Over the weekend, news emerged that upset even the most ardent skeptics of open access. Under the headline, “Trump vs Berlin” the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag reported that President Trump offered $1 billion USD to the German biopharmaceutical company CureVac to secure their COVID-19 vaccine “only for the United States.” In response, Jens Spahn, the…

Last week, the Unicode Consortium released the latest version of the Unicode Standard—the universal character coding system used in computer processing (which includes the international emoji portfolio ?). We’re thrilled to announce that Creative Commons (CC) license symbols were included in this new release. The latest Unicode Standard adds 5,930 characters, including 4 new scripts,…

CC Catalog API (V1), featuring icons by Icons by Mikicon (left) and Faisal (right) via Noun Project, CC BY

The Creative Commons Catalog Application Programming Interface (CC Catalog API) gives developers the ability to create custom applications that utilize CC Search, a rich collection of 330 million and counting openly licensed images. We have spent the last two years gathering this data from a diverse set of 28 sources, ranging from curated collections assembled…

"Working from home," by Victoria Heath, CC BY.

Over the last few days, a growing number of organizations have shut down their offices and told employees to work from home in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Here at Creative Commons (CC), we’ve also taken necessary precautions such as postponing all work-related travel and canceling the in-person component of the annual CC…

"Bhavna Ben Ramesh" by Paul Bronstein (2015), CC BY-NC.

Storytelling is a powerful tool because it can change perceptions and inspire action—and images are an essential component. As Depression-era American photojournalist and documentarian Dorothea Lange said, “The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.”  Unfortunately, finding high-quality and diverse openly licensed images, particularly those of women, is a…

Since the early days of the Creative Commons movement, the annual CC Global Summit has been one of the most important vehicles for bringing people in our community together to share their work, ideas, and vision for the future of Open. Unfortunately, given the current concerns around the global spread of COVID-19 (and in the…

The Smithsonian—the world’s largest museum and research institution—announced yesterday  Smithsonian Open Access, an initiative that removes copyright restrictions from 2.8 million digital collection 2D and 3D images and nearly two centuries of data. This major initiative uses CC0—Creative Commons’ public domain dedication tool—to make millions of images and data freely available to the public. “Our…

Public domain advocates celebrated on January 1 because, for the second year in a row, published works newly entered the public domain in the United States due to copyright expiration. To mark the occasion, Creative Commons (CC) collaborated with the Internet Archive, the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, Creative Commons USA, the Institute…

On 14 February 2020, Creative Commons (CC) submitted its comments on the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)’s Issues Paper* as part of WIPO’s consultation process on artificial intelligence (AI) and intellectual property (IP) policy. In this post, we briefly present our main arguments for a cautious approach to regulating AI through copyright or any new…

Over the past few months, we have added four new staff members to our team: Network Manager Julia Brungs; Development Manager Moumita C.; Data Engineer Brent Moran; and Open Policy Manager Brigitte Vézina. Learn more about our newest staff members below! Julia Brungs, Network Manager Prior to joining CC, Julia led the cultural heritage work…