Build

A photo of a performer playing guitar and a photo of a man listening with over-the-ear white headphones are layered with green C's and a zigzag line of C's as part of CC's visual brand.

"MUSIC - Raphael Saadiq at Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival" by Steven Pisano, here cropped, is licensed with CC BY 2.0; "kevin enjoys his big headphones" by ozmafan here cropped, is licensed with CC BY 2.0.

Creative Commons builds and maintains open tools that help creators and institutions share knowledge and creativity legally and globally.

Our tools, like the CC licenses and public domain marker, power how people share knowledge, creativity, and culture across borders, languages, and technologies.

From education and science to art and archives, from open access to AI, we are proud to shape a future where knowledge is treated as a global public good.

One Mission. A Multitude of Approaches.

We empower people and institutions to contribute to and use the commons through core legal, cultural, and technical infrastructures.

Legal Certainty

CC licenses and CC0 give creators clear, legally sound ways to share their work worldwide. They also give users confidence to access, share, and reuse CC-licensed works legally.

Today, tens of billions of CC-licensed works are available online thanks to a global community of creators and reusers.

Public Stewardship

The Public Domain Mark helps protect humanity’s shared culture and heritage by clearly identifying works that belong to the public domain.

The public domain is an essential part of the commons. Protecting it ensures that everyone can access and reuse out-of-copyright art, culture, and heritage.

Data Governance

CC signals bring our shared values into machine use of human content and creativity. They are designed to help guide responsible reuse of content by AI, ensuring openness, attribution, and respect for creator communities.

Together, these tools form a commons ecosystem: legal, cultural, and technical infrastructure for the digital age. Our tools are built using free and open source software. To learn more, visit our Open Source website.

  • CC Licenses

    The world’s standard for sharing

    CC Licenses make it possible for anyone to share their work openly while keeping the rights that matter to them.

    Used globally and applied to tens of billions of works, CC Licenses are part of the Internet’s essential infrastructure.

    Learn more

  • CC Zero & The Public Domain

    The tools for indicating what belongs to all of us

    CCO and our public domain tools lets creators waive copyright and related rights to the fullest extent possible or identify works that are free of known copyright restrictions.

    This confidentially contributes to a growing public domain.

    Learn more

  • CC Signals

    Commons values for machine use as scale

    This new framework helps creators and institutions express expectations around how their work is used in AI systems, without expanding copyright, and without closing the commons.

    CC Signals is currently being tested in real-world pilots and developed in collaboration with creators, technologists, and policymakers.

    Learn more