A lot has changed in the past few years, and it is high time for Creative Commons (CC) to be louder about our values. Underpinning our recently released strategic plan is a renewed call for reciprocity. Neutrality serves only the status quo and there is nothing neutral about fighting for a more equitable world through open practices and sharing knowledge.
Since the inception of CC, there have been two sides to the licenses. There’s the legal side, which describes in explicit and legally sound terms, what rights are granted for a particular item. But, equally there’s the social side, which is communicated when someone applies the CC icons. The icon acts as identification, a badge, a symbol that we are in this together, and that’s why we are sharing. Whether it’s scientific research, educational materials, or poetry, when it’s marked with a CC license it’s also accompanied by a social agreement which is anchored in reciprocity. This is for all of us.
But, with the mainstream emergence of generative AI, that social agreement has come into question and come under threat, with knock-on consequences for the greater commons. Current approaches to building commercial foundation models lack reciprocity. No one shares photos of ptarmigans to get rich, no one contributes to articles about Huldufólk seeking fame. It is about sharing knowledge. But when that shared knowledge is opaquely ingested, credit is not given, and the crawlers ramp up server activity (and fees) to the degree where the human experience is degraded, folks are demotivated to continue contributing.
The open movement has always fought for shared knowledge to be accessible for everyone and anyone to use, to learn from. We don’t want to slow down scientific discovery. If we can more rapidly learn, discover, and innovate, with the use of new technologies, that’s wonderful. As long as we’re actually in this together.
What we ultimately want, and what we believe we need, is a commons that is strong, resilient, growing, useful (to machines and to humans)—all the good things, frankly. But as our open infrastructures mature they become increasingly taken for granted, and the feeling that “this is for all of us” is replaced with “everyone is entitled to this”. While this sounds the same, it really isn’t. Because with entitlement comes misuse, the social contract breaks, reciprocation evaporates, and ultimately the magic weakens.
Reciprocity in the age of AI means fostering a mutually beneficial relationship between creators/data stewards and AI model builders. For AI model builders who disproportionately benefit from the commons, reciprocity is a way of giving back to the commons that is community and context specific.
(And in case it wasn’t already clear, this piece isn’t about policy or laws, but about centering people).
This is where our values need to enter the equation: we cannot sit neutrally by and allow “this is for everyone” to mean that grossly disproportionate benefits of the commons accrue to the few. That our shared knowledge pools get siphoned off and kept from us.
We believe reciprocity must be embedded in the AI ecosystem in order to uphold the social contract behind sharing. If you benefit from the commons, and (critically) if you are in a position to give back to the commons, you should. Because the commons are for everyone, which means we all need to uphold the value of the commons by contributing in whatever way is appropriate.
There never has been, nor should there be, a mandatory 1:1 exchange between each individual and the commons. What’s appropriate then, as a way to give back? So many possibilities come to mind, including:
Increasing agency as a means to achieve reciprocity by allowing data holders to signal their preferences for AI training
Credit, in the form of attribution, when possible
Open infrastructure support
Cooperative dataset development
Putting model weights or other components into the commons
When we talk about defending the commons, it involves sustaining them, growing them, and making sure that the social contract remains intact for future generations of humans. And for that to happen, it’s time for some reciprocity.
Part of CC being louder about our values is also taking action in the form of a social protocol that is built on preference signals, a simple pact between those stewarding data and those reusing it for generative AI. Like CC licenses, they are aimed at well-meaning actors and designed to establish new social norms around sharing and access based on reciprocity. We’re actively working alongside values-aligned partners to pilot a framework that makes reciprocity actionable when shared knowledge is used to train generative AI. Consider joining the Open Infrastructure Circle to help us move this work forward.
In case you missed it, we recently published our 2025-2028 Strategy which sets the stage for our goals and activities over the next few years. This updated strategy reaffirms our three goals at CC:
Strengthen the open infrastructure of sharing
Defend and advocate for a thriving creative commons
Center community
As CC’s Community and Licensing Program Manager, I’m particularly excited to share more details about Goal 3: Center community. For those of you who attended our strategy consultations in August 2024, you’ll know that reaffirming CC’s commitment to community was a top priority for community members, and we completely agree! In our strategy, community is listed as a goal in and of itself, but it is also recognized that all three of our goals are interconnected and each goal is required to fulfill the other goals. With that in mind, community is also central to strengthening the open infrastructure of sharing and defending and advocating for a thriving creative commons.
We are excited to find new ways to support a CC community of anyone who uses, advocates for, or supports the infrastructure that enables open licensing or who supports and believes in the power of the commons.
When we think about centering community now and in the future, it may first be useful for a quick history of the Creative Commons Global Network (CCGN) and past community efforts. If you are well aware of the history of the CCGN, feel free to skip ahead to the next section!
