Creative Commons
Open-Licensing Nonprofit
The nonprofit behind the CC licenses that built the open web has defended text-and-data mining as part of open culture, launching CC Signals in 2025 so creators can express AI-training preferences without abandoning openness.
In their words
Just as the CC licenses helped build the open web, we believe CC signals will help shape an open AI ecosystem grounded in reciprocity.
CC signals are designed to sustain the commons in the age of AI.
Biography
Founded in 2001 by Lawrence Lessig and fellow legal scholars, Creative Commons created the licenses under which billions of works — including all of Wikipedia — are legally shared. When generative AI began training on that commons, CC declined to join the backlash: it has long held that text-and-data mining and machine analysis of published works are compatible with, and often protected by, the open culture its licenses exist to serve.
A new social contract for AI
In a May 2025 legal primer, CC explained that its licenses do not prohibit AI training and that in many jurisdictions training may not implicate copyright at all. Then on June 25, 2025, it announced CC Signals — “a new social contract for the age of AI” — a framework letting creators and holders of large collections express how they want works used in AI development, asking for reciprocity, recognition, and sustainability in return rather than trying to lock content away. An alpha followed in November 2025.
The launch drew fire from both directions: many artists called preference signals toothless capitulation, since they rely on AI companies choosing to honor them, while some open-web advocates worried any signaling regime chills legitimate mining. CC CEO Anna Tumadóttir has argued the alternative — a paywalled, litigated internet — would destroy the commons faster than AI ever could.
Where they stand in the war
Voices for AI
Sources & further reading
Canonical record: https://battlelines.ai/topic/creative-commons