenges.
• Center community: We will know we’ve been successful when communities leverage CC’s open infrastructure to share knowledge in the public interest.

As we begin shaping our plans for 2026, we want to pause and reflect on what we’ve accomplished in this first year of our new strategy.

Strengthening the Open Infrastructure of Sharing

Introducing CC Signals

2025 will go down in history as the year we kicked off CC signals. 

Building new open infrastructure is complex—and expensive—and these challenges are magnified by the rapid advancement and scale of AI. But in many ways, this is familiar territory. By applying first principles, practical strategies, and lessons learned from decades of advancing the sharing of knowledge and creativity, we are well positioned to help ensure that technological change strengthens, rather than erodes, the commons. 

AI systems depend on vast amounts of human-created content, often collected without the knowledge or participation of those who made it. This dynamic has concentrated power and undermined trust in the social contract of the commons. CC signals responds by supporting community agency while preserving Creative Commons’ core commitment to access and openness.

CC signals is a framework that helps creators and custodians of collections of content or data express how they want their works to be used in AI development. Its goal is to uphold reciprocity, recognition, and sustainability in the way human creativity fuels machine learning.

We’re still in the pilot stages of this work. After kicking off a public feedback period in July, we’ve been identifying early adopters who’ll work with us to shape this framework so that it is responsible, adaptable, and grounded in community context. Is that you? If so, please get in touch. We’re also exploring where elements of the broader CC signals framework could be integrated into emerging standards.

The Enduring Value of the CC Licenses and Legal Tools

We are able to do this work because of the reach and enduring relevance of the CC licenses and legal infrastructure of sharing—a digital public good dedicated to the public domain, powering the digital commons, built by you for you.

The CC licenses and legal tools continue to serve as critical infrastructure that must be actively maintained. Copyright law is not uniform around the world, nor are clear global standards emerging that clarify the application of copyright law to AI training. 

This year, we released guidance on using CC-licensed works for AI training, which we’ll continue to update and enhance as we conduct further research and track legislative developments globally.

We believe the CC licenses are more important than ever as a tool to increase human-to-human sharing. At the same time, we have a responsibility to navigate the tensions between openness for humans and legitimate machine use (like text and data mining for archiving and research purposes), and unchecked extraction by AI companies, who are taking without giving back to the ecosystem from which they derive value. 

Defending a Thriving Creative Commons

While everything we do involves not only defending, but growing, a thriving creative commons, we’ve been fortunate to be able to invest in two critical sectors in 2025: scientific research and cultural heritage.

Open Science

In the field of open science, we’ve focused on two primary interventions:

• Advocating for CC BY as the default licensing option for preprints.
• Advocating for the adoption of CC’s recommendations for better sharing of climate data.

Our work with preprints, initially supported by the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, will continue into 2026 with the generous support of the Gates Foundation. The project has run the spectrum from hands-on implementation of licensing options in preprint servers (like openRxiv), to deep dives with funders of scientific research to ensure alignment with their funding policies, to knowledge sharing through Wikipedia. We believe CC BY is the right choice for preprints. The sooner scientific findings are shared and open to interrogation and reuse, the more progress humanity can make.

Barring new support, our work on climate data will wind down at the end of the year, after three years of funding from the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation. This project began with deep community engagement to develop recommendations for sharing climate data, followed by focused efforts to support partners in implementing them. We’ve worked closely with the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and most recently we’ve formalized our consultation with the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). 

If there is a funder out there who wants to continue a targeted intervention for improved, uniform sharing of climate data from global entities, please reach out to us. We believe this work is absolutely critical so that all scientists and researchers have unfettered access to current climate data!

Open Culture

In the field of open culture, we’ve continued to advocate for, and show the need for, a global standard for open cultural heritage at the international level, through a community-driven coalition. This work culminated in the launch of the Open Heritage Statement in October of this year. 

Too many barriers still limit access to our shared heritage. Removing these barriers through open solutions is essential not only for cultural rights, but also for scientific discovery and the enrichment of learning materials. This work is a necessary precondition for UNESCO to adopt an international instrument, as they did with the Recommendation on Open Science in 2021 and Recommendation on Open Education Resources in 2019. Our shared commons of education, science, and culture are inextricably linked. We remain grateful to the Arcadia Fund for their multi-year support of our work in open culture.

Across sectors, our approach to growing a thriving commons remains consistent: building shared resources and developing best practices for open sharing, working directly with institutions to adopt open access policies, and emphasizing not only licensing but also provenance of data. Where we get our information has always mattered, but never more than it does today.

Centering Community

We’ve spent 2025 thinking about how best to understand, coordinate, and align existing efforts on community engagement. This includes the governance of CC’s global network, the sector-specific community groups we host in education and culture, and making progress on the virtual engagement spaces we host (join us on Zulip!), all to facilitate connections and knowledge sharing. 

All of this work is based on insights and input from you. This year, we brought hundreds of folks together for our CC signals kickoff and the launch of the Open Heritage Statement, and very much look forward to creating spaces for dialogue in 2026 as we enter our 25th anniversary year. Subscribe to our newsletter to stay informed.

Outside the legal tools we develop and host and the specific sectors we work in, we continue to keep track of key developments in the policy space and share our work each quarter. We advocate for a balanced copyright system, where noncommercial and research entities can continue to benefit from the commons without restriction. Through making comments at WIPO, to having discussions with the World Economic Forum, and working with UNESCO as a newly minted official NGO partner, at their Mondiacult conference, and in direct engagements, we’re carrying our message far and wide.

