A few days ago, the European Commission (EC) released a recommendation for a common data space for cultural heritage, which aims to “accelerate the digitization of all cultural heritage monuments and sites, objects and artefacts for future generations, to protect and preserve those at risk, and boost their reuse in domains such as education, sustainable…

Earlier this year, Creative Commons announced that four working groups of the Creative Commons Copyright Platform would examine policy issues affecting the open ecosystem from a global perspective: (1) artificial intelligence and open content; (2) platform liability; (3) copyright exceptions and limitations; and (4) the ethics of open sharing.  The CC Copyright Platform was established…

"Trailing Again" by Jacob Surland Fine Art Photographer is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Last month, the Foreign Policy Centre (FPC) and Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD) released a publication entitled Global Britain for an open world? Open societies around the world and the international system that supports them are under growing threat. This publication examines the importance of open societies to the UK’s ‘force for good’ ambitions.  Edited…

CC Policy Working Groups In May this year, we announced that four working groups of the Creative Commons Copyright Platform would examine policy issues affecting the open ecosystem. For the past five months, they have worked vigorously to provide clearer articulation of the issues and consider possible solutions in four areas:  Working Group 1 —…

InclusiveAccess.org. CC BY 4.0

The price of college textbooks in the United States (and many other countries) has skyrocketed over the past 30 years. Two-thirds of college students say that they’ve delayed buying a textbook because it was too expensive—even though 90% of those students worry that not having the textbook will affect their course grade. In addition, more…

Yesterday, we were disappointed to learn that the Wikimedia Foundation’s application for observer status at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) was blocked due to opposition by China for the second time after its initial application in 2020. Creative Commons has been an accredited observer at WIPO since 2005. WIPO is the UN agency that…

This month, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) shared its new open access policy. This new policy is a welcome initiative that will increase opportunities for the findings of publicly funded research to be accessed, shared and reused. As part of our work supporting efforts in the creation, adoption and implementation of open access policies with…

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Creative Commons published an article titled, “Now Is the Time for Open Access Policies—Here’s Why” in March 2020. We felt it imperative to underscore the importance of open access, specifically open science, in times of crisis. A lot has changed since March of last year and it’s important to…

On 29 January 2020, the Canadian federal government introduced Bill C-4, “An Act to Implement the Agreement between Canada, the United States of America and the United Mexican States” (CUSMA).1 The bill includes a proposal to extend copyright’s term of protection2 by 20 years, moving it from “life of the author + 50 years” (the…

Developments in artificial intelligence (AI) raise several questions when it comes to the use of copyright material and Creative Commons-licensed content in particular.1 One of them is whether CC-licensed content (e.g. photographs, artworks, text, music, etc.) should be used as input to train AI. To get a sense of the various views on this question,…