Until recently, I had never heard of the sea shanty “The Wellerman”. My sea shanty repertoire consisted of “What can you do with a drunken sailor” to sea-songs on the soundtrack of Master and Commander. However, Nathan Evans, a fellow Scot who hails, like me, from North Lanarkshire, has changed all of this. His rendition … Read More “The Postal Worker, a Sea Shanty and the Public Domain”
Back in 2010, we had the great pleasure of working with world famous artist/graphic designer Shepard Fairey on a project to re-envision the Creative Commons logo in his signature style. At the time, we released a t-shirt with Fairey’s remix as part of a fundraising campaign and later put it on a CC tote bag … Read More “Download Shepard Fairey’s Creative Commons Logo Remix”
The wrap-up party for the annual CC Global Summit is always incredible, featuring local artists and musicians who send us off in style. Of course, things are a little different this year as we’ve transformed our in-person event to an entirely virtual one—but that doesn’t mean we can’t find a way to party together like … Read More “Your Chance to Perform for the CC Global Summit!”
Over 300 million images are uploaded to Facebook a day. Yes, just Facebook. Once other social media and photo-sharing platforms like Flickr, Unsplash, Instagram, etc. are taken into account, that number quickly grows into the billions. A lot has changed since the dawn of photography in the 19th century—when Nicéphore Niépce (a.k.a. the “Father of … Read More “The Increasingly Open World of Photography: A Conversation With Exposure’s Luke Beard”
The following is a summary of “GLAM Collections on Social Media: Navigating Copyright Questions—a conversation with Aleksandra Strzelichowska, Mikka Gee Conway and Anne Young” published on 31 May 2020 by Scann (licensed CC BY). How often do you debate whether to share an openly licensed work on social media? If you do share a work, … Read More “Sharing Openly Licensed Content on Social Media: A Conversation with GLAM”
On the occasion of both Earth Day and World Intellectual Property Day, which this year centers on the theme of Innovation for a Green Future, we’d like to underline the importance of cultural heritage preservation as a response to the threats posed by climate change. In this post, we’ll also share some insights on how … Read More “Using CC Licenses and Tools to Share and Preserve Cultural Heritage in the Face of Climate Change”
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 … Read More “Smithsonian Releases 2.8 Million Images + Data into the Public Domain Using CC0”
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 … Read More “The Public Domain is Alive and Well (for Now)”
Creative Commons is pleased to be a part of the second annual Public Domain Day (PDD) celebration held in Washington D.C. on January 30, in collaboration with the Internet Archive, the Institute for Intellectual Property & Social Justice, the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, and SPARC. In order to celebrate the public domain … Read More “Meet the Artists Commissioned for the Public Domain Day Celebration”
The Paris Musées’ recently released more than 100,000 works under Creative Commons Zero (CCØ), putting the works into the public domain. They also released their collections’ Application Programming Interface (API), allowing users to “recover, in high definition, several royalty-free images and their records from cross-searches on the works.” Users can scroll through the collection via … Read More “Paris Musées Releases 100,000+ Works Into the Public Domain”