A Quick History of the CCGN
The Creative Commons Affiliate Network was founded in 2001 alongside the founding of Creative Commons in order to support the global adoption of CC Licenses, and to port (or legally and linguistically adapt) the licenses to different legal jurisdictions. In November 2013, the 4.0 licenses, which no longer required porting, were launched. This presented an opportunity to shift the role of the Network to regional policy work, general awareness raising, and other local priorities. As a result, there was a need to rethink the Network structure to support this shift. A steering committee was launched in 2015 to create a new network strategy starting in 2015. The outcome of this work was the publication of Faces of the Commons, which included the ultimate recommendation for a revised Creative Commons Global Network (CCGN) to be created by the global network itself. With the goal of meeting this challenge, in 2017, the Global Network Strategy was published. Alongside the 2017 strategy, Network Platforms were introduced (and then reintroduced in 2020) as a means to collaborate across jurisdictions on specific themes. The network strategy states these platforms as the intended primary locale for network collaboration, and today they are the most active spaces of the CC community.
Adjustments to the CCGN continued. In 2019, a set of recommendations was published (though not adopted formally), in 2020, a report on the state of the network was produced, and in 2022, some major needs were identified. Much of this occurred while the CC team itself was facing a tough budgetary reality and was unable to adequately resource community management of the CCGN and support recommended changes.
Today, the CCGN is in need of renewed support from CC (the organization) to make sure the wonderful work of the global community can continue to be sustained. Many of the stated goals of the Network Strategy are out of alignment with how the network currently functions. As it stands, the Network Council—the body that governs the CCGN—has not met in over a year, and approved changes to the membership process have not been implemented because of the technical limitations of the current network website.
We have an engaged and vibrant community of almost 1,000 CCGN members, many of whom participate in local, self-governed CC Chapters, and some of whom do not (or may wish to but don’t know how to get more involved). Many folks have inquired about the ways in which they could join the CCGN but as a result of past governance shifts and untied loose ends, the CCGN is stuck in a bit of governance limbo. That brings us to today and why Goal 3: Centering Community is so important to the success of CC’s vision and mission.
Creating A Shared Vision of the Next Generation of the CCGN
Over the last year as we consulted on CC’s strategy, we have also been chatting with community members, some who are formally CCGN members and others who are CC advocates within their communities without formal affiliation with the CCGN. We conducted an internal assessment of the CCGN using historical data, community surveys, and interviews with chapter leads. In thinking about the future of our community, the shared sentiment is that the CC community is much more expansive than the formal structures of the CCGN; the CC community is anyone who uses, advocates for, or supports the infrastructure that enables open licensing or who supports and believes in the power of the commons.
Today, nothing feels more important than both supporting and belonging to a community of values-aligned CC and open advocates who champion access to knowledge, and freedom of information as the foundations of a democratic society. We are excited to adapt the CC global community to the contexts and realities of 2025 so that together we can protect and strengthen the thriving creative commons as a means to solve the world’s greatest challenges.
Sign up for our new Community newsletter to continue engaging with our work to refresh and center the CC community in our work.
Welcoming New CC Board Members
Meet the New CC Board Members
We’re pleased to introduce four new members to our Board: Alwaleed Alkhaja, Melissa Hagemann, Melissa Omino, and Colin Sullivan.
Familiar faces within the CC community, Alwaleed, Melissa, Melissa, and Colin bring prior experience within our organization, having previously partnered with us as community advocates with a history of dedicated support for the open movement.
Each of our new Board members brings a unique expertise that will help strengthen CC’s impact and guide our strategic vision forward. Their diverse backgrounds and commitment to the open movement strengthen our already dedicated Board, representing exactly what we need as we continue to grow and evolve our work to achieve our2025-2028 goals.
Alwaleed Alkhaja serves as the Head of Open Access and Copyright at the Qatar National Library, where he oversees the library’s open access program and all copyright-related matters. Throughout his academic and professional career, he has held various roles in open access publishing and open science. His experience ranges from editorial positions at Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Journals to overseeing academic publishing at Hamad bin Khalifa University Press/QScience.com (the first open access publisher in Qatar).
Alwaleed’s passion for open science is rooted in his background in scientific research. He earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Leeds and received his master’s and PhD in Molecular Biology from the Max Planck International School of Molecular Biology in Göttingen, Germany. He also holds an MBA from the University of Manchester. Alwaleed voluntarily supports several international organizations, including serving on the board of Global Sustainability Coalition for Open Science Services (SCOSS) and advisory board of the Forum for Open Research in MENA (FORM).
In his free time, he enjoys photography and exploring experimental techniques, including macro photography, pinhole photography (constructing a room-sized camera obscura), cyanotype printing, and infrared photography.
Melissa Hagemann has been at the forefront of the Access to Knowledge movement for over twenty years. She managed the Open Society Foundations’ work to define open access to research through the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) and went on to support the development of the global open access movement. To mark the 20th anniversary of the BOAI, she spearheaded the development of new recommendations which emphasize that open access is not an end in itself, but a means to further ends, above all, to the equity, quality, sustainability, and usability of research. Currently she is the Director of the BOAI Org, which advocates for the equitable development of open access globally.