2025 Reflections

Many questions remain. We need to dig deeper into the role and function of the CC licenses by legal jurisdiction with regards to text and data mining for AI training purposes. We need to consider if there is a way to imagine conditional access as a necessary and fair part of our modern digital commons. Not to mention overarching questions around what attribution should look like in AI systems.

Like many nonprofits today, securing funding for research and development of new open infrastructure is an ongoing challenge. We also rely on sustained investment to ensure that the CC licenses and legal tools remain stable and reliable as the backbone of the open movement. For CC signals to be a meaningful intervention in a world rapidly shaped by AI, we need to move quickly—but we can only do so at the pace our funding allows.

As we grapple with big open questions and wind down 2025, we’re taking time to consider even more nuanced positioning and actions for our work in the year ahead. If no one shares, we all stand to lose. Onwards we go in driving forth access to knowledge in uncertain times. 

We thank each and every one of you for your advocacy and support in the past year. If you have the means to become a sustaining donor through our Open Infrastructure Circle, we’d welcome you with gratitude and high fives.

As we look back on 2025, it’s clear that the internet as we know it is changing. Technology-enabled access to knowledge should be flourishing. Instead, information is being removed from the web or locked away in walled gardens. We are experiencing a crisis in the commons, driven in part by current AI development practices. New systems are emerging in response—from content monetization schemes and licensing agreements designed to protect large rightsholders, to the ongoing morass of lawsuits about how AI services are using content as data. We are in the midst of a major reconfiguration of how we share and reuse content on the web.

CC Signals: A Refresher

It is within this environment that we continue to develop CC signals. 

We introduced the CC signals concept last June during a live webinar, and further explored the motivation behind this work in our report From Human Content to Machine Data. We also shared the outcomes of our open feedback period following the CC signals kickoff. Since then, we’ve been experimenting in partnership with values-aligned stakeholders and developing pilot projects to test ideas raised by the community.

The goal of CC signals is to help creators and custodians of collections express how they want their content or data to be used in AI development in ways that uphold reciprocity, recognition, and sustainability. Today’s AI systems depend on vast amounts of human-created content, often collected without the awareness or involvement of those who made it. This has concentrated power and undermined trust in the social contract of the commons. 

CC signals responds by promoting community agency while preserving Creative Commons’ core commitment to access and openness. Ultimately, through CC signals and other interventions that infuse concepts of reciprocity in standards and practices, we envision an open internet where participation is equitable, creators are respected, and innovation advances the commons—not unchecked extraction.

CC Signals: Where Are We Now?

CC signals is an evolving, values-driven framework—currently being tested through a series of pilot efforts. Our strategy is to explore modular approaches across legal, technical, and normative dimensions to encourage responsible AI development practices. This allows CC signals to adapt as norms, technologies, and standards continue to evolve.  

At present, two key implementations are underway:

• Implementing CC signals on Mozilla Data Collective: We are working in partnership with our friends at Mozilla, looking at how implementation of CC signals would work on the Mozilla Data Collective platform, which is purpose-built to enable ethical dataset sharing and fair value exchange. Our plan is to test various ways of incorporating some measure of legal enforceability into CC signals. We also hope to use this as an opportunity to test which CC signal elements are most popular and impactful, and which ones have the biggest impact on AI developer behavior. 

• Adapting the CC signals contribution element in the RSL framework: Using the framework of the ecosystem contribution signal element, we are working with the RSL Collective to embed the notion of reciprocal contribution into this evolving standard. As a platform that will let rightsholders set machine-readable licensing terms for their content, integrating the contribution element ensures that standards such as RSL provide mechanisms for AI developers to contribute back to the commons at the collective or community level, not simply a one-to-one payment. 

Beyond CC signals itself, we are also exploring whether updates to CC’s license infrastructure could further strengthen and support the commons in the age of AI.  

Looking Ahead

We are actively seeking expressions of interest from dataset custodians who are interested in participating in the Mozilla Data Collective pilot project. If that’s you, we’d love to hear from you.  

We are also exploring sector-specific CC signals integrations, particularly within cultural heritage and science. 

Ultimately, CC signals are incarnations of what we want to see in the world—more recognition for authorship, sustainable commons communities, mutual commitments to shared resources. We are focused on building a vocabulary and vision for the values we think a successful commons needs to thrive. 

This work is resource-intensive. We need your support to ensure this work continues to be led by public interest organizations. Please donate today.

As we’ve discussed before, the rise of large artificial intelligence (AI) models has fundamentally disrupted the social contract governing machine use of web content. Today, machines don’t just access the web to make it more searchable or to help unlock new insights; they feed algorithms that fundamentally change (and threaten) the web we know. What once functioned as a mostly reciprocal ecosystem now risks becoming extractive by default.

In response, new approaches are emerging to support creators, publishers, and stewards of content to reclaim agency over how their works are used.

Pay-to-crawl is one approach beginning to come into focus. Pay-to-crawl refers to emerging technical systems used by websites to automate compensation for when their digital content—such as text, images, and structured data—is accessed by machines. We’ve recently published our interpretation and observations of pay-to-crawl systems in this dedicated issue brief.

CC’s Position on Pay-to-Crawl

Implemented responsibly, pay-to-crawl could represent a way for websites to sustain the creation and sharing of their content, and manage substitutive uses, keeping content publicly accessible where it might otherwise not be shared or would disappear behind even more restrictive paywalls.

However, we do have significant reservations.

Pay-to-crawl may represent an appropriate strategy for independent websites seeking to prevent AI crawlers from knocking them offline or to generate supplementary revenue. But elsewhere, pay-to-crawl systems could be cynically exploited by rightsholders to generate excessive profits, at the expense of human access and without necessarily benefiting the original creators.

