“Princesses Gather at Fountain”, ca. 1770, shown slightly cropped. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public Domain.

For centuries, cultural heritage institutions have been undertaking the work to document and catalog objects in their collections — sometimes this work suffers from a legacy of colonialism and discrimination in the way their collections are labeled and categorized. Some institutions are working to update these labels with more respectful terminology. Hear more from some of the changemakers working to update labels and metadata with more respectful terminologies during this CC panel.

Dave talks about how many “institutions are on a mission to expose their collections to the world and make them available for everyone.” Dave sees this as a major evolution from a time not too long ago when it was only those with means who could access collections in any way. Open Culture VOICES is…

“WIPO SSCR Screenshot” by Creative Commons is licensed via CC BY 4.0.

From 6 to 8 November 2023, Creative Commons participated remotely in the 44th session of the World Intellectual Property Organization Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights. In this blog post, we look back on the session’s highlights on broadcasting, exceptions and limitations, and generative AI, from CC’s perspective.

Kyle believes that “the artistic and creative expressions of humanity is the best way to experience our human efforts” and open GLAM makes this a reality for much more than what you can see on a given day in a museum. Open GLAM also helps drive more digitization of collections around the world in an…

  Maarten believes that “Open GLAM is a necessity of a disbalanced copyright framework.” Maarten talks about how open access policies help institutions achieve their public missions. Open access policies in instutions provides good evidence that society and communities need access to cultural heritage to flourish. Open Culture VOICES is a series of short videos…

“Sorry! This video does not exist.” by Creative Commons is licensed via CC BY 4.0.

A key video disappeared from the CC home webpage after the video hosting service Vimeo tagged the open work with an invalid automated copyright violation takedown notice. Learn more about what happens when automated copyright filters go wrong.

Marike van Roon shares that “the main benefit of open culture is accessibility” because if you are not fortunate enough to be part of organization that pays for you to have access to collections and you don’t live in city with public collections it’s almost impossible to access a lot of cultural heritage. In this…

"EU Flag Neural Network" by Creative Commons was cropped from an image generated by the DALL-E 2 AI platform with the text prompt "European Union flag neural network." CC dedicates any rights it holds to the image to the public domain via CC0.

The European Union’s Artificial Intelligence Act will be discussed at a key trilogue meeting on 24 October 2023. CC collaborated with Communia to summarize our views emphasizing the importance of a balanced and tailored approach to regulating foundation models and of transparency in general.

“For researchers GLAM’s preserve primary sources” which is of great benefit when creating knowledge and research about the present and the past. Pierre talks about how open access policies in GLAM’s make knowledge shared and more widespread instead of just for the elite few with permission from the collecting institution. Open Culture VOICES is a…

A shyrdaq on the floor of a Kyrgyz home in Kyzyl-Jar, Aqsy, Jalalabat”, Kyrgyzstan by Firespeaker, here cropped, is licensed via CC BY-SA 3.0.

CC celebrates the 20th anniversary of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage. CC’s community initiative “Towards a Recommendation on Open Culture” (TAROC) is designed to support the international community in developing a positive, affirmative, and influential recommendation enshrining the values, objectives, and mechanisms for open culture to flourish and, in particular, for open culture to serve as a means to safeguard intangible cultural heritage.