The Artist’s Garden at Saint-Clair by Henri-Edmond Cross, The Metropolitan Museum; Public Domain

Since its creation in 2001, Creative Commons (CC) has helped release nearly 5 million digital open images of cultural heritage held in cultural heritage institutions using CC tools. We have also been promoting open culture to build a more equitable, accessible, and innovative world, and it is based on this rich experience that our Open Culture program now supports better sharing of cultural heritage globally.

Today, we are proud at CC to announce the publication of Towards better sharing of cultural heritage — A Creative Commons Call to Action to Policymakers, a simple, concise, and accessible resource that aims to support policymakers with key arguments to reform policy — in particular copyright — to achieve better sharing of cultural heritage in the public interest. 

Drafted by a small group of open culture advocates of the Creative Commons Copyright Platform and Open Culture Platform — Shanna Hollich (CC US), Emine Ozge Yildirim (KU Leuven), Maarten Zeinstra (CC Netherlands) and Brigitte Vézina (Director of Policy and Open Culture) — this resource: 

• summarizes key takeaways from the 2022 CC policy paper Towards Better Sharing of Cultural Heritage — An Agenda for Copyright Reform; 
• applies the lessons learned during a CC virtual workshop for policy experts and open culture enthusiasts held in May 2022, and;
• distills numerous conversations with and by the CC open culture community held between June and October 2022, as well as direct document input gathering ideas, feedback and real-life examples.
  

This publication offers a basis for a shared vision on better sharing and makes a call for five actions: 

• ACTION 1: Protect the public domain from erosion
• ACTION 2: Reduce the term of copyright protection
• ACTION 3: Legally allow necessary activities of cultural heritage institutions
• ACTION 4: Shield cultural heritage institutions from liability
• ACTION 5: Ensure respect, equity, and inclusivity

Read the full document >

We’ll be presenting the publication at Open Nederland’s Public Domain Day 2023 on January 13, 2023, at the National Library of the Netherlands in The Hague. More information and registration for this hybrid event: https://publiekdomeindag.nl/.

?Do you want to know more about open culture at Creative Commons? Write to us at info@creativecommons.org.