Pay-to-crawl systems themselves could become new concentrations of power, with the ability to dictate how we experience the web. They could seek to watch and control how content is used in ways that resemble the worst of Digital Rights Management (DRM), turning the web from a medium of sharing and remixing into a tightly monitored content delivery channel.

We’re also concerned that indiscriminate use of pay-to-crawl systems could block off access to content for researchers, nonprofits, cultural heritage institutions, educators, and other actors working in the public interest. Legal rights to access content afforded by exceptions and limitations to copyright law, such as noncommercial research (in the EU) or fair use exemptions (in the US), as well as provisions for translation and accessibility tools, have been carefully negotiated and adjusted over time. These rights could be impeded by the introduction of blunt, poorly designed pay-to-crawl systems.

Proposed Principles for Responsible Pay-to-Crawl 

Pay-to-crawl systems are not neutral infrastructure. It’s vital that these systems are built and used in ways that serve the interests of creators and the commons, rather than simply create barriers to the sharing of knowledge and creativity, and benefit the few.

We’re proposing the following set of principles as a way to guide the development of pay-to-crawl systems in alignment with this vision:

1. Pay-to-crawl should not become a default setting.
   Pay-to-crawl represents a strategy that may work for some websites, and not all websites share the same underlying concerns. Pay-to-crawl systems should not be deployed as an automatic or assumed setting on behalf of websites by others, such as domain hosts, content delivery networks, and other web service providers.
2. Pay-to-crawl systems should enable choice and nuance, not blanket rules.
   Pay-to-crawl systems should enable websites to distinguish between—and set variable controls for—different types of content users (such as commercial AI companies, nonprofits, researchers, or even specific organizations), as well as types and purposes of machine use (such as model training, indexing for search, and inference/retrieval). Systems should not affect direct human browsing and use of content, including by restricting translation or accessibility services.
3. Pay-to-crawl systems should allow for throttling, not just blocking.
   Pay-to-crawl systems should enable websites to manage hosting costs and other impacts of heavy machine traffic without walling off content entirely. For instance, systems could allow websites to throttle traffic driven by ‘agentic browsing’ or ‘inference’ undertaken by large AI models, while permitting other forms of machine access that involve far lower traffic, such as for research or archival.
4. Pay-to-crawl systems should preserve public interest access and legal rights.
   Pay-to-crawl systems should not obstruct access to content for researchers, nonprofits, cultural heritage institutions, educators and other actors working in the public interest. Nor should these systems block lawful uses of content protected by copyright exceptions and limitations, and other legal rights afforded in the public interest. The act of deciding not to abide by a pay-per-crawl system should not, by itself, convert an otherwise lawful use into an illegal act.
5. Pay-to-crawl systems should use open, interoperable, and standardized components.
   Pay-to-crawl systems should not become proprietary chokepoints or gatekeepers. We urge particular caution in the use of proprietary components for authentication and payment that might result in websites getting locked into a particular pay-to-crawl system.
6. Pay-to-crawl systems should enable collective contributions to the commons.
   Pay-to-crawl systems that only enable financial transactions between singular websites and content users risk creating a highly transactional future, where the value of content is atomized. Pay-to-crawl systems should support collective forms of payment, such as to coalitions of creators and publishers, and wider conceptions of what it means to contribute to the digital commons.
7. Pay-to-crawl systems should avoid surveillance and DRM-like architectures.
   Pay-to-crawl systems must not introduce excessive logging, fingerprinting, or behavioral tracking related to the use of content. Systems should minimize data collection to only what is needed to authenticate users and settle payments, rather than seek to follow content downstream or dictate how it can be used.

The Path Forward: Showing Up Where the Future Is Being Decided

We believe now is the moment to engage, to influence, and to infuse pay-to-crawl systems with values that prioritize reciprocity, openness, and the commons.

We welcome feedback and dialogue on the principles outlined here. Your input will help guide our engagement with pay-to-crawl systems and related initiatives moving forward, as well as inform the wider CC community’s understanding of them.

Thank you to Jack Hardinges for his contributions to this post.

At Creative Commons, we’ve long believed that binary systems rarely reflect the complexity of the real world—nor do they serve the commons very well. The internet, like the communities that built it, thrives on nuance, experimentation, and shared stewardship. That’s why we’re continuously working to introduce choice where there has been little, and to advocate for systems that acknowledge the diversity of values and needs across the web. CC signals is one expression of that thinking, and lately we’ve been exploring how those ideas can travel into other emerging standards that are shaping the future of the web.

Strange Bedfellows

That brings us to Real Simple Licensing (RSL). Publicly launched in September 2025, today the RSL Collective releases the RSL 1.0 standard. RSL is an open standard that lets publishers define machine-readable licensing terms for their content, including attribution, pay per crawl, and pay per inference compensation. This is an example of emerging technical systems used by websites to automate compensation for when their digital content—such as text, images, and structured data—is accessed by machines. We’ve been referring to these systems as pay-to-crawl. Think of it as the web’s attempt to answer the question: what tools are needed when bots become the biggest readers? If you are new to the concept, we recently published an issue brief that breaks it down in plain language.

On the surface, Creative Commons and pay-to-crawl systems are strange bedfellows. We have always been a champion of the open web and are concerned about a world where knowledge is harder to access. But we also recognize that responsible, interoperable systems can create leverage where none previously existed. Thoughtfully designed, pay-to-crawl systems may help curb extractive behavior by powerful actors while keeping the web open for everyone else.

Attribution + Compensation

In its early version 1.0 draft, RSL included attribution as one condition for machine access and reuse. From the standard: 

Attribution-Only License 

The publisher permits free reuse of the content on its site, provided that visible credit and a functional link to the original source are included. 