Melissa co-organized the meeting that led to the Cape Town Open Education Declaration, which offered strategies for the growth of the global open education movement. In addition, she supported the advancement of progressive copyright reform at the national and international levels.
She has served on numerous boards, including the Advisory Board of the Wikimedia Foundation, as well as the Open Climate Campaign.
Melissa Omino Dr Melissa Omino is currently the Director of the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law (CIPIT) at Strathmore University, where she oversees the research direction of the leading Eastern African AI Policy Hub and Data Governance Policy Centre with a range of funding partners that includes the IDRC, Hewlett Foundation, Ford Foundation, and Open AIR.
Her research direction is focused on utilizing an African lens and a Human Rights lens. Part of the research conducted under Dr Omino’s leadership at CIPIT involved mapping AI applications in Africa as the initial step in answering the question of what determines African AI and the problems it aims to solve in Africa. Dr Omino is also an intellectual property (IP) expert with a research focus on the development and negotiation of IP provisions in international trade agreements by and with Global South countries.
She has served as an Advisory Board member in several African and Global Projects that intersect between AI and IP, including a National AI Strategy Process, and leading the IP Advisory to a global entity funding AI research in Africa.
Colin Sullivan is the General Counsel at Patreon, where he oversees the operations teams that ensure the platform remains a safe and stable home for creators. His responsibilities include leading the legal, trust & safety, payment operations, fraud and compliance teams. With a focus on protecting creators and maintaining a trustworthy environment, Colin plays a pivotal role in Patreon’s mission of funding the creative class and safeguarding their creative freedom. Before joining Patreon, Colin founded his own law firm where he served as outside general counsel to entrepreneurs and startups.
A Big Thank You to Alek Tarkowski
Please join us in thanking outgoing CC Board member, Alek Tarkowski who completed his five year term at the end of 2024. Alek is the Director of Strategy at Open Future and brought to the CC Board over 15 years of experience with public interest advocacy, movement building and research into the intersection of society, culture and digital technologies. As a longtime CC community member, in 2005, he co-founded Creative Commons Poland. During his time on the Board, Alex supported the development of CC’s organizational strategy and provided leadership in developing CC’s approach to sharing in the age of AI. Thankfully, Alek won’t be going too far away as he now joins the CC Advisory Council.
Welcome Alwaleed. Melissa, Melissa, and Colin, and thank you Alek!
The team here at Creative Commons was delighted to publicly release ournew organizational strategy on January 22, after almost a year of intensive team, community, and board consultations. For the next several years, our focus will be to:
Strengthen the open infrastructure of sharing
Defend and advocate for a thriving creative commons
Center community
These goals are high level, as they tend to be when packaged up as part of a multi-year strategy. These goals should also feel familiar, for an organization whose mission it is to empower individuals and communities around the world through technical, legal, and policy solutions that enable the sharing of education, culture, and science in the public interest. But there are important nuances included in these goals and subsequent short-, medium-, and long-term objectives that point to intentional and meaningful shifts in the ways we operate to meet this moment.
Of course the legal layer of the open infrastructure—the CC licenses and legal tools themselves—must be strengthened. But also, new sharing frameworks must be explored for changing times.
Of course we must ensure the ongoing survival of the commons. But strategies need to evolve from solely being a sensible argument around opening up access to information. We know that greater access facilitates advances in education, in the scientific arena, and in our ability to understand and appreciate the diversity of cultural heritage that exists. However, those who previously saw the obvious benefits to sharing may now be hesitant, uncertain about how their works will be used or contextualized, through advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning.
Finally, one might think that centering community goes without saying, but actually, it doesn’t. As an organization that has only achieved what it has because of a strong community of advocates bringing their expertise and passion to bear, we know we cannot continue to impact the social norms and legal frameworks of sharing without full participation.
So what does all of this mean for our work today, and throughout this year? Since we are currently operating in the age of AI, where all content also functions as data, we are focusing our work in two key areas:
Data governance, shaped by legal and norms-based infrastructure to facilitate sharing.
Sustaining open licensing in the age of AI, as high value contributions to the commons at scale that must be sustained through reciprocity.
This focus is guided by CC’s core principle: ideas and facts should not be commodified. As we reimagine sharing in the age of AI, we also draw on our history which reminds us to resist the reflex to expand copyright. Instead, we believe developing new norms, as part of a healthy data governance framework that prioritizes sharing in the age of AI, is the best approach to meeting our mission.
Data Governance
Our friends atOpen Future define data governance as “how rules for data use are created and enforced. This includes laws, standards, and social norms that guide what people can and can’t do with data. Good governance ensures fair and responsible data sharing.”
