Anonymous, “Prudence, Wisdom and Knowledge”, National Library of the Netherlands, Public Domain Mark. Source: www.europeana.eu/item/9200122/BibliographicResource_1000056088368

Anonymous, “Prudence, Wisdom and Knowledge”, National Library of the Netherlands, Public Domain Mark.  In December last year, the Communia Association for the Public Domain — of which Creative Commons (CC) is a member —  asked the European Commission and European Parliament to consider the development of a Digital Knowledge Act. In this blog post, we…

“AI Alignment Assembly” by Jakub Koźniewski for the Open Future Foundation is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Dear Open Movement Creators, Activists, and Stewards,  A key question facing Creative Commons as an organization, and the open movement in general, is how we will respond to the challenge of shaping artificial intelligence (AI) towards the public interest, growing and sustaining a thriving commons of shared knowledge and culture. So much of generative AI…

Somos El Bien Común" by Eréndira Derbez for Creative Commons, here cropped, licensed via CC BY 4.0.

In the past year, Creative Commons, alongside other members of the Movement for a Better Internet, hosted workshops and sessions at community conferences like MozFest, RightsCon, and Wikimania, to hear from attendees regarding their views on artificial intelligence (AI). In these sessions, community members raised concerns about how AI is utilizing CC-licensed content, and discussions…

Isolated Araneiform Topography, Public Domain Mark. https://flic.kr/p/2prGXV7

Isolated Araneiform Topography, from UAHiRISE Collection on Flickr. Public Domain Mark. AI is deeply connected to networked digital technologies — from the bazillions of works harvested from the internet to train AI to all the ways AI is shaping our online experience, from generative content to recommendation algorithms and simultaneous translation. Creative Commons engaged participants…

“Andean Textile Fragment” by Peruvian. 1500. Walters Art Museum., here slightly cropped, is released into the public domain under CC0.

In January we hosted a webinar titled “Whose Open Culture? Decolonization, Indigenization, and Restitution” discussing the intersection of indigenous knowledge and open sharing. Our conversation spanned a variety of topics regarding indigenous sovereignty over culture, respectful terminology, and the legacy of colonialism and how it still exists today.

The CC Open Education community had a busy 2023!  Five project teams, spanning nine countries, worked on open education projects ranging from developing STEAM, interactive, and climate change-related OER, to international curriculum alignment and translation work. Community members also worked on multimedia resources supporting the UNESCO Recommendation on OER, and presented in CC’s biannual Open…

At Creative Commons, we believe that addressing global challenges like the climate crisis requires opening the knowledge about those challenges. We are thrilled to announce the release of our “Recommendations for Better Sharing of Climate Data”— the culmination of a nine-month research initiative from our Open Climate Data project. These guidelines are a result of…

Laterna magica bild målad i färg på glasskiva. Bilder ur solsystemet. from Tekniska Museet Svenska, Public Domain Mark. https://digitaltmuseum.se/021016341596/laterna-magica-bild-malad-i-farg-pa-glasskiva-bilder-ur-solsystemet

2023 was quite a year for the Creative Commons (CC) Open Culture Program, thanks to generous funding from Arcadia, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing & Peter Baldwin. In this blog post we look back on some of the year’s key achievements.

"The Electric Boots” British Library. Public Domain.

In November 2023, the Court of Appeal in THJ v Sheridan offered an important clarification of the originality requirement under UK copyright law, which clears a path for open culture to flourish in the UK.

“Andean Textile Fragment” by Peruvian. 1500. Walters Art Museum., here slightly cropped, is released into the public domain under CC0.

On Wednesday, 17 January, 2024, at 3:00 pm UTC, CC’s Open Culture Program will be hosting a new webinar in our Open Culture Live series titled “Whose Open Culture? Decolonization, Indigenization, and Restitution.” As we observed a few years ago, there is growing awareness in the open culture movement about issues related to the acquisition, preservation, access, sharing, and reuse of cultural heritage of Indigenous peoples and local communities (including traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions), heritage in the context of colonization, and culturally-sensitive heritage.