This is important as one example of more choices given to web publishers beyond the binary no access or all access. The inclusion of attribution also mirrors some elements of the proposed CC signal Credit. 

You must give appropriate credit based on the method, means, and context of your use.

Attribution + Reciprocity

But as the CC signals framework recognizes, attribution alone is not enough to address the very present power imbalances between AI developers and the commons. We need new tools that ensure the commons thrives and is sustained. 

We believe now is the time to act to infuse concepts of reciprocity in standards that are ready for adoption. That’s why we worked with the RSL Collective ahead of the release of version 1.0 to integrate a contribution component to the standard, which is described as:

A good faith monetary or in-kind contribution that supports the development or maintenance of the assets, or the broader content ecosystem. 

This is not about turning access into a tollbooth. It’s about acknowledging that extraction without reinvestment leads to collapse. There is a meaningful difference between paying a fee and giving back. One is transactional. The other is about responsibility.

When AI systems derive immense value from the digital commons, contribution isn’t compensation. It’s participation in the social contract that made that value possible in the first place.

Contribution could be in the form of:

• A donation back to a non-profit that stewards the dataset; 
• Support for the broader ecosystem that sustains the work;
• Openly licensing the model, or sharing a modified dataset back to the original steward;
• Or other models we haven’t yet imagined.

A Big Step: Many More to Come

The future of the web is being negotiated right now, in standards documents, in product decisions, and in design choices that shape how power flows online. Collaboration is vital if we’re going to achieve a systems-level response to rebalance power in the digital commons. 

There’s much more work to be done, particularly in developing what adherence to contribution means in different contexts. But we’re excited about where this is going. 

Our door is open. We welcome ideas, critiques, and collaboration. If you have ideas, consider engaging with us on LinkedIn or joining CC’s community platform on Zulip. 

Our year-end fundraising campaign is happening right now. While you are here, please consider making a donation to support this work.

It’s never easy to say goodbye to someone who has been such a steady and inspiring presence in our community. After almost 15 years of dedicated service, Dr. Cable Green, our Director of Open Education, will be moving on from Creative Commons (CC).  

Education is Hope. By Cable Green at the United Nations. CC BY 4.0

During his tenure at CC, Cable served as Interim CEO, Director of Open Knowledge, and later returned to his original and most enduring passion – leading CC’s global efforts in open education. For many in both the open education sector and the CC community, Cable needs no introduction. His leadership, vision, and passion for access to knowledge have left an indelible mark on CC and the broader open movement.

A tireless advocate for barrier-free access to information, Cable has been a leading voice on open education worldwide – delivering dozens of keynotes, presentations, and workshops that have inspired educators, policymakers, and learners alike. He is equally celebrated as a generous mentor, offering thoughtful feedback and guidance on open education initiatives across the globe. While his contributions are too numerous to list, one thing is certain: Cable’s unwavering belief in the power of openness to solve the world’s greatest challenges has created lasting, real-world impact.

Over the years, Cable has helped craft numerous government, foundation, and university policies that ensure publicly funded educational resources are freely and openly available to all. Among many examples, he supported the U.S. Department of Labor and 800 community colleges in developing open educational resources (OER) through the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training program.

Cable also co-created cornerstone CC initiatives including the Open Course Library, CC Certificate, CC Consulting Program, Open Education Platform, Institute for Open Leadership, Open Climate Campaign, Open Climate Data Project, and Open Preprints Project – collectively helping raise over $12 million to advance CC’s mission.

A respected collaborator and coalition builder, Cable has worked with partners worldwide to shape the UNESCO Recommendations on OER and Open Science, the Digital Public Goods Standard, Open Up Resources, and the Network of Open Organizations.

“It has been a genuine honor to work alongside an amazing CC team, our global partners, and the open education community to identify complex problems where education is a critical part of the solution, and then opening that knowledge to help solve the problem. Together we’ve saved students billions of dollars, empowered teachers and learners through open pedagogies, and expanded access to education around the world,” shared Cable.

“On behalf of the entire CC community, I want to thank Cable for his dedication to advancing CC’s mission through the power of open education. I count myself among the many colleagues who have had the privilege of learning from his expertise. It’s not often we can so clearly see the global change one person has helped create, but Cable’s legacy in open education is both tangible and enduring,” says Anna Tumadóttir, CEO of Creative Commons. 

Please join us in wishing Cable farewell! Thankfully, as Cable departs for his next adventure, this isn’t goodbye. He will join the CC Advisory Council and be available to CC as needed. To stay connected, you can find him on LinkedIn.

Open Heritage’s Untapped Potential

From sparking creativity to fueling education and scientific research, open heritage generates positive ripple effects across society. Yet, only about 1% of cultural heritage institutions openly share their heritage collections. Incorrect copyright claims over digital reproductions, technological locks, prohibitive access fees, lack of sustainable infrastructure, and inconsistent legal frameworks are just some of the barriers that stand in the way of equitable access to heritage. The result is fragmented and fragile access that prevents people from engaging with heritage, our shared resource. 

A Momentous Contribution to UNESCO’s Efforts

This launch builds on Creative Commons’ long-standing collaboration with UNESCO, as formalized by our recent recognition as an official partner to UNESCO (consultative status). It is also an answer to the call made by UNESCO at MONDIACULT 2025 — the world’s largest conference on cultural policies — for culture to be treated as a global priority amid mounting geopolitical divides and multiple crises.

Why Sign the Statement?

Signing the Open Heritage Statement is more than symbolic; it is a way for signatories to demonstrate shared commitment, signal broad sectoral consensus to policymakers, and strengthen a global, community-driven movement. Each signature helps build momentum toward an international framework to ensure equitable access to heritage in the digital environment.

