Medium welcomes the Creative Commons licenses

Today we’re excited to announce the addition of the Creative Commons license suite to Medium. Every Medium writer now has the option to share their story under the full range of CC licenses, including CC0. Medium has also added the ability to post and share existing public domain works using CC’s Public Domain Mark. Creative Commons is a global non-profit that produces and promotes the CC licenses and tools to allow you to give other people permission to use or remix your work, with or without attribution, for any purpose.

Medium is one of the first dedicated publishing and storytelling platforms to embrace CC licenses. We see CC licenses as more than just a feature. They represent the opening up of Medium as a platform, and they give the Medium community the ability to contribute their works to a thriving, public commons on the Internet.

Medium joins a long list of other online projects that support the creation and sharing of CC licensed works, including the Internet Archive, Vimeo, Wikipedia, Flickr and many more. There are nearly a billion CC licensed, freely reusable works among these platforms, and it’s wonderful to see Medium join this fast-growing community.

Medium is helping to kick off this initiative by curating some great CC licensed posts, including one from Creative Commons’ founder Prof. Lawrence Lessig and one from author Cory Doctorow. Creative Commons also recently posted a story about the fascinating origin of the CC logos that were recently added to the permanent collection of the NY Museum of Modern Art.

You can check out Medium’s announcement if you have other questions about how to use this new feature. Over at Creative Commons’ site you can also read more about the licenses, the organization, and how you can get more involved in the Creative Commons global community.

We are looking forward to seeing the Medium community embrace the spirit of sharing with the CC licenses, and we’re excited to help the public commons become all the more rich and interesting with each additional platform that welcomes CC licensing.

Our thanks to the many folks who made this possible today, and to those who kicked off the suggestions on Twitter. You asked, Medium listened. Happy sharing!

Yours truly,
Ryan Merkley
CEO, Creative Commons