Creative Commons Licenses

Creative Commons is governed by a Board and Advisory Council.

Creative Commons needs foundations, corporations, and individuals to sustain our core operations and license infrastructure. This is a critical need. The CC Licenses and our CC0 public domain tool are core infrastructure for the open web and open access. They serve a global public interest with many well-known platforms, institutions, and individuals utilizing the CC Licenses to offer and access freely available knowledge.

Now more than ever, society needs open knowledge to have any chance at addressing the world’s most pressing challenges. We need open research and data to address the climate crisis; open images, audio, and reporting accessible to journalists confronting financial constraints and the challenges of “fake news;” freely available museum and library collections, because art and culture are often central to social change efforts; and open educational resources so K-12 schools, college students, and everyday learners can access affordable textbooks and other curriculum. Access to knowledge is key to a robust public commons and promoting an engaged citizenry; but in order to do this right, we need to have functional tools at the ready that real people can actually use.

Creative Commons’ legal tools are core open infrastructure, yet most people are unaware that the infrastructure behind the CC Licenses has had no underlying revenue stream to sustain regular maintenance or upgrades. Over the last 20 years, we’ve built up a “technical debt,” a backlog of work our small nonprofit organization hasn’t had the capacity to address. With proper funding, Creative Commons can resolve immediate technical shortcomings while establishing an agile and streamlined maintenance routine that will allow the CC Licenses to thrive and evolve with a rapidly changing digital landscape.