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Open Future is leading the newly launched CommonsDB initiative, funded by the European Commission, to create a prototype registry of public domain and openly licensed works. We are collaborating with Liccium, the Europeana Foundation, Wikimedia Sverige and the Institute for Information Law to bring this vision to life.
The CommonsDB registry will enable users to verify the rights status of content from multiple sources. It will be built using existing technologies and standards, consolidating ISCC codes, rights metadata, and verifiable credentials to make registry information available through public APIs.
The concept for CommonsDB originated from Open Future’s 2021 white paper by Paul Keller and Felix Reda, which proposed creating a public repository of public domain and open-licensed works. This work inspired the European Parliament to request and fund a pilot project for such a repository. It also builds upon the work of both Europeana and the Wikimedia community, who have developed two of the largest existing repositories of such works.
CommonsDB demonstrates Open Future’s commitment to supporting the Digital Commons and marks our first initiative to build public digital infrastructure for this purpose. It establishes a new area of focus at Open Future: Copyright Infrastructure. This line of work builds on the need for copyright infrastructure in the Digital Age, which was included as one of the Digital Commons Policy Proposals published in early 2024 to address challenges identified in the research around the Paradox of Open. A critical challenge is the lack of technical standards for copyright information and opt-outs—a gap affecting both digital copyright functionality and EU AI regulation.
CommonsDB aligns with the European Commission’s efforts to strengthen the Digital Commons and promote openness, interoperability, and accessibility. The project focuses on developing copyright infrastructure that provides better public information about rights status and permissions. This is essential for AI training and creator control, particularly for Public Domain works and Digital Commons resources, while providing guidance on machine-readable opt-outs and developing AI training compliance standards.
Over the next 18 months, Open Future will work closely with CommonsDB partners and external open collections experts to design and implement the prototype registry. To support this, we will conduct a two-part study examining the operational and technical feasibility. This study will identify and address copyright, public domain, and data governance issues to minimize legal uncertainty, and will explore the future governance and sustainability of the registry.
