Skip to content

Better Sharing, Brighter Future

Twenty Years of Creative Commons (in Sixty Seconds)” by Ryan Junell and Glenn Otis Brown for Creative Commons is licensed via CC BY 4.0 and includes adaptations of the multiple open and public domain works. View full licensing and attribution information about all works included in the video on Flickr.

Creative Commons is an international nonprofit organization that empowers people to grow and sustain the thriving commons of shared knowledge and culture we need to address the world's most pressing challenges and create a brighter future for all.

Learn more

The nonprofit behind the licenses and tools the world uses to share

For over 20 years, Creative Commons has supported a global movement built on a belief in the power of open access to knowledge and creativity. From Wikipedia to the Smithsonian, organizations and individuals rely on our work to share billions of historic images, scientific articles, cultural artifacts, educational resources, music, and more!

  • Wikipedia

    55+ million articles

    Every one of Wikipedia's 55 million plus articles are shared openly and freely using a CC license.

  • The Met

    492,000+ images

    All images of public-domain works in the Met's collection are openly available under Creative Commons Zero (CC0).

  • Khan Academy

    100,000+ lessons

    Many of the lessons found on Khan Academy are openly licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA.

Latest News

CC Celebrates 20 Years of the UNESCO Convention on Safeguarding Intangible Heritage

Open Heritage
A colorful shyrdak, a type of rug, with geometric square and diamond patterns filled with spiraling and curvy abstract shapes in bright pink, red, navy, yellow, teal and light and dark blues. A shyrdaq on the floor of a Kyrgyz home in Kyzyl-Jar, Aqsy, Jalalabat”, Kyrgyzstan by Firespeaker, here cropped, is licensed via CC BY-SA 3.0.

CC celebrates the 20th anniversary of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage. CC’s community initiative “Towards a Recommendation on Open Culture” (TAROC) is designed to support the international community in developing a positive, affirmative, and influential recommendation enshrining the values, objectives, and mechanisms for open culture to flourish and, in particular, for open culture to serve as a means to safeguard intangible cultural heritage.