This year marked the first year of a new strategic cycle for Creative Commons, and it began amid profound change.

The ground beneath the open internet continues to shift. Powerful technologies, driven largely by multibillion-dollar companies, are reshaping how knowledge and creativity are shared online, concentrating power in the hands of a few and testing long-standing assumptions about openness and access. To call this a David vs. Goliath moment would be an understatement. Yet, buoyed by a global community of advocates, creators, and partners, our small but determined team of 20 continues to stand up for the public interest and for access to knowledge worldwide. 

This year, our three strategic goals served as anchors in this rapidly evolving environment:

• Strengthen the open infrastructure of sharing: We will know we’ve been successful when a strong and resilient open infrastructure empowers sharing and access in the public interest.
• Defend and advocate for a thriving creative commons: We will know we’ve been successful when a thriving creative commons exists to solve the world’s greatest challenges.
• Center community: We will know we’ve been successful when communities leverage CC’s open infrastructure to share knowledge in the public interest.

As we begin shaping our plans for 2026, we want to pause and reflect on what we’ve accomplished in this first year of our new strategy.

Strengthening the Open Infrastructure of Sharing

Introducing CC Signals

2025 will go down in history as the year we kicked off CC signals. 

Building new open infrastructure is complex—and expensive—and these challenges are magnified by the rapid advancement and scale of AI. But in many ways, this is familiar territory. By applying first principles, practical strategies, and lessons learned from decades of advancing the sharing of knowledge and creativity, we are well positioned to help ensure that technological change strengthens, rather than erodes, the commons. 

AI systems depend on vast amounts of human-created content, often collected without the knowledge or participation of those who made it. This dynamic has concentrated power and undermined trust in the social contract of the commons. CC signals responds by supporting community agency while preserving Creative Commons’ core commitment to access and openness.

CC signals is a framework that helps creators and custodians of collections of content or data express how they want their works to be used in AI development. Its goal is to uphold reciprocity, recognition, and sustainability in the way human creativity fuels machine learning.

We’re still in the pilot stages of this work. After kicking off a public feedback period in July, we’ve been identifying early adopters who’ll work with us to shape this framework so that it is responsible, adaptable, and grounded in community context. Is that you? If so, please get in touch. We’re also exploring where elements of the broader CC signals framework could be integrated into emerging standards.

The Enduring Value of the CC Licenses and Legal Tools

We are able to do this work because of the reach and enduring relevance of the CC licenses and legal infrastructure of sharing—a digital public good dedicated to the public domain, powering the digital commons, built by you for you.

The CC licenses and legal tools continue to serve as critical infrastructure that must be actively maintained. Copyright law is not uniform around the world, nor are clear global standards emerging that clarify the application of copyright law to AI training. 

This year, we released guidance on using CC-licensed works for AI training, which we’ll continue to update and enhance as we conduct further research and track legislative developments globally.

We believe the CC licenses are more important than ever as a tool to increase human-to-human sharing. At the same time, we have a responsibility to navigate the tensions between openness for humans and legitimate machine use (like text and data mining for archiving and research purposes), and unchecked extraction by AI companies, who are taking without giving back to the ecosystem from which they derive value. 

Defending a Thriving Creative Commons

While everything we do involves not only defending, but growing, a thriving creative commons, we’ve been fortunate to be able to invest in two critical sectors in 2025: scientific research and cultural heritage.

Open Science

In the field of open science, we’ve focused on two primary interventions:

• Advocating for CC BY as the default licensing option for preprints.
• Advocating for the adoption of CC’s recommendations for better sharing of climate data.

Our work with preprints, initially supported by the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, will continue into 2026 with the generous support of the Gates Foundation. The project has run the spectrum from hands-on implementation of licensing options in preprint servers (like openRxiv), to deep dives with funders of scientific research to ensure alignment with their funding policies, to knowledge sharing through Wikipedia. We believe CC BY is the right choice for preprints. The sooner scientific findings are shared and open to interrogation and reuse, the more progress humanity can make.

Barring new support, our work on climate data will wind down at the end of the year, after three years of funding from the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation. This project began with deep community engagement to develop recommendations for sharing climate data, followed by focused efforts to support partners in implementing them. We’ve worked closely with the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and most recently we’ve formalized our consultation with the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). 

If there is a funder out there who wants to continue a targeted intervention for improved, uniform sharing of climate data from global entities, please reach out to us. We believe this work is absolutely critical so that all scientists and researchers have unfettered access to current climate data!