CC plays a unique role within data governance across the open internet. The CC licenses provide a form of legal and social norms guidance that has facilitated sharing on the internet for the last 25 years. We think of CC’s role within data governance as providing critical infrastructure that enables community-driven, fair, and responsible data sharing. The challenge is that what is considered fair and responsible data sharing is not static; it evolves based on context. And while this has always been true, AI has brought issues of fairness, transparency, trust, accountability, and more to the forefront for CC and for our many collaborators and colleagues who are committed to human-centered approaches to data governance.
In 2025, we need to continue to explain how the CC licenses interact with AI training, and champion preference signals as a way to advance the data governance we need to meet this moment. You’ve heard from us on this subjectin the past, and there is much more to come as we find partners to pilot this work with in the coming months. Policy and legal environments will also continue to play a significant role in both driving and influencing the data governance landscape of the future. CC’s role in advocating for balanced copyright and policies that drive access to knowledge, especially as new legislation, particularly around AI, is passed and implemented, is instrumental in representing civil society and advocating on behalf of the public interest.
Sustaining Open Licensing in the Age of AI
The use of the CC licenses has resulted in billions of items being released openly. Today, these items have also become parts of AI training sets—this is a significant shift that is influencing the norms around open licensing. Our priority is increasing sustainable sharing and access, but we now must consider “what about AI?”. We believe that openly licensed collections of content, which act as high-value contributions to the commons, must continue to be prioritized.
However, many creators (artists, researchers, educators, and everyone in between) are understandably concerned about their contributions to the commons being reduced to small pieces of data within huge datasets where they lose agency over how their works are being used. We believe that the antidote to this is reciprocity. We believe it is time for the open movement to ask for something in return when there is disproportionate benefit from use of open datasets. We aim to do this by developing relationships with AI model builders on behalf of those who contribute to the commons, ensuring that training datasets remain collectively owned, sustain the commons, and that data governance principles are respected.
We need more open educational, cultural, scientific, and research data to allow more rapid scientific discovery and collaboration. Sharing must continue in the age of AI and we are committed to supporting open licensing at scale, taking the context of AI into consideration.
There are new and layered complexities in the open sharing world, and we’re excited and determined to help clarify and address these challenges. We’d like to see open sharing grow as a collective strategy to advance the public interest. In 2025 (and beyond, I’m sure), we will be finding ways to facilitate agency for the movement and facilitating even more sharing and access, while ensuring that the commons remain resilient and sustainable.
If you’d like to support this work, consider joining the Creative CommonsOpen Infrastructure Circle. Our most dedicated supporters ensure that every day we can show up and do the valuable work of preserving and growing the global commons of knowledge and culture from which we all benefit.
The AI Action Summit & Civil Society’s (Possible) Impact
On February 10 and 11, 2025, the government of France convened the AI Action Summit, bringing together heads of state, tech leaders, and civil society to discuss global collaboration and action on AI. The event was co-chaired by French President Macron and Indian Prime Minister Modi. This was the third such Summit in just over a year, the first two in the UK and South Korea respectively. The next one is to be hosted in India, with a firm date not yet set.
Creative Commons was invited to be an official participant in the Summit, and given room to speak on a panel about international AI governance. Given our continued advocacy for public interest AI, and on-the-ground work, particularly in the US and EU, to interrogate new governance structures for data sharing, open infrastructures, and data commons, the Summit was an important venue to contribute to the global conversation.
We focused on three things in our panel and direct conversations:
Civil society matters, and must continue to be included. While we may not hold the pen on drafting declarations, or be in the negotiating room with world leaders and their ample security teams, we must continue to (loudly) bring our perspectives to these spaces. If we aren’t there, then nobody is. Without civil society, there can be no public interest.
The importance of openness in AI. What it means, who benefits from it, and how we think critically about ongoing (dis)incentives to participate in the open knowledge ecosystem.
Local solutions for local contexts, local content, and local needs.
Civil Society Matters
Civil society matters because we represent real concerns from real people. A people-centered approach to AI must inevitably be a planet-centered approach as well, one simply cannot and should not exist without the other.
Included in the civil society contingent at the Summit were also major philanthropic foundations who have long focused on public interest technology. Encouragingly (we hope) they have joined forces with private investment and governments to launch Current AI, a coalition which is advocating ‘global collaboration and local action, building a future where open, trustworthy technology serves the public interest’. The Summit also saw the launch of ROOST (Robust Open Online Safety Tools), which was born out of a conversation at a prior Summit around the absence of reliable, robust, high-quality open source tooling for trust and safety. ROOST adds a critical building block to the open source AI ecosystem as tools to allow anyone to run safety checks on datasets before use and training should (hopefully) result in safer model performance.
But philanthropy is not a business model for something that is set to become ubiquitous public infrastructure at a greater level than is already the case with the internet currently. The investments of philanthropy alone will not be enough to steer the public interest conversation to the top of the action agenda. There must be matching political will and public investment, and we’ll be watching closely for evidence that actions are following words.
