“No Rights Reserved”
The Problem
A Solution
Using CC0
Examples
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Europeana — Europe’s digital library — releases its metadata into the public domain using CC0 . This massive dataset consists of descriptive information from a huge trove of digitized cultural and artistic works. By removing all restrictions on the use of the metadata that describes these cultural works, Europeana creates opportunities for developers, designers, and other digital innovators to create applications, games for mobile devices, and websites that visualize and represent the diverse collection of artistic works in Europeana. See Europeana releases 20 million records into the public domain using CC0. -
figshare allows researchers to publish all of their research outputs in an easily citable, searchable, shareable manner. Figshare has adopted CC0 as the default tool for researchers to share their datasets. In many cases, it can be difficult to ascertain whether a database is subject to copyright law, as many types of data aren’t copyrightable in many jurisdictions. Putting a database or dataset in the public domain under CC0 is a way to remove any legal doubt about whether researchers can use the data in their projects. Hundreds of organizations use CC0 to dedicate their work to the public domain. Although CC0 doesn’t legally require users of the data to cite the source, it does not affect the ethical norms for attribution in scientific and research communities. -
Open Goldberg Variations: Before the Open Goldberg Variations, public domain recordings of Bach’s Goldberg Variations were hard to find, even though the scores themselves were in the public domain. Open Goldberg Variations wanted to change that, so it teamed up with professional musician Kimiko Ishizaka and started a Kickstarter project to create studio-quality recordings, promising to release them into the public domain using the CC0 public domain dedication tool. According to the project founders , “Musicians are usually not willing to withdraw their copyrights and their control over usage, but we feel that they thus miss opportunities to contribute to the greater good and benefit from wider distribution of their works. If this project succeeds, we hope that the recording will be available to everyone forevermore, and that it will be a truly widely known and enjoyed artistic work.” Sure enough, the project was funded at nearly double its original funding goal, and as a result all 30 variations performed by Kimiko Ishizaka are now available for free download via CC0. -
Metropolitan Museum of Art: A ll public domain images in its collection are shared under CC0, which expanded their digital collection by over 375,000 images as well as provided data on over 420,000 museum objects spanning more than 5,000 years. Through the power of the commons, billions of people are now able to enjoy the beauty of the Met’s collections as well as participate in the continued growth of the commons, utilizing the infrastructure that makes greater collaboration possible.
More info
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Read the CC0 FAQ -
Read the CC0 summary and legal text -
Apply CC0 to your own work