Open Culture

In the field of open culture, we’ve continued to advocate for, and show the need for, a global standard for open cultural heritage at the international level, through a community-driven coalition. This work culminated in the launch of the Open Heritage Statement in October of this year. 

Too many barriers still limit access to our shared heritage. Removing these barriers through open solutions is essential not only for cultural rights, but also for scientific discovery and the enrichment of learning materials. This work is a necessary precondition for UNESCO to adopt an international instrument, as they did with the Recommendation on Open Science in 2021 and Recommendation on Open Education Resources in 2019. Our shared commons of education, science, and culture are inextricably linked. We remain grateful to the Arcadia Fund for their multi-year support of our work in open culture.

Across sectors, our approach to growing a thriving commons remains consistent: building shared resources and developing best practices for open sharing, working directly with institutions to adopt open access policies, and emphasizing not only licensing but also provenance of data. Where we get our information has always mattered, but never more than it does today.

Centering Community

We’ve spent 2025 thinking about how best to understand, coordinate, and align existing efforts on community engagement. This includes the governance of CC’s global network, the sector-specific community groups we host in education and culture, and making progress on the virtual engagement spaces we host (join us on Zulip!), all to facilitate connections and knowledge sharing. 

All of this work is based on insights and input from you. This year, we brought hundreds of folks together for our CC signals kickoff and the launch of the Open Heritage Statement, and very much look forward to creating spaces for dialogue in 2026 as we enter our 25th anniversary year. Subscribe to our newsletter to stay informed.

Outside the legal tools we develop and host and the specific sectors we work in, we continue to keep track of key developments in the policy space and share our work each quarter. We advocate for a balanced copyright system, where noncommercial and research entities can continue to benefit from the commons without restriction. Through making comments at WIPO, to having discussions with the World Economic Forum, and working with UNESCO as a newly minted official NGO partner, at their Mondiacult conference, and in direct engagements, we’re carrying our message far and wide.

2025 Reflections

Many questions remain. We need to dig deeper into the role and function of the CC licenses by legal jurisdiction with regards to text and data mining for AI training purposes. We need to consider if there is a way to imagine conditional access as a necessary and fair part of our modern digital commons. Not to mention overarching questions around what attribution should look like in AI systems.

Like many nonprofits today, securing funding for research and development of new open infrastructure is an ongoing challenge. We also rely on sustained investment to ensure that the CC licenses and legal tools remain stable and reliable as the backbone of the open movement. For CC signals to be a meaningful intervention in a world rapidly shaped by AI, we need to move quickly—but we can only do so at the pace our funding allows.

As we grapple with big open questions and wind down 2025, we’re taking time to consider even more nuanced positioning and actions for our work in the year ahead. If no one shares, we all stand to lose. Onwards we go in driving forth access to knowledge in uncertain times. 

We thank each and every one of you for your advocacy and support in the past year. If you have the means to become a sustaining donor through our Open Infrastructure Circle, we’d welcome you with gratitude and high fives.

The post What We Built Together in 2025 appeared first on Creative Commons.

As we look back on 2025, it’s clear that the internet as we know it is changing. Technology-enabled access to knowledge should be flourishing. Instead, information is being removed from the web or locked away in walled gardens. We are experiencing a crisis in the commons, driven in part by current AI development practices. New systems are emerging in response—from content monetization schemes and licensing agreements designed to protect large rightsholders, to the ongoing morass of lawsuits about how AI services are using content as data. We are in the midst of a major reconfiguration of how we share and reuse content on the web.

CC Signals: A Refresher

It is within this environment that we continue to develop CC signals. 

We introduced the CC signals concept last June during a live webinar, and further explored the motivation behind this work in our report From Human Content to Machine Data. We also shared the outcomes of our open feedback period following the CC signals kickoff. Since then, we’ve been experimenting in partnership with values-aligned stakeholders and developing pilot projects to test ideas raised by the community.

The goal of CC signals is to help creators and custodians of collections express how they want their content or data to be used in AI development in ways that uphold reciprocity, recognition, and sustainability. Today’s AI systems depend on vast amounts of human-created content, often collected without the awareness or involvement of those who made it. This has concentrated power and undermined trust in the social contract of the commons. 

CC signals responds by promoting community agency while preserving Creative Commons’ core commitment to access and openness. Ultimately, through CC signals and other interventions that infuse concepts of reciprocity in standards and practices, we envision an open internet where participation is equitable, creators are respected, and innovation advances the commons—not unchecked extraction.

CC Signals: Where Are We Now?

CC signals is an evolving, values-driven framework—currently being tested through a series of pilot efforts. Our strategy is to explore modular approaches across legal, technical, and normative dimensions to encourage responsible AI development practices. This allows CC signals to adapt as norms, technologies, and standards continue to evolve.  