Our view is that governments should prioritize investment in publicly accessible AI, which meets open standards and allows for equitable access. These are key drivers of innovation and every sector stands to benefit. Governments can lead the way on investing in compute, (re)training people, and preparing and encouraging high quality openly licensed datasets, to level the playing field for researchers, innovators, open source developers, and beyond.
Openness in AI
Openness in AI continues to be a broad and multifaceted topic: how do we continue to foster open sharing, making it resilient, safe and trustworthy while we’re hearing from our community some examples of creators and organizations choosing more restrictive licenses now, or hesitating to share at all in an attempt to regain agency over how their content is used as training data. Our future depends on protecting the progress of the last 20 years of open practices. The answer does not lie in a misguided shift from CC BY to CC BY-NC-ND. We have to think more holistically.
The CC licenses alone are not a governance framework in and of themselves, but what they represent are absolutely critical components of legal and social norms that support data governance that can serve the public interest.
In the context of data governance, we see our role in helping negotiate preferences for reuse of datasets containing openly licensed works. We need to ensure that folks are still incentivized to participate and contribute to the commons, while feeling their voices are heard and their work is contributing in mutually-beneficial ways. If you are the steward of a large open dataset, we want to hear from you.
Local Solutions for Local Contexts
From CC’s perspective, local solutions for local contexts are where we need to put our energy. As Janet Haven from Data & Society frames it, let’s focus on collaborationfor AI governance, rather than striving for a single, globalgovernance structure. One size does not fit all, and even issues that are global needs, like planetary survival, will require very different efforts by country or region. It was rather encouraging to hear examples of “small” language models from across the world, that emphasize language preservation and cultural context. Efforts to record, catalog, and digitize language and cultural artifacts are underway. This is yet another area where we see a need to systematically articulate and clearly signal preferences for reuse, so that local efforts thrive and are respected appropriately.
Where We Go From Here
We heard from many fellow civil society organizations that the tone in France differed markedly from previous Summits in the UK or South Korea. There was a welcome diversity of civil society voices on panels and in workshops, with a steady drumbeat of calls for safe, sustainable, and trustworthy AI. “Open source” and “public interest” were phrases uttered in many major interventions. But aside from us collectively being able to fill a few volumes on how we define these terms anyway (sustainable for who?) the real impact of the Summit will be seen in the ways in which we collaborate from now on.
The political discussions at the Summit focused heavily on the false dichotomy of regulation versus innovation – and yes, the language used heavily fed into the narrative that those are mutually exclusive. Much emphasis on the desire for regional investment (and superiority), while offering global collaboration, was mildly disheartening but also fully expected. Political statements around public interest were repeated but vague. Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau, who emphatically urged everyone to not forget the people, stating that “the benefits must accrue to everyone”. Whether those in power will pay attention to that message is anyone’s guess. Take, for example, The Paris Charter on Artificial Intelligence in the Public Interest, which says all of the right things but lacks in terms of both widespread endorsement and meaningful steps towards implementation.
We are clear-eyed on the fact that AI is here, has been for quite some time, and will not go away. We need collaborative, pragmatic approaches to steer towards what we see as beneficial outcomes and public interest values. While there were glimmers of hope from some who hold legislative and executive power, it’s clear that civil society has a lot of advocacy work ahead of us.
The Summit culminated in countries signing onto a declaration, with notable omissions from the United States and UK. As always, it is once the media cycle moves on where we will see any lasting impact. In the meantime, let’s not wait for another global Summit to take action.
Why Digital Public Goods, including AI, Should Depend on Open Data
Acknowledging that some data should not be shared (for moral, ethical and/or privacy reasons) and some cannot be shared (for legal or other reasons), Creative Commons (CC) thinks there is value in incentivizing the creation, sharing, and use of open data to advance knowledge production. As open communities continue to imagine, design, and build digital public goods and public infrastructure services for education, science, and culture, these goods and services – whenever possible and appropriate – should produce, share, and/or build upon open data.
CC is a member of the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) and CC’s legal tools have been recognized as digital public goods (DPGs). DPGs are “open-source software, open standards, open data, open AI systems, and open content collections that adhere to privacy and other applicable best practices, do no harm, and are of high relevance for attainment of the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).” If we want to solve the world’s greatest challenges, governments and other funders will need to invest in, develop, openly license, share, and use DPGs.
Open data is important to DPGs because data is a key driver of economic vitality with demonstrated potential to serve the public good. In the public sector, data informs policy making and public services delivery by helping to channel scarce resources to those most in need; providing the means to hold governments accountable and foster social innovation. In short, data has the potential to improve people’s lives. When data is closed or otherwise unavailable, the public does not accrue these benefits. CC was recently part of a DPGA sub-committee working to preserve the integrity of open data as part of the DPG Standard. This important update to the DPG Standard was introduced to ensure only open datasets and content collections with open licenses are eligible for recognition as DPGs. This new requirement means open data sets and content collections must meet the following criteria to be recognised as a digital public good.
