On January 1, 2022, and throughout the month of January, Creative Commons (CC) is celebrating Public Domain Day, welcoming copyright works into the public domain, where they become freely available for the public to use, reuse and modify.  As part of our Open Culture / GLAM program’s celebration of Public Domain Day, we are reaching…

Every year, on 1 January, advocates of free and open content celebrate the works of art that have entered the public domain around the world. Why New Year’s Day? Copyrighted works such as books, artworks or music are only protected for a certain number of years, and this protection ends on 1 January. On 20…

On 29 January 2020, the Canadian federal government introduced Bill C-4, “An Act to Implement the Agreement between Canada, the United States of America and the United Mexican States” (CUSMA).1 The bill includes a proposal to extend copyright’s term of protection2 by 20 years, moving it from “life of the author + 50 years” (the…

"St. Valentine's Day - The Old Story in All Lands (1868)" by Harper & Bros. Cooper Hewitt (CC0)

February is usually the time to share virtual hugs, chocolates, and witty cards with family and friends for Valentine’s Day ❤️. (Or “Friend’s Day” in Finland!) This past Valentine’s Day, we wanted you to share something a little different: your creative work.  In our Open Sharing is Caring challenge, we asked you to openly share…

There is a quiet, familiar beauty found in still life, a type of art that depicts primarily inanimate objects, like animals, food, or flowers. These comforting images offer a sense of certainty and simplicity in uncertain and complex times. This could explain why over six million Instagram users have fallen in love with still life…

"St. Valentine's Day - The Old Story in All Lands (1868)" by Harper & Bros. Cooper Hewitt (CC0)

February is the time to share virtual hugs, chocolates, and witty cards with family and friends for Valentine’s Day ♥️ (or “Friend’s Day” in Finland!)  This Valentine’s Day, we want you to share something a little different: your creative work.  In our Open Sharing is Caring challenge, we’re asking you to openly share an image, song, artwork, research paper, poem, GIF…whatever it…

Illustration from the book "Songs, naval and national" by Thomas Dibdin, published in London, England in 1841.

Until recently, I had never heard of the sea shanty “The Wellerman”. My sea shanty repertoire consisted of “What can you do with a drunken sailor” to sea-songs on the soundtrack of Master and Commander. However, Nathan Evans, a fellow Scot who hails, like me, from North Lanarkshire, has changed all of this. His rendition…

In the second part of our series on artificial intelligence (AI) and creativity, we get immersed in the fascinating universe of AI in an attempt to determine whether it is capable of creating works eligible for copyright protection. Below, we present two examples of an AI system generating arguably novel content through two different methods:…

Image: "Love is Art Science 95" by Kollage Kid, licensed CC BY-NC 2.0.

Should novel output (such as music, artworks, poems, etc.) generated by artificial intelligence1 (AI) be protected by copyright? While this question seems straightforward, the answer certainly isn’t. It brings together technical, legal, and philosophical questions regarding “creativity,” and whether machines can be considered “authors” that produce “original” works. In search of an answer, we ran…

15318215771_72c527508c_k Photo of the Ndebele Tribe in South Africa by UN (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)-

This post was co-authored by CC’s Open Policy Manager Brigitte Vézina and Legal and Policy Intern Alexis Muscat. Tomorrow is International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, a day that seeks to raise awareness of and support Indigenous peoples’ rights and aspirations around the world. We at Creative Commons (CC) wish to highlight this important…