At present, two key implementations are underway:

• Implementing CC signals on Mozilla Data Collective: We are working in partnership with our friends at Mozilla, looking at how implementation of CC signals would work on the Mozilla Data Collective platform, which is purpose-built to enable ethical dataset sharing and fair value exchange. Our plan is to test various ways of incorporating some measure of legal enforceability into CC signals. We also hope to use this as an opportunity to test which CC signal elements are most popular and impactful, and which ones have the biggest impact on AI developer behavior. 

• Adapting the CC signals contribution element in the RSL framework: Using the framework of the ecosystem contribution signal element, we are working with the RSL Collective to embed the notion of reciprocal contribution into this evolving standard. As a platform that will let rightsholders set machine-readable licensing terms for their content, integrating the contribution element ensures that standards such as RSL provide mechanisms for AI developers to contribute back to the commons at the collective or community level, not simply a one-to-one payment. 

Beyond CC signals itself, we are also exploring whether updates to CC’s license infrastructure could further strengthen and support the commons in the age of AI.  

Looking Ahead

We are actively seeking expressions of interest from dataset custodians who are interested in participating in the Mozilla Data Collective pilot project. If that’s you, we’d love to hear from you.  

We are also exploring sector-specific CC signals integrations, particularly within cultural heritage and science. 

Ultimately, CC signals are incarnations of what we want to see in the world—more recognition for authorship, sustainable commons communities, mutual commitments to shared resources. We are focused on building a vocabulary and vision for the values we think a successful commons needs to thrive. 

This work is resource-intensive. We need your support to ensure this work continues to be led by public interest organizations. Please donate today.

The post CC Signals: What We’ve Been Working On appeared first on Creative Commons.

As we’ve discussed before, the rise of large artificial intelligence (AI) models has fundamentally disrupted the social contract governing machine use of web content. Today, machines don’t just access the web to make it more searchable or to help unlock new insights; they feed algorithms that fundamentally change (and threaten) the web we know. What once functioned as a mostly reciprocal ecosystem now risks becoming extractive by default.

In response, new approaches are emerging to support creators, publishers, and stewards of content to reclaim agency over how their works are used.

Pay-to-crawl is one approach beginning to come into focus. Pay-to-crawl refers to emerging technical systems used by websites to automate compensation for when their digital content—such as text, images, and structured data—is accessed by machines. We’ve recently published our interpretation and observations of pay-to-crawl systems in this dedicated issue brief.

CC’s Position on Pay-to-Crawl: Cautiously Supportive

We’re cautiously supportive of pay-to-crawl systems. Implemented responsibly, pay-to-crawl could represent a way for websites to sustain the creation and sharing of their content, and manage substitutive uses, keeping content publicly accessible where it might otherwise not be shared or would disappear behind even more restrictive paywalls.

This support, however, is conditional and comes with significant reservations.

Pay-to-crawl may represent an appropriate strategy for independent websites seeking to prevent AI crawlers from knocking them offline or to generate supplementary revenue. But elsewhere, pay-to-crawl systems could be cynically exploited by rightsholders to generate excessive profits, at the expense of human access and without necessarily benefiting the original creators.

Pay-to-crawl systems themselves could become new concentrations of power, with the ability to dictate how we experience the web. They could seek to watch and control how content is used in ways that resemble the worst of Digital Rights Management (DRM), turning the web from a medium of sharing and remixing into a tightly-monitored content delivery channel.

We’re also concerned that indiscriminate use of pay-to-crawl systems could block off access to content for researchers, nonprofits, cultural heritage institutions, educators, and other actors working in the public interest. Legal rights to access content afforded by exceptions and limitations to copyright law, such as noncommercial research (in the EU) or fair use exemptions (in the US), as well as provisions for translation and accessibility tools, have been carefully negotiated and adjusted over time. These rights could be impeded by the introduction of blunt, poorly designed pay-to-crawl systems.

Proposed Principles for Responsible Pay-to-Crawl 

Pay-to-crawl systems are not neutral infrastructure. It’s vital that these systems are built and used in ways that serve the interests of creators and the commons, rather than simply create barriers to the sharing of knowledge and creativity, and benefit the few.

We’re proposing the following set of principles as a way to guide the development of pay-to-crawl systems in alignment with this vision:

1. Pay-to-crawl should not become a default setting.
   Pay-to-crawl represents a strategy that may work for some websites, and not all websites share the same underlying concerns. Pay-to-crawl systems should not be deployed as an automatic or assumed setting on behalf of websites by others, such as domain hosts, content delivery networks, and other web service providers.
   
