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Category: Licenses & Tools
Revisiting the Openverse: Finding Open Images and Audio
by Nate Angell, Zack Krida Better Internet, Licenses & Tools, Technology“art is the universe creating itself as it goes” by submerged~, here slightly cropped, is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0. Looking for that perfect picture to illustrate your post? That catchy tune to jazz up your video? Look no further than Openverse, the huge library of free and open stock photos, images, and audio…
Better Sharing for Generative AI
by Catherine Stihler Better Internet, Licenses & Tools, Open Creativity, TechnologyOver the last year, innovation and use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has exploded, providing new ways for people to create content of all sorts. For example, it’s been used to help create award winning art, develop educational materials, expedite software development, and craft business materials. Recently, three artists filed a class action lawsuit in…
Training: Open Licenses for Artists, Musicians and Creators
by Jennryn Wetzler Licenses & ToolsCurious about Creative Commons licenses? Join Creative Commons staff for an overview of the six CC licenses and two public domain tools. We will describe the CC license and tool elements, their legal, machine-readable, and human-readable layers, as well as show practical use cases for each of the licenses and tools. Participants will engage in…
Celebrate Public Domain Day 2023 with Us: The Best Things in Life Are Free
by Ony Anukem Events, Licenses & Tools, Open HeritageJoin Creative Commons, Internet Archive, and many other leaders from the open world to celebrate Public Domain Day 2023. As of January 2023, a treasure trove of new cultural works has become as free as the moon and the stars — at least in the USA and many other countries. And what better way to…
Open Office Hours with CC’s Legal Team
by Creative Commons Licenses & Tools(updated May 2024 with new link) Come join CC’s legal team for open office hours. Everyone is invited to meet with General Counsel Kat Walsh and Counsel Yuanxiao Xu to discuss legal issues related to CC licenses, CC0, and open sharing in general. We’ll start off with a few minutes talking about CC and some…
New FAQ on NFTs and CC0
by Creative Commons Licenses & ToolsUnless you’ve been avoiding the internet entirely, you’ve probably heard about people buying and selling non-fungible tokens — or NFTs — unique data tokens that link to digital files, including artworks and other types of copyrightable works. CC has been following how people are creating and trading NFTs, and how the marketplace of creative works is…
What’s Next for CC Licenses
by Sarah Hinchliff Pearson Licenses & ToolsIn this 20th anniversary year of the CC license suite, we are pleased to be renewing our commitment to license stewardship. Creative Commons has always taken its stewardship responsibilities seriously, engaging in multi-year consultation processes for versioning the tools, publishing official translations of the licenses into dozens of languages, and working to educate people about…
Do not feed the trolls
by Catherine Stihler Licenses & ToolsRecently, there has been an increase in threatened and actual lawsuits involving CC licensed works, and in some cases, license enforcement has even become a business model. We have now learned that even long-time friend and contributor to Creative Commons, Cory Doctorow, has been targeted. Put simply, “license-enforcement-as-business model” is a perversion of the founding…
Principles for License Enforcement Published
by Kat Walsh Licenses & ToolsThe principles for license enforcement are now published. The consultation period has ended, and we’re grateful to everyone who contributed their many thoughtful comments! These principles will be useful for: Platforms that host CC-licensed materials and want to incorporate them into site policy to guide user expectations Creators who want to enforce rights under a…
License Stewardship consultation
by Kat Walsh, Sarah Hinchliff Pearson Licenses & ToolsThe CC license suite was foundational to the creation of Creative Commons. To this day, the stewardship of CC licenses and public domain tools remains one of the core functions of the organization. At this milestone of the 20th anniversary of Creative Commons, we are embarking on a public consultation around CC’s stewardship. Specifically, we…