OpenLobby.EU
Explore

Creative Commons

CC

Creative Commons develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation.

Lobbying Activity

Meeting with Tiemo Wölken (Member of the European Parliament, Shadow rapporteur) and European Federation of Journalists

25 Sept 2025 · AI & Copyright

Meeting with Mario Furore (Member of the European Parliament)

25 Sept 2025 · Copyright and Ai

Meeting with Ilhan Kyuchyuk (Member of the European Parliament)

4 Mar 2025 · AI office code of practice

Meeting with Werner Stengg (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager) and Strategic Advisory Management

9 Oct 2024 · Present their position on the AI Act and its link to copyright

Meeting with Sabine Verheyen (Member of the European Parliament)

2 Oct 2024 · Media Policy

Response to Interim Evaluation of Digital Europe

11 Sept 2024

At Creative Commons, we support the prioritization of culture and cultural heritage under the Digital Europe Programme. We urge the European Commission to increase funding for the common European data space for cultural heritage, the only earmarked cultural project under the Digital Europe Programme, and one of the few operational data spaces to date. We had supported this data space upon its creation, as you can read in our 2021 blog post: https://creativecommons.org/2021/11/19/creative-commons-welcomes-ec-recommendation-on-common-european-data-space-for-cultural-heritage/. We believe the contribution of the data space to the digital transformation of the cultural heritage sector as well as the reuse of cultural heritage are and will continue to be crucial in the coming years. This work is also vital to advance European global digital leadership and sovereignty, as it builds digital capacity in both cultural heritage professionals and users of digital cultural heritage. Additionally, we call for the revision of the co-financing terms assigned to data space support projects. Instead of the current 50%, participating institutions should only be required to contribute a maximum of 25%. The existing 50% co-funding requirement is unsustainable, especially for small and medium heritage institutions, which make up the majority of the sector. We support the Europeana Initiatives official response to the funding needs for the data space (available here: https://pro.europeana.eu/post/europeana-initiative-s-official-response-to-digital-europe-programme-consultation).
Read full response

Meeting with Dragoş Tudorache (Member of the European Parliament)

10 Apr 2024 · Digital issues

Meeting with Maurits-Jan Prinz (Cabinet of Commissioner Thierry Breton)

10 Oct 2023 · AI Act

Meeting with Tiemo Wölken (Member of the European Parliament)

28 Jun 2023 · AI Regulation and Copyright (staff level)

Meeting with Eleonora Ocello (Cabinet of Commissioner Thierry Breton)

28 Jun 2023 · European Media Freedom Act

Response to Virtual worlds, such as metaverse

2 May 2023

Creative Commons welcomes the EC initiative on virtual worlds. As the worlds leading non-profit organization that stewards the CC licenses and promotes a policy environment that supports creativity, collaboration, and better sharing of knowledge and culture, we believe that it is essential for any regulation of the technologies that make up the metaverse promotes the development of responsible and trustworthy technologies, encourages and fosters human creativity, and ultimately serves the commons of knowledge, culture, and information for all. At CC, we are exploring the role that the emerging technologies of the metaverse will play in supporting better sharing. In particular, we have been examining the copyright issues raised by the various technologies that underpin virtual worlds and the metaverse as a new digital experience, including artificial intelligence, collection and use of data by virtual worlds technologies and services, and blockchain technology and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Our comments (attached) address these three topics.
Read full response

Meeting with Werner Stengg (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager)

24 Apr 2023 · Articficial Intelligence Act, Data Act, EU Media Freedom

Meeting with Dragoş Tudorache (Member of the European Parliament, Rapporteur)

24 Apr 2023 · Artificial Intelligence

Meeting with Dragoş Tudorache (Member of the European Parliament, Rapporteur) and American Chamber of Commerce to the European Union

30 Jan 2023 · Artificial Intelligence

Meeting with Ibán García Del Blanco (Member of the European Parliament, Rapporteur)

10 Oct 2022 · Exchange of views on AI

Response to Proposal on the conditions for the remuneration of third country recorded music played in the EU

21 Sept 2022

Creative Commons (CC) is pleased to submit our brief comments in the framework of the call for evidence on Remuneration of music performers and record producers from third (non-EU) countries for recorded music played in the EU. CC is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to helping build and sustain a thriving commons of shared knowledge and culture. Together with an extensive member network and multiple partners, we build capacity and infrastructure, develop practical solutions, and advocate for better open sharing. Indeed, CC’s long focus on open sharing has evolved into a vision for better sharing: we must pursue a commons of knowledge and culture that is inclusive, just, and which inspires reciprocity — a commons that serves the public interest. While CC would in principle support an EU directive that would bring much needed certainty and clarity into the international framework in order to level the playing field for fair remuneration of performers and sound recording producers, we would caution against perpetuating the imbalances that presently mar the restrictive model that exists under current copyright law. We support the EC’s goals of ensuring legal certainty and the legislative proposal to amend Article 8(2) in order to apply material reciprocity under the World Performances and Phonograms Treaty (WPPT) by introducing specific rules as explicitly stated by the CJEU in its RAAP judgment. We take this opportunity to share our views along the following three main points, as detailed in the attached document and summarized as follows: - As a matter of principle, CC supports fair and equitable remuneration, but the current copyright and related (neighboring) rights system is not fit for purpose. - Fair remuneration through collective management organizations (CMOs) in the EU needs to be adapted to new realities. - The CC model offers a sustainable alternative for fair remuneration. CC supports the EC’s efforts to clarify the conditions under which third party nationals are entitled to fair remuneration. The EC must not lose sight of the vital importance to uphold the public interest in access to cultural works and objects of related rights, in line with its open access policies. The EC approach to bringing certainty into the global music market must not lead to negative impact on better sharing of creative content. Notwithstanding the concrete need to find a solution to reciprocity concerns under international law, the EC should prevent further monopolization of CMOs at the national level and not hinder creators’ freedom of contract. Further, it should avoid options that involve mandatory licensing and a monopolization of rights management organizations. CMOs are neither the appropriate structures to cover all types of works and objects of related rights or all types of uses, nor should they be the only option to ensure fair remuneration. The CC model offers music performers and record producers countless benefits when they opt in to a more flexible copyright framework by using CC licenses and tools to widely disseminate and promote their works or objects of related right for increased visibility, innovative business models, and greater public access and enjoyment.
Read full response

