Photographer Carol Highsmith has donated her life’s work of tens of thousands of photos to the Library of Congress during her decades long career.

The vision of the Creative Commons project is universal access to research and education, and full participation in culture to drive a new era of development, growth, and productivity. Collaboration, sharing, and co-operation are in our nature — building community, co-operating towards common goods, and creating shared benefits are at the heart of who we…

Image by Ilya Pavlov, CC0. Last week the White House finalized the Federal Source Code Policy to improve access to software code developed by or for the federal government. The policy is a step in the right direction toward making software accessible and reusable across U.S. government agencies, as well as for the general public.…

In March we hosted the second Institute for Open Leadership. In our summary of the event we mentioned that the Institute fellows would be taking turns to write about their open policy projects. As a Ugandan science educator with a background in computer science, I have witnessed thousands of kids dropping out of school because…

Final arguments in the case against Diego Gomez will be presented on August 10. Gomez is a Colombian graduate student who shared an academic paper without permission online and received a criminal copyright complaint from the author. If convicted, Gomez faces a 4-8 year prison sentence and a significant monetary fine. Over the last year, we’ve highlighted…

In March we hosted the second Institute for Open Leadership, and in our summary of the event we mentioned that the Institute fellows would be taking turns to write about their open policy projects. By way of some background, I am currently the digital publishing manager at the African branch of Cambridge University Press (CUP),…

What if the future of eco-housing is remixable, inexpensive, collaborative, open sourced, freely licensed, and accessible to all?

Joost de Cock in homemade shirt, jeans, and shoes. CC-by-SA-NC

The delightfully quirky sewing site Make my Pattern.com is the work of self-proclaimed “sewcialist” Joost de Cock, a Belgian designer with a flair for fashion. When he started Make my Pattern, de Cock set out to solve a major issue for amateur sewers: patterns fit best when hand-drafted, but hand-drafting is inaccessible to most hobbyists.…

‘Awesome’ by Sam Howzit, CC BY 2.0 on Flickr One of the greatest strengths of the Creative Commons organization is the dedicated volunteers worldwide who help build openly licensed projects and educate the public about CC in their local communities and internationally. A few months ago, we provided mini grants to these communities through The…

In March we hosted the second Institute for Open Leadership, and in our summary of the event we mentioned that the Institute fellows would be taking turns to write about their open policy projects. I had the privilege of participating in the second Institute for Open Leadership (IOL), held in Cape Town and hosted by…