As part of our #20CC anniversary, last year we joined forces with Fine Acts to spark a global dialogue on what better sharing looks like in action. Our #BetterSharing collection of illustrations was the result — we gathered insights from 12 prominent open advocates around the world and tasked 12 renowned artists who embrace openness with transforming these perspectives into captivating visual pieces available under a CC license.

Each month throughout 2023, we will be spotlighting a different CC-licensed illustration from the collection on our social media headers and the CC blog. For July, we’re excited to showcase “Better Sharing For Brighter Future” by Janice Chang. The piece, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, was inspired by a quote from Tyler Green, Author, Historian, Art Critic and Producer/Host, The Modern Art Notes Podcast:

“It means understanding that sharing and open content is a means, not an end. For me, it means understanding that sharing and open content is a means, not an end, that open content and open access policies aren’t an end in and of themselves. Although within the context of an individual project, it’s an excellent end. But what we get, we the community of scholars, we the broader community of people, what we get is an opportunity to understand how this material fits within the worlds around us, allowing new and different ideas to more fully inform us. My favorite example is always going to be the more art and visual material, whether it’s photographs or engravings in 19th century magazines. The more we understand how images have worked across histories, the more we will understand how impactful artists and visual makers, engravers, whomever have been. And so I think that open access is probably the primary and most important means through which we will understand how artists have impacted the world.”

Meet the artist:

Janice Chang is a Los Angeles born and raised illustrator based in Brooklyn, NY. Much of her work takes on an honest representation of the sometimes humorous and bendy limbs of her characters as a way to engage in conversations around social and interpersonal issues. She works primarily for editorial, commercial, advertising, and motion clients, but also loves to explore painting murals, animation, and making sculptures.

Follow Janice on Instagram: @janiceechang

The full #BetterSharing collection is available on TheGreats.co to be enjoyed, used and adapted, and then shared again, by anyone, forever. View the full collection >>

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As a part of CC’s continuing engagement in policy to shape generative artificial intelligence (AI), Brigitte Vézina, our Director of Policy and Open Culture, participated in a June session hosted by the European Internet Forum: Generative AI, Art & copyright: from creative machines to human-powered tools. The panel was held in the framework of EU negotiations on the development of the Artificial Intelligence Act, one of the world’s first regulations dedicated to AI.

The panel was chaired by MEP Dragos Tudorache, Rapporteur on the AI Act, and brought together speakers representing rightholders in the creative industries, an AI developer, and CC as the only representative of civil society present to defend the public interest. The debate touched on several copyright-related issues related to AI training, transparency and safeguards, AI-generated outputs, and more.

In our panel remarks, we emphasized how, for many years, we have been examining the interplay between copyright and AI — exploring ways in which these technologies and practices could help people build on and contribute to the commons, stimulate new creativity, and foster better sharing, i.e. sharing that is inclusive, equitable, reciprocal and sustainable.

Going forward, it is clear that a diverse, global community must be involved in guiding the regulation of generative AI, with expertise spanning the fields of copyright, certainly, but also ethics, privacy and data protection, and fundamental human rights, so that AI’s promises are fulfilled and its perils, averted.

CC will continue our work to represent the public interest in negotiations around AI policy, as well as continue to engage and grow our broad, global community to refine and share understanding of AI’s impact on the commons. Join us at our Global Summit in Mexico City during 3–6 October 2023 where our theme is AI & the Commons.

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We are thrilled to announce that Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects have now adopted version 4.0 of the Creative Commons BY-SA license! The project first began using version 3.0 of the CC licenses in 2009 following a community process, having previously used the GNU Free Documentation License.

This decision, made as part of a Terms of Use revision that was widely discussed by the Wikimedia community, will enable more compatibility and reuse with CC-licensed resources as well as take advantage of the improvements in the 4.0 licenses.

Wikipedia is run by the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation, and is one of the most widely-used websites in the world. Its resources are all freely licensed for reuse by the public. This change will now enable Wikipedia to incorporate content from a variety of useful sources that also use CC 4.0 licenses, including publications from the United Nations and many national governments.