Meeting with Tiemo Wölken (Member of the European Parliament)

6 Sept 2022 · allgemeiner Austausch zum Urheberrecht, AI Act, Data Act

Meeting with Florian Denis (Cabinet of Commissioner Mairead Mcguinness) and Strategic Advisory Management

14 Jun 2022 · digital agenda

Meeting with Agnieszka Skonieczna (Cabinet of Commissioner Thierry Breton), Filomena Chirico (Cabinet of Commissioner Thierry Breton)

13 Jun 2022 · Content creation and digital policies

Response to European Media Freedom Act

18 Mar 2022

Creative Commons (CC) welcomes the opportunity to provide feedback on Safeguarding media freedom in the EU – new rules. CC fully supports the EU’s initiative to enhance its legislative framework in order to further defend and protect media freedoms in the EU and globally. We strongly believe journalism provides a crucial public service. Access to verifiable information and stories that question the underlying terrain of power is critical to all democratic societies. The EU is right to want to seek to defend, enhance and export these values. The proliferation of digital services has exponentially changed the way in which we communicate, bringing both opportunities and challenges. On the one hand, journalism as we know it faces existential new challenges. Sadly, the war in Ukraine is just one recent and shocking manifestation of the direct and indirect costs to society and the values which underpin it when media freedoms are discarded. Increasingly, journalists face work-halting financial and ethical challenges, as well as threats to their physical and digital safety, when sharing information online. Misinformation and disinformation campaigns in the media challenge collective notions of ground truth. They challenge the bedrock and meaning of the open internet and of the principles on which free and democratic societies are built. On the other hand, journalism also faces newfound opportunities, as the tectonic plates of power shift in our shared digital landscape. We witness the rising role of nonprofit, independent, community-based media sources, filling gaps where traditional media organizations have shuttered; the rising power of crowdsourcing information and fact checking, and a powerful new role an open internet can play in sustaining the fundamental right to access to information and better knowledge sharing. CC supports independent journalists and we know our licenses can play an impactful role. For example, the largest remaining independent news site in Russia Meduza applied CC BY 4.0 licenses to more than 100 news articles in a campaign to free journalist Ivan Golunov, who was arrested for his anti-corruption investigations. Hundreds of Russian media outlets republished Golunov’s pieces, helping put his work in the spotlight. According to Meduza, it may have been the first time in the history of Russian media that one journalist’s articles were published at the same time in every outlet. It marked an unprecedented campaign of solidarity with Golunov, first among journalists and later with the general public. As a result: Ivan Golunov was released days later. With Meduza as well as independent news organizations in Ukraine now under threat, allies around the world are demonstrating a swell of support: more than 4M has been fundraised via crowdsourcing platforms GoFundMe and Patreon. And there are more open, collaborative ways in which we can support journalists. CC encourages journalists to openly license their outputs, including coverage of the war in Ukraine, using CC licenses, giving them the skills to do so in our first open journalism training. We at CC are eager to play an active role in the EU’s policymaking process in order to ensure that our licenses and our community can make a significant, positive contribution to defending media freedoms at home and abroad in the public interest. We look forward to providing practical input and advice to the European Commission and the EU legislators as they develop the EU media freedom act in order to ensure the public interest is mainstreamed into policymaking. This will enhance the sharing of knowledge, with open-access information providing the strongest collective bulwark against the societally corrosive effects of mis/disinformation in the public arena.
Read full response

Response to Review of the Directive on the re-use of public sector information (Directive 2013/37/EU)

13 Jul 2018

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the re-use of public sector information (recast) COM(2018)234. Creative Commons (CC) is a nonprofit organization that provides standard, free, open licenses and other legal tools to make it easier to share and build upon the creativity of others, consistent with the rules of copyright. We’ve provided guidance and recommendations on licensing for public sector information (PSI), including during the Commission’s consultation last year, and also via the LAPSI 2.0 project. We’re pleased that the revised proposal (April 2018) would increase the availability of PSI by bringing new types of public sector data into the scope of the directive, including data related to transportation, research data, and “high value datasets”. We continue to advocate for better clarity of the Commission’s definition of open licenses within the PSI Directive. This is the only path forward for PSI to fully contribute to the EU Digital Single Market. We agree with Open Knowledge: “Europe’s data economy can only benefit from open data if licence terms are standardised. This allows data from different member states to be combined without legal issues, and enables to combine datasets, create cross-country applications, and spark innovation.” We’ve argued that PSI should be shared as a part of the global public domain (using the CC0 Public Domain Dedication), or by using standard, permissive open licensing (such as CC BY or another Open Definition-compliant license). A positive change in the 2013 Directive was the removal of text encouraging the development of additional open government licenses, which would have complicated re-use by creating incompatibility between PSI, and creating confusion among potential re-users. The Commission’s July 2014 “guidelines” was a step in the right direction, as it recommended standardized, open licenses such as CC 4.0, and also CC0. Please find our complete comment in the attached document.
Read full response