As part of Creative Commons’ key strategic goal of Better Sharing, today we have joined six other organizations spanning the globe to launch the Movement for a Better Internet, a diverse community of advocates, activists, academics, and civil society groups working together to promote policies that create a better internet for people everywhere. The movement…

Yesterday, China blocked the ad-hoc accreditation of the Wikimedia chapters of France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Sweden, and Switzerland as official observers to the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Previously, China rejected the Wikimedia Foundation’s application for observer status to this UN agency. The WIPO SCCR…

Yesterday, we were disappointed to learn that the Wikimedia Foundation’s application for observer status at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) was blocked due to opposition by China for the second time after its initial application in 2020. Creative Commons has been an accredited observer at WIPO since 2005. WIPO is the UN agency that…

One of our roles at Creative Commons involves influencing policy making at the international level. This is a role we can fulfill notably thanks to our permanent observer status with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the UN agency that shapes international intellectual property (IP) law. However, a few days ago, the Wikimedia Foundation’s application…

Construction of the Story Bridge, Brisbane, 1939 / State Library Queensland / No known copyright restrictions Last November, a bunch of us from Wikimedia, Mozilla, P2PU, OKFN, Creative Commons, School of Open, and other communities got together for a session at Mozfest called “Collaborations across the Open Space.” That session not only laid the groundwork…

Wikipedia also wrapped up a wildly successful fundraiser at the end of the year. See below for Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales’ thank you letter to the community, reproduced in full under CC BY-SA, the license Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites migrated to last June. Note “support our friends” at the end — it is a…

In case you haven’t heard, WikiEducator‘s Wayne Mackintosh announced earlier this week that they were joining forces with Connexions “to provide educators with greater freedom of choice to mix and match the best of two OER worlds, namely “producer-consumer” models with more traditional work flow approaches and commons-based peer production.” WikiEducator and Connexions are two…

We wanted to give big thanks to Ben, Dean, Elizabeth, Adi, and all the volunteers to helped make the fantastic Open Video Conference happen. Myself, Jane and Alex K were all in attendance on behalf of CC and we figured we’d post a wrap up about our experience at the conference. At the CC Salon…

As anyone following this site closely must know, the Wikipedia community and Wikimedia Foundation board approved the adoption of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) license as the main content license for Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites. A post about the community vote has many links explaining the history and importance of this move. Detail…

Just a reminder that the Creative Commons Salon NYC / Official Open Video Conference Pre-party is happening Thursday night! I’m also excited to announce that we’ve added a live acoustic set from CC musician Adam McHeffey (of FrostClick fame) as well as lots of cold beer sponsored by blip.tv! Here’s all the info: June’s Salon…