Creative Commons was founded in response to the radical expansion of copyright in the 20th century. 

While copyright can help creators be rewarded and recognized for their creativity and control and make money from some uses of their work, unbalanced copyright encloses the commons, stifles legitimate access to and use of works, and limits creators’ choices. Copyright law provides the legal basis for CC’s licenses and public domain tools, and changes to copyright law can affect how these tools function, as well as access to the commons in general. 

Historically, our policy work has emphasized the importance of copyright’s limitations and exceptions, protecting the public domain, and helping funders require grant-funded works be openly licensed to build and sustain a thriving commons. We’ve made it easier for people to share education, science, and culture and to access and build upon the work of others.

Policy work is integrated throughout all aspects of CC’s efforts as we aim to facilitate development of policies that do not unduly expand copyright and to promote open licence adoption. These policies then become part of CC’s open infrastructure of sharing, which informs license stewardship, versioning, and/or the development of new tools. 

Policy Approaches Today

Breaking down copyright’s barriers is only one piece of the puzzle. Through our direct engagement with policymakers, national governments, institutions and funders, and in conjunction with our community, we work to ensure that emerging regulations around technology and AI are fit for purpose and serve the public interest.

Improving sharing of knowledge and creativity depends on regulations that address concentrations of power over the ability to create, distribute, and use material. Today there is an urgent need to develop new, nuanced approaches to digital sharing to address societal concerns raised by AI. 

→ Read more about our policy positions and stances regarding AI and the Commons

We engage with policymakers in the US, EU, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and elsewhere to shape copyright in the public interest. We advise, assist and counsel international and multilateral bodies (UN, EU), national governments, institutions and funders  on the usefulness, benefits and sometimes necessity of open licensing policies. 

We also provide assistance and expertise and make recommendations to bodies that fund, host or produce knowledge and culture on how to develop, adopt and implement open policies. We cultivate, train and educate our stakeholders, including policymakers, to help them on their journey to understanding and applying sound open policies and practices, including the use of CC licenses and tools. Today, these policy interventions are considered within the context of sharing in the age of AI. 

Current Copyright Policy Priorities

Knowledge and culture should be equitably accessible to all.

Human knowledge and culture constitute our shared humanity, and CC believes that everyone should be able to enjoy the full potential of access to knowledge and culture that the digital age brings. Copyright should not unreasonably prevent anyone from accessing works in libraries, museums, or schools and other learning establishments. 

The public domain must be protected and celebrated and the scope and duration of copyright must be limited.

Copyright is intended to be a limited right, applicable only to certain materials and for a limited period of time. Material that is not the product of human creativity, such as pure factual data or content created solely by machines, should not be copyrightable and no claims for rights (including related rights) should be treated as legitimate.

Cultural and scholarly works that are in the public domain should not be made unfairly inaccessible or unusable by the public through contractual restrictions or ancillary rights. The public domain should be celebrated as a rich source of knowledge and culture, not considered to be a lesser state.

Limitations and exceptions are crucial to copyright. 

Exclusive rights must not limit all uses of works. Copyright holders should not have sole control over uses such as, among others, preservation, research, reporting, criticism, and scholarship, where the importance of these uses for a free, connected and resilient society outweighs the rights of a creator to control uses of their works. We must also protect transformative uses of works, such as data mining and machine learning, which necessarily use the works as tools to an end that is not simply consumption of the original work. Limitations and exceptions should be mandatory, harmonized at the international level and applicable across borders, and protected against technological and contractual override. 

Copyright should be limited in ways that facilitate text and data mining (TDM).

Studying and analyzing materials to derive facts, ideas, and other uncopyrightable elements or make other non-infringing uses should be permitted, even where that analysis implicates an act of reproduction as an intermediate step. At the same time, a copyright exception can be complemented by other ways for rights holders to express their preferences about use of their works in TDM, including AI training.

Publicly funded data and public sector information should be open by default. 

The public sector has a critical role to play in building an open commons by making the data it collects and the information it produces openly available to the public . Data collected by public bodies is a public asset, and, except where it’s subject to privacy, security, or other privilege limitations, should be made freely available for everyone to use, reuse, build upon, and share without restrictions. Information produced by the public sector should be made available under standard open licenses or public domain tools for public reuse. Similarly, databases and datasets that are produced using public funds should be open to the public and in the public domain, even if they were created by third parties.