Open Heritage Statement Launch Webinar

Creative Commons will host a webinar to mark the launch of the Statement and brief participants on its objectives, impact, and opportunities for engagement. 

Date: 14 October 2025
Time: 14:00 UTC
Register here 

Take Action

By signing the Open Heritage Statement today, you add your voice to a global call for equitable access to heritage, helping to lower barriers, stimulate creativity, and preserve our cultural memory for future generations.

Learn more about the Open Heritage Statement.

The (Under-Realized) Potential of Open Heritage

To understand our present, we need to know our past: our memories, our history, our heritage. Over the last two decades, pioneers of open heritage — institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Rijksmuseum, Paris Musées, the Smithsonian, and many more — have shown the world the value of sharing digitized public domain collections openly. Taken together, these successes give us a glimpse of what is possible, from sparking new narratives across diverse contexts, nurturing collective memory, advancing digital equity, and inviting people to transform yesterday’s heritage into today’s creativity and tomorrow’s innovation. Their leadership inspired a vision: a future where the world’s heritage is equitably accessible by everyone. 

But these success stories of open heritage remain the exception, not the rule. The vast majority of CHIs still face serious obstacles to openly sharing their digital collections and lack the support to open up confidently, be it in Chile, India, Nigeria, or Brazil. Legal uncertainty leading to copyright “anxiety,” fear of lost revenue, resource constraints, economic questions around open licensing, and misconceptions about what “open” really means continue to hold many back. Above all, the absence of international guidance encouraging open policies, tools, and practices puts our shared heritage at risk of being locked away forever. The result is a fragmented global landscape with pockets of equitable access within vast stretches of inaccessibility.

The numbers speak for themselves. The Open GLAM Survey, which has gathered data from nearly 1,700 CHIs across 55 countries, documents close to 100 million openly licensed or public domain digital objects. This reflects the fact that only ~1% of the world’s CHIs have open policies. 

The potential of open heritage is enormous, but without a shared international normative framework to support CHIs in going open, this potential will remain unrealized. The need for alignment, across regions, institutions, and states, is urgent.

From Vision to Coalition — A Brief History of TAROCH

Recognizing this gap, CC began convening the global open culture community around a simple but powerful belief: when people can equitably connect with heritage in the digital environment, they can learn from it, build upon it, and keep it alive for future generations. With support from the Arcadia Fund starting in 2021, we published An Agenda for Copyright Reform (2022) and a Call to Action to Policymakers. We organized a Roundtable in Lisbon (2023) to assess global challenges and explore the need for a new UNESCO instrument for open culture. The turning point came in Lisbon in May 2024. Nearly 50 experts, activists, and institutional leaders gathered for the Open Culture Strategic Workshop and together charted a new path toward the official launch of the TAROCH Coalition in November 2024. 

TAROCH is now an international coalition of more than 60 organizations across 25 countries. Membership is extensive and diverse, reflecting the global nature of this endeavor. Through international working groups and local advocacy circles, Coalition members collaborate on targeted policy engagement to empower CHIs with shared open standards and clear opportunities for international cooperation.

The Opportunity of a UNESCO Partnership

In August 2025, CC became an official UNESCO partner, a formal recognition of the track record of collaboration between the two organizations over two decades in the fields of openness and education, science, culture, and communication. Now more than ever, CC, TAROCH, and UNESCO are uniquely positioned to set open standards at the international level. In fact, UNESCO has demonstrated a strong commitment to openness through multiple instruments, notably the 2019 Recommendation on Open Educational Resources and the 2021 Recommendation on Open Science. By 2023, 61 Member States had implemented the OER Recommendation, and the number of countries with open science policies had almost doubled. The evidence is in plain sight: UNESCO Recommendations lead to positive change. 

A Recommendation on Open Heritage, or other standard-setting instrument, would be the next logical step, complementing the existing instruments and catalyzing global cooperation on a key priority for UNESCO: ensuring equitable access to heritage in the digital environment to activate the universal right to participate in cultural life. 

What’s Next? Introducing the Open Heritage Statement

Over the past months, the TAROCH Coalition has collaboratively drafted the Open Heritage Statement, turning local efforts into a global call. The Statement is a shared articulation of values, challenges, and priorities to close the global gap in access to heritage. It consists of two parts: a Preamble, situating the issues in context and outlining values and principles; and Articles, proposing policy solutions to lower barriers and unlock the potential of open heritage.

In October, we will publish the Open Heritage Statement and invite governments, institutions, organizations, policymakers, and advocates to sign or support the Statement. By joining our voices under the banner of the Open Heritage Statement, we can raise awareness about the importance of open heritage as a key means to turn the vision of the 2022 Mondiacult Declaration of culture as a global public good into action. 

👉 The Statement will be launched publicly during a Creative Commons webinar on Tuesday, 14 October at 14:00 UTC. Register today. 

👉 If your institution or organization would like to be part of a global movement that is helping shape the future of open heritage, apply to join the TAROCH Coalition.

Why Zulip?

• Aligned values: The Zulip project values resonate with Creative Commons’ commitments to openness, transparency, and community-driven spaces.
• Better features for collaboration: Zulip offers a broad set of tools that make it easier to coordinate across time zones and languages. Its powerful threading system is especially suited to global, distributed communities.
• Stronger permissions: Zulip provides more flexible roles and permissions, which will allow for better community moderation. 

