Since 2002, Creative Commons (CC) licenses have served as legally enforceable tools for digital sharing. Beyond their functionality, they also signal a commitment to open sharing in the public interest.  CC’s general guidance has been to acknowledge and support all valid uses for each of our current six licenses and two public domain tools.  

UNESCO © 2023 by Brigitte Vézina is licensed under CC BY 4.0 We are proud to announce that we are now established as an official NGO partner to UNESCO (consultative status). UNESCO stands for “United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization” and is the UN’s specialized agency that aims to foster international cooperation in the…

Havsstrand by Maurice Denis. Public Domain. Swedish National Museum Many people can benefit from open access to cultural heritage in a variety of ways and for a variety of purposes — from creators seeking inspiration to researchers discovering new interpretations, all the way to cultural heritage institutions (CHIs) connecting with more audiences, and the general…

As a global leader in open licensing and copyright, we have long stood at the intersection of innovation in the public interest, creativity, and access to knowledge. With the rise of consumer-facing generative AI, which is changing the way people share and access knowledge online, it became clear: CC had to act—urgently, but with care.…

“Eight eyes. Engraving after C. Le Brun” by Charles Le Brun is licensed via CC0. The intersection of AI, copyright, creativity, and the commons has been a focal point of conversations within our community for the past couple of years. We’ve hosted intimate roundtables, organized workshops at conferences, and run public events, digging into the…

The Board of Directors of Creative Commons (CC) is pleased to announce the appointment of Anna Tumadóttir as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of CC. 

Today, Creative Commons (CC) joins the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) as a new member. The DPGA is a multi-stakeholder initiative with a mission to accelerate the attainment of the sustainable development goals in low- and middle-income countries by facilitating the discovery, development, use of, and investment in digital public goods (DPGs).

Our Mission Creative Commons is an international nonprofit organization that empowers people to grow and sustain the thriving commons of shared knowledge and culture that we need to address the world’s most pressing challenges and create a brighter future for all. Together with our global community and multiple partners, we build capacity and infrastructure, we…

In theory, publishing publicly funded television content under open licenses should be a no-brainer. As with publicly funded research, open licenses improve distribution, allow for remix creativity, and unlock access to popular free knowledge platforms such as Wikipedia. In practice, however, advocates of open licenses in the realm of public-service media face several hurdles, such…

Creative Commons licenses give everyone from individual creators to large institutions a standardized way to grant the public permission to use their creative work under copyright law. From the reuser’s perspective, the presence of a Creative Commons license on a copyrighted work answers the question, What can I do with this work? The CC License…