Have you ever wondered who looks for openly licensed images? Or how those images are used? Before we launched CC Search in April 2019, we assumed that the search engine would serve three broad groups of creators: Those making designs, imagery, and art Those illustrating text, such as bloggers, journalists, or educators Those creating videos…

Astronaut Edwin Aldrin walks on lunar surface near leg of Lunar Module. Credit: Neil Armstrong/NASA, (1969) in the public domain.

It’s July 20, 1969.  Along with 600 million people, nine-year-old Chris Hadfield is glued to his television—watching intently as American astronaut Neil Armstrong glides down the ladder of the Lunar Module, and in one swift pounce, touches the dust of a familiar yet alien world. His words forever immortalized, “That’s one small step for man,…

This week is bittersweet. Bitter because instead of welcoming you to the CC Global Summit in Lisbon, I’m at my home in Toronto wishing we were together. Sweet because we have been given the opportunity to revise the CC Global Summit—to turn this annual, in-person gathering into something uniquely digital that will, hopefully, address the…

CC Catalog API (V1), featuring icons by Icons by Mikicon (left) and Faisal (right) via Noun Project, CC BY

The Creative Commons Catalog Application Programming Interface (CC Catalog API) gives developers the ability to create custom applications that utilize CC Search, a rich collection of 330 million and counting openly licensed images. We have spent the last two years gathering this data from a diverse set of 28 sources, ranging from curated collections assembled…

A screenshot of the revamped CC License Chooser.

This is part of a series of posts introducing the projects built by open source contributors mentored by Creative Commons during Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2019. Ari Madian was one of those contributors and we are grateful for his work on this project. The Creative Commons (CC) License Chooser was made nearly 15 years ago and…

Educational community, including libraries and universities.

This is part of a series of posts introducing the projects built by open source contributors mentored by Creative Commons during Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2019. Maria Belen Guaranda was one of those contributors and we are grateful for her work on this project. “By visualizing information, we turn it into a landscape that you can explore…

This is part of a series of posts introducing the projects built by open source contributors mentored by Creative Commons during Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2019. Mayank Nader was one of those contributors and we are grateful for his work on this project. Creative Commons (CC) is working towards providing easy access to CC-licensed…

Above is a screenshot of the students’ proposed prototype for an improved CC Search. (CC BY)

Since its launch, CC Search has become more than just a search tool for CC-licensed content; it has come to exemplify the virtuous cycle of knowledge creation—where we create, collaborate, and learn from one another.  Our recent collaboration with a group of students from UC Berkeley was a true exercise in this cycle of creation…

The Creative Commons (CC) Global Network is made up of people like you. People who are attracted to the CC Global Network because of what can be accomplished by building a globally-accessible public commons of knowledge and culture through CC’s tools and products.  In 2016, CC released an assessment of the community in the Faces…

This is part of a series of posts introducing the projects built by open source contributors mentored by Creative Commons during Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2019. Dhruv Bhanushali was one of those contributors and we are grateful for his work on this project. Over the past few months, we’ve been working on CC Vocabulary,…