Kalie Taylor / CC0 / Download all posters If you follow this blog with any regularity, you’re likely already familiar with Bassel Khartabil, the Syrian CC community leader who has been in imprisoned since March 2012 without having had any charges brought against him. Thursday, May 22, is Bassel’s birthday, and the third birthday he’ll…

Ryan Merkley / Rannie Turingan / CC0 I’m honored to be chosen as CEO of Creative Commons. CC is a giant of the open web, and it’s an organization that I have always believed in and truly admire. I appreciate the confidence shown by the board, and support I have already received from staff and…

Today the White House released the U.S. Open Data Action Plan, reaffirming their belief that “freely available data from the U.S. Government is an important national resource… [and] making information about government operations more readily available and useful is also core to the promise of a more efficient and transparent government.” The report (PDF) outlines…

Release of DVD containing Odia font, open source tools and Offline Odia WikipediaAhemadullah Shaikh / CC BY-SA This guest blog post was written by Subhashish Panigrahi of The Center for Internet and Society, a Creative Commons affiliate in India. My name is Subhashish Panigrahi. I am an educator currently working in the community and communication…

Creative Commons received a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to survey the licensing policies of private foundations, and to work toward increasing the free availability of foundation-supported works. We are still pursuing this objective, but here’s where we are at the moment. Tax-exempt private foundations are non-profit institutions exclusively devoted to benefitting…

This guest blog post was written by Niki Korth. If you’re in the Bay Area, come see Marc read from his new book at City Lights Thursday night and come hear Niki speak at next week’s CC Salon. Marc Weidenbaum / Jorge Colombo In 1996, Marc Weidenbaum founded the website Disquiet.com, which focuses on the…

CC10 Party in San Francisco / David Kindler / CC BY Creative Commons is thrilled to announce that we will be reviving CC salons on a quarterly basis starting March 27! Years ago, CC ran a series of CC Salon events in the Bay Area, informal events that brought together creators of all kinds to…

Kristina Alexanderson / CC BY-NC-SA Getty Images recently announced that it will allow free noncommercial embedding of 35 million of the images in its stock photography database. This is a good step toward better supporting a variety of users. Getty is clearly seeing its images appear across the web anyway, so it’s decided to go…

Donatella Della Ratta / Joi Ito / CC BY Creative Commons extends its deepest gratitude to Donatella Della Ratta. For almost six years, she’s been working as a tireless advocate for Creative Commons and open culture in the Arab world, increasing the knowledge and adoption of CC, conducting outreach to creative communities, and connecting activists…

Today is the third day of Copyright Week, and today, we’re focusing on open access. As EFF put it in the Copyright Week principles: The results of publicly funded research should be made freely available to the public online, to be fully used by anyone, anywhere, anytime. This is a principle that Creative Commons has…