Comprehensive Open Licensing:
The entire data set/content collection must be under an acceptable open licence. Mixed-licensed collections will no longer be accepted.
Accessible and Discoverable:
All data sets and content collection DPGs must be openly licensed and easily accessible from a distinct, single location, such as a unique URL.
Permitted Access Restrictions:
Certain access restrictions – such as logins, registrations, API keys, and throttling – are permitted as long as they do not discriminate against users or restrict usage based on geography or any other factors.
The DPGA writes: “This new requirement is designed to increase trust and confidence in all DPGs by ensuring that users can fully engage with solutions without concerns over intellectual property infringement. Simplifying access and usage aligns with the DPGA’s goal of making DPGs truly open and accessible for widespread adoption… it helps foster an environment and ecosystem where innovation can thrive without legal uncertainties.”
AI and Open Data
As CC examines AI and its potential to be a public good that helps solve global challenges, we believe open data will play a similarly important role.
CC recognizes AI is a rapidly developing space, and we appreciate everyone’s diligent work to create definitions, recommendations, and guidance for and warnings about AI. After two years of community consultation, the Open Source Initiative released version 1.0 of the Open Source AI Definition (OSAID) on October 28, 2024. This definition is an important step in starting the conversation about what open means for AI systems. However, the OSAID’s data sharing requirements remain contentious, particularly around whether and how training data for AI models should be shared.
CC is of the opinion that just because it is difficult to build and release open datasets, that does not mean we should not encourage it. In cases where training data should not or cannot be shared, we encourage detailed summaries that explain the contents of the dataset and give instructions for reproducibility, but nonetheless that data should be defined as closed. When data can be made open and shared, it should be.
We agree with Liv Marte Nordhaug, CEO, Digital Public Goods Alliance who said in a recent post: “With regards to AI systems, there is a need to ensure that we don’t inadvertently undermine the open data movement and open data as a category of DPGs by advancing an approach to AI systems that is more permissive than for other categories of DPGs. Maintaining a high bar on training data could potentially result in fewer AI systems meeting the DPG Standard criteria. However, SDG relevance, platform independence, and do-no-harm by design are features that set DPGs apart from other open source solutions—and for those reasons, the inclusion of [AI] training data is needed.”
Next Steps
CC will continue to work with the DPGA, and other partners, as it develops a standard as to what qualifies an AI model to be a digital public good. In that arena we will advocate for open datasets, and consideration of a tiered approach, so that components of an AI model can be considered digital public goods, without the entire model needing to have every component openly shared. Updated recommendations and guidelines that recognize the value of fully open AI systems that use and share open datasets will be an important part of ensuring AI serves the public good.
For over 20 years, Creative Commons (CC) has provided self-serve solutions to address the limitations of copyright in a digital world. CC is a beloved symbol of sharing and knowledge freedom that resists a restrictive sharing and re-use environment and brings people together. Thanks to organizations like CC and many others, creative, cultural, educational, and research works are more accessible than ever before, and yet, our work is not done. At a time when there are increasing concentrations of power online, and when monopolization of knowledge is amplified exponentially through technology such as artificial intelligence (AI), CC has been called upon to intervene with the same creativity and collective action as we did with the CC licenses over 20 years ago. If we continue down this path without intervention, the internet and our ways of connecting online will be controlled by the few who disproportionately benefit from the many in ways that deepen inequities.
Over the next few years, our priorities will focus on ensuring a strong and resilient open infrastructure of sharing, and enabling a healthy and thriving creative commons powered by reciprocity and community in the public interest.
Let’s get into the details! Our 2025-2028 strategy is guided by three interconnected goals:
Strengthen the open infrastructure of sharing
Defend and advocate for a thriving creative commons
Center community
Goal 1: Strengthen the open infrastructure of sharing
We imagine a world where CC’s foundational open infrastructure is funded by default, and where individual creators and rightsholders reclaim agency in contributing to and benefiting from the commons. If we can ensure a strong and resilient open infrastructure of sharing that enables access to educational resources, cultural heritage, and scientific research in the public interest, we’ll have a viable alternative to the concentrations of power that currently exist and are restricting sharing and access. Because the commons must continue to exist for everyone.
As we look to the future, we will know we’ve been successful in meeting this goal when a strong and resilient open infrastructure empowers sharing and access in the public interest.
Goal 2: Defend and advocate for a thriving creative commons
Stronger open infrastructure enables the thriving creative commons that is required to solve the world’s greatest problems. Knowledge must be accessible, discoverable, and reusable. In tandem with a strong and supported open infrastructure of sharing, a thriving creative commons redistributes power from the hands of the few to the minds of the many, and cements a worldview of knowledge as a public good and a human right. We cannot and must not take the commons for granted.
