Be a voice for sharing. Support CC. 2014 was a big year in the open movement. Both the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation approved open policies requiring grantees to publish their content under CC BY, the most open Creative Commons license. That means that for any content funded…

Wellington / John Bunney, courtesy of Te Papa Tongarewa / No known copyright restrictions In the first of a series of blog posts focusing on our global activities, Matt McGregor tells us of exciting developments in CC in New Zealand Aotearoa. 2014 has been a busy year for the commons in Aotearoa. After a few…

Help build the next era of sharing online.Make a donation to Creative Commons. 12 years ago today, we launched the first Creative Commons license suite. The internet was changing the way people share, and changing what it meant to be a creator. But copyright law hadn’t caught up. The Net was making sharing easy; the…

A few weeks ago, we published a report showing that there are nearly a billion Creative Commons–licensed works. That’s an impressive number, but it only hints at how powerful and widespread CC licenses have become. The real story of Creative Commons is the story of the people who use CC licenses. It’s the story of…

Today, we’re releasing a new report that we think you will want to see. State of the Commons covers the impact and success of free and open content worldwide, and it contains the most revealing account we’ve ever published, including new data on what’s shared with a CC license. We found nearly 900 million Creative…

I joined CC in June of this year, and immediately set out to update our strategy. I spent the summer working with our staff, affiliates, board, partners, and funders to understand the needs and the opportunities, and to plan for 2015 and beyond. Today, we’re focused on three strategic objectives: A vibrant commons. Supporting the…

Move-Horizontally / P.J. Onori / CC BY Glühwendel brennt durch / Stefan Krause / FAL 1.3 This FAL-licensed photo was selected as Wikimedia Commons’ 2013 Picture of the Year. Like CC Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA), the Free Art License (FAL 1.3) is a copyleft license, meaning that it requires licensees to share their adaptations under the…

Today, the Knight Foundation announced the selected recipients of its latest Prototype Fund. We’re very proud to be among them, with a new project that probably sounds a bit outside of our normal work to those familiar with CC. Here’s why we’re doing it: When I joined as CEO, I was tasked with imagining the…

Bethlehem College Preso / Locus Research / CC BY-SA Last month, I had the honour of providing a keynote address and two workshops at a teacher conference at Northcote College1, on the North Shore of Auckland, New Zealand. Like many schools, Northcote is in the process of developing an overarching digital citizenship policy for staff,…

Today and tomorrow the School of Open launches in Tanzania and Nigeria in conjunction with Mozilla Maker Party! (SOO logo here. Earth icon licensed CC BY by Erin Standley from the Noun Project.) In Tanzania, CC Tanzania is hosting a creative event for kids at the Open University of Tanzania, the first university in the…