This change was made through a revision to the project’s Terms of Use, where all new edits to Wikipedia will be under version 4.0 of the CC BY-SA license. Older edits will remain under BY-SA 3.0, which allows adaptations to be made with 4.0-licensed material. This presents a small amount of complexity for reusers, but over time, as more and more of the project is revised, this will become less of a practical concern.

Version 4.0 of the CC licenses, first published in 2013, introduced several important updates and improvements. Some of the key benefits of this upgrade include greater internationalization, more practical attribution requirements, a grace period for correcting reuse errors, improved clarity and simplicity, and better handling of rights outside copyright, such as database rights. These changes make it an ideal fit for Wikimedia’s mission of simple, globally accessible reuse in a wide variety of contexts.

A big part of CC’s ongoing stewardship of the commons is helping organizations like Wikimedia keep their platforms and communities aligned with current open licensing tools and practices. With Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikidata, and all the other Wikimedia projects together being some of the biggest contributors to the open commons, we know how important it is for these essential works made by people from all over the world to be as interoperable as possible with other open content. CC salutes Wikimedia and its community for doing the necessary work to align thinking and technology to make the move to 4.0 a reality!

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Back in 2004, ccMixter.org was born when Creative Commons and Wired magazine collaborated to support communities engaged in remixing openly-licensed and public domain music. As it has evolved over the years, ccMixter has become an independent project that supports musicians and creators working in remix culture, connecting them with each other and their fans. To reflect ccMixter’s contemporary identity, they have developed a new logo and a new tagline, “collaborative community”, represented by the “cc” in their name and logo.

Starting in 2009, ccMixter’s marks, terms of use, and format were managed by both Creative Commons and ArtisTech Media, an organization that supports global open music communities. Going forward, ccMixter will be operated independently by ArtisTech Media alone, with Creative Commons’ enthusiastic support.

“Today we’re celebrating an exciting new chapter for ccMixter,” said Emily Richards, CEO of ArtisTech Media. “Our history with Creative Commons and its licenses built a solid foundation for our community’s culture of sharing. We’re ready to take our creative collaboration to yet another level.”

Along with their new identity and independence, ccMixter has updated their platform to use the latest CC licenses, version 4.0, which enable shared music to be remixed more flexibly and with greater legal certainty across international jurisdictions.

“We are delighted that ccMixter can now be independently stewarded by the expert hands of Emily and her colleagues at ArtisTech Media,” said Catherine Stihler, CEO of Creative Commons. “Better sharing and the ability for us to work together with like-minded organizations further increases the value of the commons for generations to come. We wish Emily and her colleagues well and know that the commons is stronger for our working together to enable this project to live and grow in their hands.”

CC salutes ccMixter and its collaborative community and the ongoing beat of remix culture!

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Did you know that access to cultural heritage is part of the UN Declaration of Human Rights? Stephen discusses this little known article among other important aspects of access, participation, and engagement of cultural heritage and the responsibilities of institutions in this regard. He also explains how Open Culture is a way to establish the social responsibility of institutions to a community and society.

Open Culture VOICES is a series of short videos that highlight the benefits and barriers of open culture as well as inspiration and advice on the subject of opening up cultural heritage. Stephen Wyber is the Director of Policy and Advocacy at IFLA which coordinates meetings and collaborations between GLAM institutions, namely libraries, around the world. He works to co-create meaningful understanding of the needs of libraries and what role libraries play in society and community.

Stephen responds to the following questions:

1. What are the main benefits of open GLAM?
2. What are the barriers?
3. Could you share something someone else told you that opened up your eyes and mind about open GLAM?
4. Do you have a personal message to those hesitating to open up collections?

Closed captions are available for this video, you can turn them on by clicking the CC icon at the bottom of the video. A red line will appear under the icon when closed captions have been enabled. Closed captions may be affected by Internet connectivity — if you experience a lag, we recommend watching the videos directly on YouTube.

Want to hear more insights from Open Culture experts from around the world? Watch more episodes of Open Culture VOICES here >>

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