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Brigitte Vézina

Director of Policy and Open Culture
Brigitte Vézina Brigitte Vézina (Photo by Victoria Heath, CC BY)

Brigitte is passionate about all things spanning culture, arts, handicraft, traditions, fashion and, of course, copyright law and policy.  She gets a kick out of tackling the fuzzy legal and policy issues that stand in the way of access, use, re-use and remix of culture, information and knowledge.

Before joining CC, she worked for a decade as a legal officer at WIPO and then ran her own consultancy, advising Europeana, SPARC Europe and others on copyright matters.

Currently located in the Netherlands where she lives with her husband and two kids, Brigitte grew up living in eight different countries across North America, Africa and Europe but Montréal is where she proudly comes from.

Brigitte is a fellow at the Canadian think tank Centre for International Governance Innovation. She holds a bachelor’s degree in law from the Université de Montréal and a master’s in law from Georgetown University. She has been a member of the Bar of Quebec since 2003.

Photo credit: Victoria Heath CC BY 4.0

Posts by Brigitte Vézina

Celebrating the Public Domain in the Capital of Europe

by Connor Benedict, Brigitte Vézina Open Culture

Last week, Creative Commons took part in the International Public Domain Day celebration at the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels. Two engaging roundtables were hosted, delving into copyright issues concerning the public domain and its future. The event united advocates for open access to cultural heritage, featuring presentations on topics like the monetization and decolonization of the public domain, as well as updates on the Europeana Public Domain Charter. Creative Commons introduced new guidelines published in February aimed at encouraging users to reference institutions when utilizing public domain cultural heritage materials.

EU adopts landmark Artificial Intelligence Act

by Brigitte Vézina, Mark Foster Copyright

Creative Commons welcomes the adoption by the European Parliament of the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act. We engaged intensively with EU policymakers to safeguard the appropriate interplay with EU copyright legislation. The EU must now ensure implementation allows broad, open access to harness the full potential of generative AI whilst enforcing the safeguards provided.

Getty Museum releases 88K+ images of artworks with CC0

by Brigitte Vézina Open Heritage

The J. Paul Getty Museum just released more than 88 thousand works under Creative Commons Zero (CCØ), putting the digital images of items from its impressive collection squarely and unequivocally into the public domain. This is in line with our advocacy efforts at Creative Commons (CC): digital reproductions of public domain material must remain in the public domain. In other words, no new copyright should arise over the creation of a digitized “twin.”