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| Creative Commons CC0 | |
|---|---|
| Name | CC0 |
| Caption | Public domain dedication tool |
| Author | Creative Commons |
| Introduced | 2009 |
| Jurisdiction | International |
Creative Commons CC0 Creative Commons CC0 is a public-domain dedication tool designed to allow creators to waive copyright and related rights internationally. It functions alongside other Creative Commons instruments to facilitate reuse by removing legal and practical barriers for Wikimedia Foundation, Internet Archive, Library of Congress, British Library, and other cultural institutions. Major adopters include National Aeronautics and Space Administration, European Union, World Health Organization, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and numerous museums and universities.
CC0 was developed by Creative Commons with input from organizations such as Public Domain Review, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Open Knowledge Foundation, Science Commons, and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. The tool provides a legal mechanism similar to labors like the Berne Convention and institutions such as the United States Copyright Office to clarify a creator’s intent to relinquish rights. CC0 is used by repositories like Wikimedia Commons, Flickr, Europeana, HathiTrust, Getty Research Institute, and databases maintained by Smithsonian Institution and Wellcome Collection.
CC0 combines a public-domain waiver with a fallback license and waiver of moral rights influenced by doctrines in Berne Convention, Berne Convention Implementation Act, and national regimes including United Kingdom Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, United States Copyright Act, European Union Copyright Directive, Canadian Copyright Act, and Australian Copyright Act. The instrument addresses moral rights recognized in jurisdictions influenced by decisions such as French Intellectual Property Code and precedents from the Court of Justice of the European Union. CC0’s legal text references treatment similar to instruments used by United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods and standards considered by World Intellectual Property Organization. Institutions including Stanford University, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Columbia University have produced guidance interpreting CC0 in light of national statutes like 17 U.S.C. § 106.
CC0 is applied across sectors from scientific data sharing at European Organization for Nuclear Research and National Institutes of Health to cultural heritage releases by Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate Modern, Museum of Modern Art, and archival projects at The British Museum and National Archives and Records Administration. Open-source communities such as Apache Software Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, Linux Foundation, and OpenStreetMap contributors have debated CC0 use for databases and code, paralleling licenses like MIT License, Apache License 2.0, and GNU General Public License. CC0 facilitates reuse in projects hosted by GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and for datasets in Dryad, Zenodo, Figshare, and PLOS publications.
High-profile adopters include European Commission, National Library of France, National Diet Library (Japan), Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, and corporations like Microsoft and Google for certain datasets. Major consortia such as Open Knowledge Foundation and Creative Commons Global Network have promoted CC0 for scholarly data used by Nature and Science publishers. The tool has influenced policy at funders like Wellcome Trust, Gates Foundation, European Research Council, and National Science Foundation to encourage open data mandates. CC0-enabled materials are frequently aggregated by Wikidata, DBpedia, Project Gutenberg, and research infrastructures like CERN Open Data Portal.
Critics from organizations including Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, American Library Association, and law clinics at Harvard Law School and New York University School of Law have raised concerns about waiver enforceability across jurisdictions such as Germany, France, Italy, and Brazil where moral rights and personality rights are robust. Litigation and advisory opinions from courts like the Court of Justice of the European Union and national tribunals have shaped interpretation, and disputes have appeared in contexts involving Getty Images, Associated Press, Reuters, and cultural institutions. Discussions reference treaties like the Berne Convention and cases influenced by doctrines from European Court of Human Rights and national constitutional provisions.
CC0 is often compared to tools and doctrines such as the Unlicense, WTFPL, the Public Domain Mark, and national declarations used by institutions like Library of Congress and Bibliothèque nationale de France. It is contrasted with permissive open licenses like MIT License, BSD License, Apache License 2.0, and copyleft licenses like GNU General Public License used by projects such as Debian, Fedora Project, and Free Software Foundation initiatives. CC0’s global waiver differs from the Public Domain Mark which labels status, and from community norms employed by Creative Commons Zero adopters at repositories like Open Knowledge Foundation and OpenGLAM.
Implementers at institutions including National Gallery of Art, Victoria and Albert Museum, J. Paul Getty Trust, Royal Collection Trust, and academic repositories at University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, Yale University, and Princeton University should document provenance, apply metadata standards like Dublin Core, Schema.org, MARC21, and register datasets with infrastructures such as ORCID, Crossref, DataCite, and Handle System. Best practices recommend legal review by counsel familiar with statutes like 17 U.S.C. and directives like the EU Database Directive, use of persistent identifiers in platforms like Figshare and Zenodo, and clear rights statements following guidance by RightsStatement.org, Open Data Institute, SPARC, and national GLAM networks.