From June—August 2019, Creative Commons hosted eight CC Certificate classes for Academic Librarians and Educators. Participants in the classes studied Creative Commons licenses, copyright, the public domain, and open practices. Certificate students developed open licensing proficiency and deepened their understanding of the broader context for open advocacy. See examples of the assignments participants shared under…
Today is the International Day for Universal Access to Information (IDUAI). You may be wondering why this day is necessary—particularly in 2019, when the average person is inundated with an estimated 34 gigabytes of information every day, from emails and text messages to Youtube videos and news programs. In fact, it’s easy to take information…
Earlier this year, we met Patrick Böhler, a journalist and executive editor of SWI swissinfo.ch, the international news service of Switzerland’s public broadcaster. In our conversation, we discussed the ways that various media companies and journalistic projects have used Creative Commons licensing to increase public access to their stories. We were excited when Patrick circled…
In 2016, Creative Commons launched a small grant program called “The Awesome Fund.” In total, 19 grants funded a wide range of creative projects led by members of the CC network. The Long Road to the Hall of Fame One of the grant recipients was Réda Zine, an author, director, and producer based in Italy.…
Good news for people and groups working on ways to empower creators: Today, Coil announced Grant for the Web, a new $100 million fund to benefit creators and promote innovation in web monetization. Grant for the Web is funded and led by Coil, in collaboration with Creative Commons and Mozilla. The fund hopes to address…
Creative Commons is delighted to welcome Cable Green as the organization’s interim Chief Executive Officer. As we recently announced, Ryan Merkley has stepped down after five years of service as CEO to start a new position at Wikimedia. We are thankful to Ryan for his leadership at CC and excited for him and the Commons…
Creative Commons gets letters and phone calls and emails from all around the world. People write to share their work, call to get advice on how to use the licenses, and email to complain and to say thank you. Recently, we got a series of hand-written letters from a number of students in a US-based…
Over the past year, we’ve expanded our tech team at CC, welcoming four new staff members to help support the global commons through CC’s licenses and tools. Timid Robot Zehta joined us in October of 2018 as CC’s Core Systems Manager; Hugo Solar signed on in January as CC’s Web Developer; Bruno Ferreira also began…
Jeffrey Epstein used his position of power, influence, and wealth to abuse young women and girls. The brief message that follows relates to matters that are inconsequential in comparison to the pain of the survivors, although it connects to broader issues about the society in which that pain was inflicted and persisted. Like many members…
We’ve added two new awesome staff members to the Creative Commons team. Whitney Valentine-Wafer joined us earlier this year as CC’s Director of Finance and Treasurer. And just this past week, Victoria Heath began her new role as CC’s Communications Manager. We’re very excited to be able to work with these two very fine folks.…