On Monday 2 March 2026, Creative Commons (CC) and Internet Archive Europe, together with the support of Open Nederland, hosted an event entitled “Ensuring equitable access to heritage in the digital environment: A leading role for the Netherlands on the global stage.” In this blog post, we offer a recap of the dynamic discussions and share why they matter for CC. 

Last month, we published a preview of what we intended to bring to the AI Impact Summit in Delhi: a focus on data governance, shared infrastructure, and democratic approaches to AI that genuinely advance the public interest rather than replicate existing power imbalances. That piece outlined our core interventions and the principles that have guided our thinking as we grapple with how to ensure openness, agency, and equity in the age of AI. 

Vito is a Copyright and AI Fellow with the legal team at Creative Commons. He holds a Juris Doctor from the University of California, College of Law, San Francisco, as well as a double major in Political Science and Global Studies and a double minor in French and Italian from Temple University. He is currently…

Over the past year,  we’ve been engaged in a series of conversations with a small group of researchers specializing in IP, AI policy, and data governance about what CC  licensing means—and does—in African contexts today. What started as an organic exchange in various spaces has revealed something larger: a strong appetite to move these conversations into the open. At stake are not only questions about CC licenses but deeper issues of data sovereignty, equity, governance, and power in global knowledge systems.

Over the past year, Creative Commons communities around the world have continued to show what’s possible when people come together around shared values of openness, collaboration, and care. In 2025 we were focused on gathering feedback on our ongoing preference signals explorations, creating and gathering feedback on new governance frameworks for future implementation, streamlining community communication channels, and transitioning to an open source chat platform for community collaboration.

I like to say I am a “writer who lawyers”. I begin here because I want to name my biases up front. I am a lawyer, but I come to this work first and foremost as a writer thinking about the conditions that will allow us to continue to share knowledge publicly. And in spite of—or perhaps because of—the fact that I am a lawyer, I have a healthy skepticism about the power of legal terms and conditions. The law will play a role, but the challenge of keeping the internet human will ultimately be navigated by the stories we imagine and tell.  We need new stories.

In November 2025, we had the privilege of supporting and participating in Semana de la Cultura Libre (Open Culture Week) in Montevideo, Uruguay: a week-long celebration of open culture organized by CC Uruguay. Through panels, workshops, concerts, and conversations, the week offered a powerful reminder that free culture is not an abstract idea but a living practice shaped by local communities, histories, and needs.

This month, CC will be represented at the AI Impact Summit in Delhi, an international gathering shaping the future of AI policy and practice. The 2026 Summit follows the AI Action Summit in Paris in February 2025, where CC underscored a simple but essential truth: without civil society, there can be no public interest.

In 2026, Creative Commons will continue to ensure that technological change strengthens, not erodes, the commons and improves the acts of sharing and access that are part of our everyday lives. We do this by applying first principles, practical strategies, and lessons learned from decades of advancing the commons. Sharing of research, educational materials, heritage, and creative works are acts of generosity—these are the gifts people give to the commons. Access to these same shared resources enables collaboration, innovation, and understanding. Together, this is how we improve access to knowledge and build a more equitable future.  

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.