"Bhavna Ben Ramesh" by Paul Bronstein (2015), CC BY-NC.

Storytelling is a powerful tool because it can change perceptions and inspire action—and images are an essential component. As Depression-era American photojournalist and documentarian Dorothea Lange said, “The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.”  Unfortunately, finding high-quality and diverse openly licensed images, particularly those of women, is a…

The Smithsonian—the world’s largest museum and research institution—announced yesterday  Smithsonian Open Access, an initiative that removes copyright restrictions from 2.8 million digital collection 2D and 3D images and nearly two centuries of data. This major initiative uses CC0—Creative Commons’ public domain dedication tool—to make millions of images and data freely available to the public. “Our…

Public domain advocates celebrated on January 1 because, for the second year in a row, published works newly entered the public domain in the United States due to copyright expiration. To mark the occasion, Creative Commons (CC) collaborated with the Internet Archive, the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, Creative Commons USA, the Institute…

On 14 February 2020, Creative Commons (CC) submitted its comments on the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)’s Issues Paper* as part of WIPO’s consultation process on artificial intelligence (AI) and intellectual property (IP) policy. In this post, we briefly present our main arguments for a cautious approach to regulating AI through copyright or any new…

Over the past few months, we have added four new staff members to our team: Network Manager Julia Brungs; Development Manager Moumita C.; Data Engineer Brent Moran; and Open Policy Manager Brigitte Vézina. Learn more about our newest staff members below! Julia Brungs, Network Manager Prior to joining CC, Julia led the cultural heritage work…

Creative Commons is pleased to be a part of the second annual Public Domain Day (PDD) celebration held in Washington D.C. on January 30, in collaboration with the Internet Archive, the Institute for Intellectual Property & Social Justice, the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, and SPARC. In order to celebrate the public domain…

Creative Commons is pleased to be a part of the second annual Public Domain Day celebration held in Washington D.C. on January 30, 2020!  In collaboration with the Internet Archive, the Institute for Intellectual Property & Social Justice, the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, and SPARC, this event will “bring together a diverse group…

Broken Hill Wall Mural-07= by Sheba_Also 43,000 photos is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 This post was co-authored by Diane Peters (CC’s General Counsel) and Alexis Muscat (CC’s 2019 legal intern) For the past year or so, CC has been tracking and thinking about strict, less than-amicable enforcement activities involving CC licenses. These activities present…

A portrait of Caroline Rémy (1855-1929), a French feminist journalist. Photo by Paul Cardon.

The Paris Musées’ recently released more than 100,000 works under Creative Commons Zero (CCØ), putting the works into the public domain. They also released their collections’ Application Programming Interface (API), allowing users to “recover, in high definition, several royalty-free images and their records from cross-searches on the works.” Users can scroll through the collection via…

Update: On February 7, 2020, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied Great Minds’ petition for rehearing (opinion (PDF)). As a result, the decision (PDF) of the panel in favor of CC’s interpretation of the licenses remains final. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit reaffirmed Creative Commons’ interpretation of activities that are permissible under the…