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.
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