As we look to the future, we will know we’ve been successful in meeting this goal when a thriving creative commons exists to solve the world’s greatest challenges.
Goal 3: Center community
We steward the open infrastructure of sharing and contribute to a thriving creative commons with, and for, community. Community is central to everything we do and at the heart of our mission and vision. We need to recalibrate our commitment to serve and recognize those who have built the commons on which we all rely. We aim to better center the community of open advocates, who are credited for the global usability and adoption of the CC legal tools, alongside the rich generational and geographical diversity of open advocates with varying needs and awareness of CC.
As we look to the future, we will know we’ve been successful in meeting this goal when communities leverage CC’s open infrastructure to share knowledge in the public interest.
Over the next several weeks we will be outlining more about our plans for 2025 and the ways that we are bringing this ambitious strategy and optimistic view of the future to life. In the meantime, you can read the full published strategy on our website.
The creation of this strategy would not have been possible without the input and vision of the CC global community, including the CC Board of Directors, members of the CC Global Network, and our engaged and enthusiastic platform communities. Thank you!
CC Open Science: 2024 Year in Review
For more than 20 years, Creative Commons (CC) has been critical infrastructure for the open sharing of research outputs and a staunch advocate of open policies and investments that make knowledge more accessible. We believe CC licences could do even more to advance open science.
Access to science is a fundamental human right, and yet, much of that public good is inaccessible because of paywalls and limited in its reuse because of restrictive copyright licenses. The CC licenses are an essential part of open science infrastructure and provide a legal tool for sharing, reusing, innovating, and further benefiting from publicly-funded scientific research that belongs to all of us.
For more than 20 years, research outputs such as journal articles, books, conference proceedings, theses, and more have been made available through the application of a CC license. CC licenses are embedded into the workflows of scholarly publishers and academic librarians in ways that have dramatically increased the discoverability and usability of research outputs by other researchers and the general public, including journalists, policy makers, activists, and curious individuals. Increased access to knowledge is enabled through open science practices and policies which are empowered by CC licenses.
As we wrap up a year of global elections, increasing global warming, enduring the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, while ensuring innovation and discovery to address the next, all while navigating sharing in an age of COVID-19, nothing seems more important than ensuring open access to research. It is for that reason that we are proud to share some highlights of our open science initiatives at CC in 2024 and share our plans and priorities for open science and the role of CC licenses in the coming years.
Advances in Open Climate
Open access is a necessary condition to solving the climate crisis. Not only is the knowledge about our understanding of climate change and its impacts contained in research outputs but so are the solutions to climate change. At CC we want to enable access to these research outputs to help address the climate crisis. CC is well positioned to leverage our expertise in the open access, data and licences to help researchers, librarians, consortia, policy makers, and other stakeholders in scholarly communication open research outputs. Opening up climate change research and data is climate action.
Open Climate Data Project
Generously funded by the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, this project is facilitating better sharing of climate data with CC licensing, metadata, and database user-interface practices. CC published Recommendations for Better Sharing of Climate Data, a seminal resource to help national and intergovernmental climate data-producing agencies use legal terms, licenses, and metadata values that ensure climate data is accessible, shareable, and reusable. Our goal is to share strategies and provide resources that enable interconnected and interoperable climate data to be used to find faster solutions to mitigating the climate crisis. The Recommendations are available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. CC is also working with some of the largest producers of climate data including the GEO (Group on Earth Observations) to guide and implement these recommendations.
The Open Climate Campaign
This year is also the last year of the Open Climate Campaign, a joint initiative between CC, SPARC, and EIFL, funded by Arcadia. The Campaign, which ran for two years made a significant impact in raising awareness about the lack of access to climate research and unveiled how essential open science and open climate is if we are to find faster, more equitable solutions to address the climate crisis. By bringing together a network of endorsers and galvanizing the academic library community, the Open Climate Campaign launched, or supported the launch of, proactive and lasting initiatives to increase access to climate research. Read more about some of the successful projects from the Campaign that are continuing at CC below.
The Paper Pledge for the Planet: Open repositories can be a tool for climate action. This year CC launched an initiative encouraging authors to upload a version of your work, as agreed within the terms of your publishing agreement, to an open repository. Authors can check atShare Your Paper what version you can upload and even directly email the permitted version right on the same website. We are also partnering with theConfederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) andEIFL for direct outreach to researchers through academic and national institutions.
Unbinding: About 40% of papers cited in the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report are behind a paywall. That means that some of the world’s most important research on climate change is inaccessible. We are directly appealing to publishers to open up the papers. As partners CC will provide the data and information about this key literature and celebrate publishers participation and contribution to addressing climate change.
Taking action to increase the availability of access to climate research is collective climate action. The more we can collectively work together to ensure that all climate research is available as open access as the default, the more we will collectively be able to do to address the climate crisis. We are actively seeking partnerships and funding to continue this work. If this resonates, please reach out.