2. Pay-to-crawl systems should enable choice and nuance, not blanket rules.
   Pay-to-crawl systems should enable websites to distinguish between—and set variable controls for—different types of content users (such as commercial AI companies, nonprofits, researchers, or even specific organizations), as well as types and purposes of machine use (such as model training, indexing for search, and inference/retrieval). Systems should not affect direct human browsing and use of content, such as by restricting translation or accessibility services.
3. Pay-to-crawl systems should allow for throttling, not just blocking.
   Pay-to-crawl systems should enable websites to manage hosting costs and other impacts of heavy machine traffic without walling off content entirely. For instance, systems could allow websites to throttle traffic driven by “agentic browsing” or “inference” undertaken by large AI models, while permitting other forms of machine access that involve far lower traffic, such as for research or archival.
4. Pay-to-crawl systems should preserve public interest access and legal rights.
   Pay-to-crawl systems should not obstruct access to content for researchers, nonprofits, cultural heritage institutions, educators and other actors working in the public interest. Nor should these systems block lawful uses of content protected by copyright exceptions and limitations, and other legal rights afforded in the public interest. The act of deciding not to abide by a pay-per-crawl system should not, by itself, convert an otherwise lawful use into an illegal act.
5. Pay-to-crawl systems should use open, interoperable, and standardized components.
   Pay-to-crawl systems should not become proprietary chokepoints or gatekeepers. We urge particular caution around the use of proprietary components for authentication and payment that might result in websites getting locked into a particular pay-to-crawl system provider.
6. Pay-to-crawl systems should enable collective contributions to the commons.
   Pay-to-crawl systems that only enable financial transactions between singular websites and content users risk creating a highly transactional future, where the value of content is atomized. Pay-to-crawl systems should support collective forms of payment, such as to coalitions of creators and publishers, and wider conceptions of what it means to contribute to the digital commons.
7. Pay-to-crawl systems should avoid surveillance and DRM-like architectures.
   Pay-to-crawl systems must not introduce excessive logging, fingerprinting, or behavioral tracking related to the use of content. Systems should minimize data collection to only what is needed to authenticate users and settle payments, rather than seek to follow content downstream or dictate how it can be used.

The Path Forward: Showing Up Where the Future Is Being Decided

We believe now is the moment to engage, to influence, and to infuse pay-to-crawl systems with values that prioritize reciprocity, openness, and the commons.

We welcome feedback and dialogue on the principles outlined here. Your input will help guide our engagement with pay-to-crawl systems and related initiatives moving forward, as well as inform the wider CC community’s understanding of them.

Thank you to Jack Hardinges for his contributions to this post.

The post Where CC Stands on Pay-to-Crawl appeared first on Creative Commons.

At Creative Commons, we’ve long believed that binary systems rarely reflect the complexity of the real world—nor do they serve the commons very well. The internet, like the communities that built it, thrives on nuance, experimentation, and shared stewardship. That’s why we’re continuously working to introduce choice where there has been little, and to advocate for systems that acknowledge the diversity of values and needs across the web. CC signals is one expression of that thinking, and lately we’ve been exploring how those ideas can travel into other emerging standards that are shaping the future of the web.

Strange Bedfellows

That brings us to Real Simple Licensing (RSL). Publicly launched in September 2025, today the RSL Collective releases the RSL 1.0 standard. RSL is an open standard that lets publishers define machine-readable licensing terms for their content, including attribution, pay per crawl, and pay per inference compensation. This is an example of emerging technical systems used by websites to automate compensation for when their digital content—such as text, images, and structured data—is accessed by machines. We’ve been referring to these systems as pay-to-crawl. Think of it as the web’s attempt to answer the question: what tools are needed when bots become the biggest readers? If you are new to the concept, we recently published an issue brief that breaks it down in plain language.

On the surface, Creative Commons and pay-to-crawl systems are strange bedfellows. We have always been a champion of the open web and are concerned about a world where knowledge is harder to access. But we also recognize that responsible, interoperable systems can create leverage where none previously existed. Thoughtfully designed, pay-to-crawl systems may help curb extractive behavior by powerful actors while keeping the web open for everyone else.

Attribution + Compensation

In its early version 1.0 draft, RSL included attribution as one condition for machine access and reuse. From the standard: 

Attribution-Only License 

The publisher permits free reuse of the content on its site, provided that visible credit and a functional link to the original source are included. 

This is important as one example of more choices given to web publishers beyond the binary no access or all access. The inclusion of attribution also mirrors some elements of the proposed CC signal Credit. 

