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Sarah Hinchliff Pearson

General Counsel

Sarah Hinchliff Pearson is the General Counsel at Creative Commons. Her multi-disciplinary toolkit includes law, journalism, and an MBA.

Sarah found her way to the open movement through a lifelong interest in the future of media. She has a long history with Creative Commons, beginning as a member of the legal team that created the Version 4.0 license suite. She was most recently a lawyer at DuckDuckGo, returning to Creative Commons in 2024.

Sarah lives in Des Moines, Iowa, with her husband, two kids, and 100-pound lap dog.

Posts by Sarah Hinchliff Pearson

Update to our Privacy Policy

by Sarah Hinchliff Pearson About CC

Like the rest of the internet, it seems, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) that comes into effect today has given us a good opportunity to pause and do a comprehensive review of the ways in which Creative Commons collects and uses the personal information of its community.

Kicking off the CC Certificates Beta

by Sarah Hinchliff Pearson About CC

Today marks day one of the beta version of the Creative Commons Certificates program, a project designed to provide people the skills and expertise they need to implement and advocate for open licensing around the world.

Annuncia la traduzione 4.0 della licenza in Italiano!

by Sarah Hinchliff Pearson Licenses & Tools

The CC 4.0 licenses are now translated into Italian The official Italian translation of the Creative Commons 4.0 Licenses and CC0 waiver is now available! Led by CC Italy, the translations also benefited from the collaboration with CC Switzerland. The working group was hosted and coordinated by the Nexa Center for Internet & Society at…

A Conversation about Making the Web More Human: kickoff event for CC’s prosocial work

by Jane Park, Sarah Hinchliff Pearson Events

As part of our effort to build a more vibrant and usable commons, CC is trying to hone in on what makes sharing truly meaningful.

Toward a Better Internet: Building Prosocial Behavior into the Commons

by Jane Park, Sarah Hinchliff Pearson About CC

What does it mean to exhibit prosocial behavior? For our purposes, we mean behavior that leads to healthy collaboration and meaningful interactions online.