What This Means for You

Moving to Zulip is not just a platform change—we are also taking this opportunity to strengthen our outreach and engagement process. We’d like to warmly invite everyone who sees themselves as part of the CC global community to join us on Zulip. This is the first step in fostering broader community collaboration within all of CC’s community spaces. 

Join now! To join CC on Zulip, please complete the Creative Commons Community Intake Form. This form will help us ensure a safe, transparent, and welcoming environment.

How the Process Works

Step 1 – Request
When you fill out the Creative Commons Community Intake Form, you’ll be asked to:

• Verify you’re a real human
• Confirm your interest/engagement in the open movement
• Agree to CC’s Code of Conduct
• You may also choose to opt in to our community mailing list

Step 2 – Review

• Applications will be reviewed by the CC team to ensure they meet the above criteria.
• Approved applicants will be added to our community list, Zulip (if requested), and the mailing lists (if requested).
• Applications that don’t meet the criteria will not be approved.

Transitioning from Slack to Zulip

Current CC Slack users are asked to make the move to Zulip by filling out the intake form. If you are not currently on the CC Slack, no problem! Simply fill out the intake form so that you can join the CC community on Zulip. 

Timeline

• Week of September 15: Zulip registration is now open. CC Slack signup is closed and redirected to the Zulip signup. 
• October 17: CC Slack is shut down.

What’s Next

As we’ve been discussing on the blog, the current Creative Commons Global Network (CCGN) membership process has been dormant for a number of years. We want to ensure that our community spaces are welcoming to everyone who sees themselves as part of the CC global community, regardless of existing CCGN membership. This is the first step of many!

We’re excited to take this step together. Zulip will give us a sustainable, values-aligned space to connect, collaborate, and grow as a community. If you are new to Zulip, you can get started with this helpful beginner’s guide. 

Join Zulip now and share what you’ve been working on in the open movement! 

Open Heritage and Contemporary Creativity

Apollo or Venus in your living room? This is the proposition made by Denmark’s Statens Museum for Kunst (SMK) upon openly sharing its vast collection of 3D models of sculptures. With SMK’s open files of digital reproductions of sculptures in the public domain, anyone can 3D-print a sculpture of Roman gods Apollo or Venus and use it to create a new object to decorate the living room, among many creative endeavors.

In this blog post, we highlight some examples of the benefits of open heritage and show what becomes possible when barriers are removed and heritage in the public domain is openly accessible.

When cultural heritage institutions (CHIs) like the SMK openly share their public domain collections in the digital environment, their mission to make heritage available to all really comes alive. Open heritage can prompt curiosity, unlock creativity, spark imagination, spur artistic experimentation, and nurture the contemporary art scene. It allows artists, creators, designers and creative entrepreneurs to have a fresh take on our shared heritage. Open heritage is essential if we want people to be able to interrogate humanity’s cultural record, participate in cultural life, and enjoy the arts without barriers and on equitable terms.

Europeana’s GIF IT UP annual competition is another great example of creative remixing and storytelling made possible by open heritage. Every year in October, people from around the globe create new GIFs from openly licensed heritage material and share them with the world.

 

It is also fascinating to see artist Amy Karle leveraging Smithsonian 3D scans of a fossilized Triceratops skeleton (the first “digital dinosaur”) to create sculptures consisting of “novel evolutionary forms based upon extinct species to explore hypothetical evolutions through technological regeneration.” And for the romantics among us, Germany’s Coding da Vinci produced a playful “dating app” matching users with portrait paintings digitized by the Augustinermuseum (Städtische Museen Freiburg).

Open Heritage’s Ripple Effect Across Society

Increased creativity is not the only benefit of open heritage. In particular, open heritage can also contribute to heritage preservation and increased visibility. For example, in 2021, the Wellcome Collection in the UK announced its images had passed 1.5 billion views on Wikipedia. Open heritage also helps enhance student engagement and learning: the Wikipedia in School project in Denmark integrated open heritage resources directly into school curricula, making education more interactive and culturally relevant. It can also accelerate scientific research to address global challenges like climate change. CHIs can amplify the scientific value of their heritage collection and foster cross-border collaboration among researchers. The butterfly story mentioned in part 1 of this series is a clear illustration of the value of open heritage for scientific progress. 

From advancing cultural rights and digital equity, to fueling education and scientific research and discovery, open heritage generates ripple effects across society. And as the world faces multiple challenges, open heritage is all the more critical if we want to sustain resilient, free and democratic societies, strengthen fundamental freedoms, and foster the production of new solutions to the world’s biggest problems. 

However, as we explored in part 1 of this series, so much of our shared digital heritage remains locked away, despite the fact that heritage in the public domain belongs to the public, and should be free for anyone to access, reuse, and breathe new life into it. Equitable access to heritage is not just a means to enjoy culture as a global public good; it is also a social and economic imperative. 

A Global Call for Open Heritage

To support open heritage at scale and protect access to public domain heritage for future generations, we need global alignment. This October, the TAROCH Coalition (Towards a Recommendation on Open Cultural Heritage) will publish the Open Heritage Statement, a collaborative declaration that sets out shared values, challenges, and priorities for closing the global gap in equitable access to heritage. The Statement will enshrine the principles that underpin equitable access and identify concrete actions to lower barriers, enabling open heritage to nurture creativity and shape sustainable futures for all. The Statement is designed to support UNESCO’s ongoing work on cultural rights, digital transformation, and knowledge sharing for sustainable development, reinforcing its founding commitment to the free flow of ideas.

Register today for the launch of the Open Heritage Statement on 14 October, 14:00 UTC to learn more about our global call for equitable access to public domain heritage in the digital environment. Once released, the Statement will be made available for governments, institutions and organizations to sign and promote, laying the groundwork for a future international framework on open heritage.

