For several years, Creative Commons has been monitoring an alarming increase in enforcement actions relating to CC licenses. Today, we are announcing the next phase of our evolving response to this complex issue, and we would like your input.

There are several elements to our plans, but the centerpiece today is a draft Statement of Principles Around License Enforcement. We recognize that these principles have limited legal “bite,” given that CC does not hold the copyright to community works. However, we believe there is value in articulating what CC believes is license enforcement that upholds the spirit and intent of the licenses. We also foresee other possible mechanisms for these principles to be useful, including integration of the principles into community codes of conduct and adoption by major rights holders. 

We want to hear from you. Do these principles reflect your own values? Why or why not? How can we adapt them to better meet community expectations? You can read the principles and our wider plans on this front on the CC site, and you can leave comments on the text of the principles in this google doc. We will be improving this draft in the coming weeks, and engaging in a public conversation around them at the CC Summit in September.

(Update from 21 Sep 2021: we’ve been reading and incorporating comments, and all links in this post now lead to the updated draft incorporating comments received so far. Please continue to offer your input!)