You must give appropriate credit based on the method, means, and context of your use.

Attribution + Reciprocity

But as the CC signals framework recognizes, attribution alone is not enough to address the very present power imbalances between AI developers and the commons. We need new tools that ensure the commons thrives and is sustained. 

We believe now is the time to act to infuse concepts of reciprocity in standards that are ready for adoption. That’s why we worked with the RSL Collective ahead of the release of version 1.0 to integrate a contribution component to the standard, which is described as:

A good faith monetary or in-kind contribution that supports the development or maintenance of the assets, or the broader content ecosystem. 

This is not about turning access into a tollbooth. It’s about acknowledging that extraction without reinvestment leads to collapse. There is a meaningful difference between paying a fee and giving back. One is transactional. The other is about responsibility.

When AI systems derive immense value from the digital commons, contribution isn’t compensation. It’s participation in the social contract that made that value possible in the first place.

Contribution could be in the form of:

• A donation back to a non-profit that stewards the dataset; 
• Support for the broader ecosystem that sustains the work;
• Openly licensing the model, or sharing a modified dataset back to the original steward;
• Or other models we haven’t yet imagined.

A Big Step: Many More to Come

The future of the web is being negotiated right now, in standards documents, in product decisions, and in design choices that shape how power flows online. Collaboration is vital if we’re going to achieve a systems-level response to rebalance power in the digital commons. 

There’s much more work to be done, particularly in developing what adherence to contribution means in different contexts. But we’re excited about where this is going. 

Our door is open. We welcome ideas, critiques, and collaboration. If you have ideas, consider engaging with us on LinkedIn or joining CC’s community platform on Zulip. 

Our year-end fundraising campaign is happening right now. While you are here, please consider making a donation to support this work.

The post Integrating Choices in Open Standards: CC Signals and the RSL Standard appeared first on Creative Commons.

It’s never easy to say goodbye to someone who has been such a steady and inspiring presence in our community. After almost 15 years of dedicated service, Dr. Cable Green, our Director of Open Education, will be moving on from Creative Commons (CC).  

During his tenure at CC, Cable served as Interim CEO, Director of Open Knowledge, and later returned to his original and most enduring passion – leading CC’s global efforts in open education. For many in both the open education sector and the CC community, Cable needs no introduction. His leadership, vision, and passion for access to knowledge have left an indelible mark on CC and the broader open movement.

A tireless advocate for barrier-free access to information, Cable has been a leading voice on open education worldwide – delivering dozens of keynotes, presentations, and workshops that have inspired educators, policymakers, and learners alike. He is equally celebrated as a generous mentor, offering thoughtful feedback and guidance on open education initiatives across the globe. While his contributions are too numerous to list, one thing is certain: Cable’s unwavering belief in the power of openness to solve the world’s greatest challenges has created lasting, real-world impact.

Over the years, Cable has helped craft numerous government, foundation, and university policies that ensure publicly funded educational resources are freely and openly available to all. Among many examples, he supported the U.S. Department of Labor and 800 community colleges in developing open educational resources (OER) through the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training program.

Cable also co-created cornerstone CC initiatives including the Open Course Library, CC Certificate, CC Consulting Program, Open Education Platform, Institute for Open Leadership, Open Climate Campaign, Open Climate Data Project, and Open Preprints Project – collectively helping raise over $12 million to advance CC’s mission.

A respected collaborator and coalition builder, Cable has worked with partners worldwide to shape the UNESCO Recommendations on OER and Open Science, the Digital Public Goods Standard, Open Up Resources, and the Network of Open Organizations.

“It has been a genuine honor to work alongside an amazing CC team, our global partners, and the open education community to identify complex problems where education is a critical part of the solution, and then opening that knowledge to help solve the problem. Together we’ve saved students billions of dollars, empowered teachers and learners through open pedagogies, and expanded access to education around the world,” shared Cable.

“On behalf of the entire CC community, I want to thank Cable for his dedication to advancing CC’s mission through the power of open education. I count myself among the many colleagues who have had the privilege of learning from his expertise. It’s not often we can so clearly see the global change one person has helped create, but Cable’s legacy in open education is both tangible and enduring,” says Anna Tumadóttir, CEO of Creative Commons. 

Please join us in wishing Cable farewell! Thankfully, as Cable departs for his next adventure, this isn’t goodbye. He will join the CC Advisory Council and be available to CC as needed. To stay connected, you can find him on LinkedIn.

The post A Heartfelt Farewell to Dr. Cable Green appeared first on Creative Commons.