What is “Openness” in the Context of Heritage?

Openness entered the world of heritage in the early 2000s. Open access in the context of heritage materials means heritage (and associated metadata) is as broadly accessible as possible and it is shared and reused (including commercial use and modification) by anyone for any purpose, at no cost to the user and free from unnecessary copyright restrictions.

Open heritage is achieved by leveraging the vast potential of digital tools and technologies in enhancing access, protecting the public domain from erosion, and encouraging the use of open licenses and tools, such as Creative Commons licenses and public domain tools, to clearly communicate how heritage materials can be accessed and reused. A central tenet is that faithful digital reproductions of public domain materials must stay in the public domain.

It’s important to note that openness is relative, nuanced and contextual. Open heritage does not aim to force access to heritage that was never meant by its community holders or traditional custodians to be shared, let alone openly shared.

Openness is a means to an end, and not an end in and of itself. It is a means to remove unfair barriers to access and use of heritage, so people can equitably connect and engage with heritage in the digital environment and together build and sustain a thriving commons. It is a pathway to achieve heritage-related goals, such as preservation, safeguarding, transmission, access, representation, and participation.

There are also legal and ethical factors to consider when making heritage open: data protection (protection of personal or confidential information), privacy, and cultural sensitivities around heritage, among others, as well as respect for Indigenous heritage and Traditional Knowledge. In sum, there may be legitimate reasons not to openly share heritage.

This blog post is an adaptation of this pre-print manuscript, where you can discover many more examples of the benefits made possible by open heritage.

 

Jamie Seaboch / EyeQ Innovations, digital collage CC-BY-SA 4.0. Based on Niels Hansen Jacobsen, Motif from “The Story of a Mother”, 1892, KMS5387; August Strindberg, “Storm in the Skerries, ‘The Flying Dutchman’”,1892, KMS3432; Vilhelm Hammershøi, “Interior in Strandgade, Sunlight on the Floor”, 1901, KMS 3693. Statens Museum for Kunst, open.smk.dk, Public Domain.

GIF by Francesco Trentadue (Valenzano, Italy). Based on “Wasserfall“ by Franz Rechberger. Public Domain. Albertina Museum, via Europeana.

We’re kicking off a three-part series leading up to the launch of the Open Heritage Statement in October.

The Statement, developed by the TAROCH Coalition (Towards a Recommendation on Open Cultural Heritage), under the leadership of Creative Commons, is a collaborative, community-fueled initiative calling for equitable access to heritage in the public domain. It represents the shared values, principles, and challenges of more than 60 individual organizations and institutions across 25 countries and 13 global networks that represent multiple organizations, and sets out priorities for advancing openness at a global scale.

Over this series, we’ll explore:

1. The obstacles that stand in the way of equitable access to heritage in the digital environment;
2. The meaning of open in the heritage context and the benefits of equitable access, from sparking creativity to advancing human rights, and;
3. The Open Heritage Statement itself, and how it aims to shape an international framework under UNESCO’s auspices.

Join our global call for equitable access to public domain heritage in the digital environment. Mark your calendars for the Open Heritage Statement Launch on 14 October, 14:00 UTC. Register in advance for this meeting.

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In 2022, the United Kingdom’s Natural History Museum reported that scientists had applied computer vision to over 125,000 of the museum’s collection of digitized images of butterfly specimens dating back hundreds of years and found that insects are changing due to climate change—hotter years produce bigger insects. The Museum explained: “…open access digitized collections … allow scientists from all over the globe to be able to more easily use collections, can accelerate research in a more collaborative way than ever before.” 

For anyone promoting open access to heritage collections in the digital environment, the fact that digital images of butterflies made openly accessible thanks to CC0 could help us understand and address climate change—one of the greatest challenges of our times—was incredibly exciting.

This example is representative of the transformative potential of open access to heritage. It shows how making the heritage collections of cultural heritage institutions (CHIs) (such as museums, archives, and libraries) equitably and openly accessible and reusable online, by anyone for any purpose, can bring immense benefits to society. It is telling of how open access epitomizes the dual mission of CHIs of both preserving heritage in the public domain and enabling their users to harness it for the public good. 

Unfortunately, not all experiences are as positive as this butterfly story. Douglas McCarthy and Andrea Wallace humorously reported at the Icepops 2022 conference on the £179 fee a museum charged to download a reproduction of a public domain painting by 18th-century artist William Hogarth, turning open heritage into gated access. The same year, German puzzle manufacturer Ravensburger was sued in court by a museum in Italy for the unauthorized use of the images of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man (a famous drawing dated c.1490) on a series of puzzles.

As these contrasting examples show, the possibility of accessing and reusing heritage is vital to a creative and innovative society. Open access to heritage enables human progress well beyond the confines of art and culture. Unfortunately, this is all too often compromised by a slew of unnecessary barriers—from incorrect copyright claims over digital reproductions, to technological locks, all the way to prohibitive access fees (and more). As a result, people still face obstacles that prevent them from meaningfully connecting with their heritage. Critical pieces of our shared memory remain out of reach for the communities they represent and for the people eager to build bridges across them. 

To help remove these barriers and contribute to equitable sharing of heritage worldwide, a small number of trailblazing institutions, like the UK’s Natural History Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, the Rijksmuseum, and other pioneering institutions have adopted open access policies, practices, and tools that harness Creative Commons licenses and public domain tools to release digital heritage objects for broad access and fresh reuse, demonstrating the real-world benefits of open sharing.

