During Fair Use Week organizations and individuals are publishing blog posts, hosting workshops, and sharing educational resources about the implementation and importance of this essential limitation to the rights endowed by copyright. Fair use (and in other countries, the related “fair dealing”) is a flexible legal tool that permits some uses of copyrighted material without…

Why are students criminalized for sharing knowledge? Over the last two years several organizations have been highlighting the situation of Colombian graduate student Diego Gomez, who is being criminally prosecuted for sharing a research article online. Gomez is a student in conservation and wildlife management, and for the most part has poor access to many…

As the producers of the world’s first open movie, Ton Rosendaal and his team at the Blender Institute “work open” in every aspect of their production, from code to licensing to distribution.

You may have seen our recent blog post explaining Creative Commons’ involvement in a court case between Great Minds, a publisher of educational materials, and FedEx Office, the retail chain that provides on-demand copying and printing services. To recap, Great Minds created educational materials under a U.S. federal government grant that required them to be…

Creative Commons has requested permission to file an amicus brief in litigation between Great Minds and FedEx Office and Print Services, Inc. At the center of the litigation is the proper interpretation of the CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 license, known as BY-NC-SA.

District Court Filings: Defendant Fedex Office’s Motion to Dismiss Defendant Fedex Office’s Reply in support of Motion to Dismiss Plaintiff Great Minds’ Opposition to Motion to Dismiss Original complaint of Great Minds against FedEx Office Letter filed by CC seeking leave to file amicus brief District Court order granting motion to dismiss Appellate Court Filings:…

The interdisciplinary artist Caroline Woolard engages with political economy and activism through radically innovative collaborative projects.

Creative Commons abides by the federal Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) by responding to notices of alleged infringement that comply with the DMCA and other applicable laws. As part of our response, we may remove or disable access to material residing on a site that is controlled or operated by Creative Commons (such as creativecommons.org)…

CC Legal’s top priority is to responsibly steward our licenses and public domain tools, ensuring that CC’s existing licenses and legal tools remain relevant, user-friendly, and as effective as possible in service of creators and reusers. Our core activities in support of this priority include: maintaining and updating materials explaining how our legal tools operate,…

Prince performing in Brussels during the Hit N Run Tour in 1986, CC-by-2.0 Today at Copyright On!, Britton Payne discussed the unique copyright situation surrounding Prince’s estate. This potentially long and bitter battle could shape the future of music copyright to come. Prince fought a number of legendary copyright battles, which makes this current fight…