Supporting Policy Development to Advance Open Science
CC actively develops and contributes to open science and access policies with funders, institutions, national governments and international bodies. This year we worked with over 10 countries developing, consulting and aiding in the implementation of open access policies including Morocco who recently announced their national strategy for open educational resources and open science.
Increasing the Accessibility and Reusability of Preprints
CC and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative are collaborating to promote the use of the CC BY 4.0 license on preprints (otherwise known as the versions of research manuscripts that are published before undergoing formal peer review). Openly licensing preprints enables researchers and readers to benefit from rapid dissemination, rigorous review, and equitable contribution to scientific knowledge that doesn’t require paid access to exclusive research journals. As part of our Open Preprints project, we develop and share practical licensing guidance for researchers in the life sciences, as well as make policy recommendations for funders and preprint servers.
We meet regularly with arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv, and Research Square, and other preprint servers to help streamline their open licensing practices in standard alignment with each other. We’re also engaging funders of open science to develop model policies aimed at increasing the adoption of CC BY licenses on preprints and ensure that grant-funded research outputs are accessible, adaptable, and aligned with the growing demand for transparency and collaboration in scientific communication. This year CC developed a series of resources to help preprint authors, librarians, preprint servers, and others in the scholarly communication space adopt CC By licences for preprints.
We look forward to engaging and connecting with researchers, funders, data organizations, preprint servers, and other stakeholders through our workshops, events and projects in 2025. You can find out more information about how to get involved in our work on CC’s new Open Science website. You can also join one of our upcoming Open Climate Community Calls in partnership with the Open Environmental Data Project or join our Open Goes COP Collation working to raise awareness of open at the UNFCC’s Conference of the Parties.
With new publications, events, and the launch of a new coalition, the CC Open Culture Program accomplished a lot! Here are some highlights:
At the Open Culture Strategic Workshop in Lisbon, Portugal, we gathered nearly 50 experts from every continent to co-create a strategic roadmap for future action, charting a course for UNESCO Member States to draft an agreement (otherwise referred to as a legal instrument). This would promote open solutions to enable equitable access to cultural heritage worldwide. Read our blog post and full report for more: CC strategic workshop reveals big opportunities for open access to cultural heritage.
In the wake of the Lisbon workshop, we launched the Towards a Recommendation on Open Cultural Heritage( TAROCH) Coalition, a collaborative effort to achieve the adoption of a UNESCO standard-setting instrument to improve open access to cultural heritage. Read our blog post Creative Commons Launches TAROCH Coalition for Open Access to Cultural Heritage and TAROCH information brief and apply to join the Coalition now!
The Open Culture team is thrilled that we will once again be offering the CC Certificate on Open Culture in 2025. Learn more and register! We look forward to building on those achievements and continuing to ensure we can all access heritage to connect to our past and imagine our futures. Contact us at info@creativecommons.org for more information.
Creative Commons training efforts strengthen our mission to “empower individuals and communities around the world through technical, legal, and policy solutions that enable the sharing of education, culture, and science in the public interest.” In 2024, our Learning & Training team focused on: 1) piloting new partnerships, 2) expanding training options, and 3) reaching new communities. We are pleased that our 2024 training and engagement efforts supported national governments, universities, secondary education institutions, NGOs, librarians, cultural heritage professionals, and web developers spanning almost every continent. See below for highlights, and contact us if you would like to collaborate in 2025.
We partnered with Library Juice Academy to create an additional microcredential course launching in January 2025. Registration is currently open until all seats are filled.
Similar to our partnership with the US Midwest Higher Education Compact (MHEC), we partnered with BCcampus to support subsidized CC Certificate training for additional higher education institutions.
Expanding training options:
CC provided increased support for our CC Certificate program and its 1,892 alumni across 68 countries. The CC Certificate program trains advocates, educators, librarians, and cultural heritage professionals in copyright, open licensing and open practices for advocacy. This year, CC awarded 35 scholarships for Certificate courses; hosted 24 webinars covering topics such as Digitized Representation by Heritage Institutions, Accessible OER, AI, copyright, and CC licenses; and provided multiple avenues of engagement for Certificate alumni, including both formal and informal mentorship options and a monthly newsletter.
To reach more librarians, CC collaborated with the American Library Association to provide a 4-week webinar series for ALA’s Core division, supporting librarians’ professional development. CC also hosted presentations at ALA LibLearnX and ALA Annual.
Reflecting on 2024, we are grateful for the friendships and collaborations forged, and the new communities we had the pleasure of meeting. As we continue working toward the three goals in 2025, we hope to connect! If you would like to partner with CC, host a CC training for your institution, or get CC support for your community of practice, please let us know. Learn more on our website and email learning [at] creativecommons.org for more information. We’d be delighted to help you continue to grow your knowledge expertise in opening access to research, science, education, and culture.