But despite growing digital capacity, motivation, and best intentions, for the near totality of the world’s CHIs, providing open, equitable access remains a challenge—only about 1% of institutions share heritage as open access. Without an international framework providing clear guidance on how to implement open policies and practices, many institutions are left unsure of what is possible or even where to begin. This is the gap the TAROCH Coalition aims to close by harnessing collective effort for global change. 

The Problem: Unnecessary Fences around Public Domain Heritage 

Heritage in the public domain should be available for anyone to access and reuse for any purpose, without copyright permission. Yet in reality, the public domain is often fenced off from the public by a swath of barriers preventing both stewards and users from fully and equitably enjoying heritage in the public domain. These barriers are of a legal, technological, financial, and geographical nature, among others. Below we outline some of the most prevalent barriers we see when it comes to CHIs and enabling open access to public domain heritage. 

Wrongful Copyright Claims

CHIs sometimes restrict access to public domain heritage by erecting legal barriers around it. They do so by claiming an overlay of copyright over faithful digital reproductions of the heritage in their collections. This includes asserting copyright over digitized reproductions and applying (restrictive or open) copyright licenses to limit reuse. For example, as we reported in 2019, the Neues Museum in Berlin released a 3D scan of the 3,000-year-old Nefertiti bust from ancient Egypt under a CC BY-NC-SA license (wrongfully implying an underlying copyright in this digital reproduction). 

Pseudo-Copyright Exclusivity

In certain countries, CHIs lean on their country’s cultural heritage laws to prevent copyright-compliant use. This raises another type of legal barrier: by invoking cultural heritage protection laws, institutions may claim a “pseudo-copyright” requiring permission and imposing a fee, thus preventing further use of public domain heritage. By looking at real-world examples, we notice that these laws can achieve the opposite of what they were intended for: to protect and enhance cultural heritage and promote the development of culture. These laws should not restrict prosocial creative reuses. 

Contractual Restrictions

Sometimes, CHIs enforce terms and conditions (or terms of use) on their website that restrict reuse of digital heritage. These terms and conditions will often prohibit commercial uses even though this is allowed under copyright law. These terms function as contracts and can mislead users into thinking copyright restrictions apply where they do not. This erodes the integrity of the public domain.  

Technical Blocks

Further to the above contractual barriers, some institutions use digital rights management (DRM) and technological protection measures (TPMs) or make available their heritage files with watermarks, as low-resolution files only, or in inaccessible formats. This limits how public domain heritage can be accessed and reused and ends up harming scholarly research and cultural participation. For example, a study in Pakistan “revealed that contents preserved with Sindh Archives & Antiquities on local heritage were shared with Sindh Archives & Antiquities watermarks only. […] From an Open GLAM perspective, the watermarks on digital collections prevent citizens from using and reusing heritage collections and therefore, limit collection outreach.” As Professor Melissa Terras put it back in 2014, “all I want is a clear, 300dpi image. It’s no use saying «this is in the public domain!» if you only provide 72dpi”.

Low Accessibility for People with Disabilities

Unfortunately, public domain heritage is often not available in digital files that allow for the creation of accessible formats for people with disabilities, including print disabilities. This digital exclusion disproportionately affects blind and visually impaired people, as well as those with cognitive and motor impairments. People are thus disempowered from creating versions of heritage materials in accessible formats that meet the needs of everyone.  

Economic Barriers

Finally, making heritage in the public domain available to the public requires significant resources, and many CHIs are under pressure to monetize their collections to offset funding shortfalls. Several CHIs charge the equivalent of hundreds of dollars per image for access to digitized public domain works. These fees create barriers for educators, researchers, and smaller cultural creators, particularly outside the Global North. While financial sustainability is important, unreasonable paywalls undermine the public benefit of digital access. As the Creative Commons-funded report “Open Licensing Models in the Cultural Heritage Sector” recommends, institutions should develop economic models for revenue generation that go hand in hand with the open ethos. 

The Impact of Barriers on Equitable Access to Heritage

As the above overview of diverse barriers confirms, when CHIs fail to enable equitable access, many important elements of our shared heritage remain locked away, out of reach. And heritage that is inaccessible is at risk of being forgotten, its meaning and context lost, and its transmission to future generations jeopardized. This has repercussions on entire communities of artists and creators, educators, students, scholars, and researchers, as well as members of the public, who lose opportunities to understand, learn, and create with heritage. This also reflects poorly on CHIs: it undermines their public-interest mission of providing universal access to their collections in the digital environment and opens the door to the erosion of cultural diversity, the widening of the digital divide, the weakening of intercultural dialogue, and the loss of shared narratives that connect us to our past and inspire our future. 

The barriers that fence off our shared heritage are real, but they are not insurmountable. We believe there is a unique window of opportunity to unlock its full value and place it at the heart of what matters now. 

In our next post in this series, we’ll look at these benefits in action, from advancing human rights and education to sparking creativity and scientific discovery, and why they make the case for global alignment even stronger. We will uncover how openness is key to building a future where everyone can connect with, use, and build upon our shared memory.

What’s to Come

Join us. This October, the TAROCH Coalition (Towards a Recommendation on Open Cultural Heritage) will publish the Open Heritage Statement, a collaborative declaration that sets out shared values, challenges, and priorities for closing the global gap in equitable access to heritage. The Statement will enshrine the principles that underpin equitable access and identify concrete actions to lower barriers, enabling open heritage to nurture creativity and shape sustainable futures for all.

The Statement is designed to support UNESCO’s ongoing work on cultural rights, digital transformation, and knowledge sharing for sustainable development, reinforcing its founding commitment to the free flow of ideas.

Once released, the Statement will be open for institutions and organizations to sign and promote, laying the groundwork for a future international framework on open heritage.

This blog post is an adaptation of this pre-print manuscript.