Kat Walsh is the General Counsel at Creative Commons. She was on the CC legal team 2012-2015 during the drafting and initial publication process of version 4.0 of the license suite and returned as Deputy General Counsel in 2021.
She has a nearly 20-year history in the free and open culture movements, including many years on the boards of the Wikimedia Foundation and the Free Software Foundation, and has previously worked in library policy, technology startups, and online community management.
Kat is an advocate for free access to knowledge and for CC licensing as part of the infrastructure for an internet that belongs to everyone. As General Counsel, she oversees the legal support for all aspects of CC’s activities, provides strategic input, leads the stewardship of CC’s legal tools, and advises the organization on new programmatic initiatives.
When not practicing law, Kat is also a bassoonist, violist, choral singer, and powerlifter. She is based in Novato, California.
In the past year, Creative Commons, alongside other members of the Movement for a Better Internet, hosted workshops and sessions at community conferences like MozFest, RightsCon, and Wikimania, to hear from attendees regarding their views on artificial intelligence (AI). In these sessions, community members raised concerns about how AI is utilizing CC-licensed content, and discussions…
Many wonder what role CC licenses, and CC as an organization, can and should play in the future of generative AI. The legal and ethical uncertainty over using copyrighted inputs for training, the uncertainty over the legal status and best practices around works produced by generative AI, and the implications for this technology on the…
The United States Supreme Court released its opinion today in Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith. While it’s hard to predict the full ramifications of this decision at this point, our initial opinion is that this decision is not ideal, but also not the death knell for transformative fair use that many feared it could have…
As part of Creative Commons’ key strategic goal of Better Sharing, we have taken a firm stance against mandatory content filtering on the internet. In new proposed legislation, the U.S. Congress is now raising mandatory content filtering again as a tool to eliminate infringement of copyrighted works. For those who are new to the discussion,…
Last Friday, United States (US) senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) introduced the “Strengthening Measures to Advance Rights Technologies (SMART) Copyright Act of 2022.” Their bill proposes to have the US Copyright Office mandate that all websites accepting user-uploaded material implement technologies to automatically filter that content. We’ve long believed that these kinds…
