Data Notes and Sources

1.4 Billion Creative Commons Licensed Works

Google provided us with the base data, counting all of the web pages in its cache that link to Creative Commons license deeds, which we used to make the estimates in this report. While pages may link to Creative Commons license deeds for reasons other than to license or attribute works under them, we reason that those are vastly outnumbered by pages that indicate a CC license choice without linking to the deed. As in previous years, we’ve supplemented Google’s data with that of several websites that aren’t reflected in Google’s data.

Google data

Total web pages that link to current CC tools: 245,440,000
Total web pages that link to retired CC tools: 40,480,000
Total web pages that link to unknown license: 50,000
Grand total: 285,970,000

Google grand total (285,970,000) + total works across un-cached platforms (1,185,431,740) = 1,471,401,740 (1.47 billion)

Source: Google query, available at Github. Platform data and sources below.

Platforms not included in Google’s data:

Total works across platforms listed below: 1,185,431,740

Platform name	Number of works (rounded down by hundred thousand)	Number by license	source
Flickr	415.1 million	BY: 78,401,146 BY-ND: 21,650,940 BY-NC-ND: 99,291,797 BY-NC: 54,159,187 BY-NC-SA: 115,876,935 BY-SA: 38,667,923 CC0: 1,808,499 PDM: 5,248,400	https://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/ (accessed on 21/11/17)
Wikipedia (all pages in all languages)	46.7 million	all CC BY-SA	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:About
Scribd	50 million	unknown	Source at Scribd (2014)
MusicBrainz	75.3 million	CC0: 65,136,008 CC BY-NC-SA: 4,521,082	https://musicbrainz.org/statistics
Freebase	58.7 million	all CC BY (58,726,427)	http://web.archive.org/web/20160501004947/http://www.freebase.com:80/
deviantART	40 million	BY: 1,305,622 BY-ND: 2,070,999 BY-NC-ND: 13,132,215 BY-NC: 693,161 BY-NC-SA: 1,923,225 BY-SA: 890,283	Source at deviantART
Geonames	11.4 million	all CC BY (11,459,808)	http://www.geonames.org/statistics/
YouTube	49 million	all CC BY	Source at YouTube
Libre.fm	187.8 million	all CC BY-SA (187,859,603)	Source at Libre.fm
Wikia.com	50 million	Unknown combination of CC BY-SA, CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-ND	http://fandom.wikia.com/explore
Mapillary	219.7 million	All CC BY-SA	https://www.mapillary.com (accessed 27 Nov 17)
Pixabay	1.2 million	All CC0 (1,208,480)	https://pixabay.com/en/photos/?order=popular (accessed 27 Nov 17)
Everipedia	6 million	All CC BY-SA	https://everipedia.org/ (Accessed 5 Dec 17)

License break-down

Free Cultural works (public domain, CC BY, CC BY-SA) = 955,152,199 = 64.9%

Public domain = 117,181,387

Google + Platforms not cached by Google = total for license/tool

CC BY: 65,870,000 + 198,893,003 = 264,763,003
CC BY-SA: 73,390,000 + 499,817,809 = 573,207,809
CC BY-ND: 3,710,000 + 23,721,939 = 27,431,939
CC BY-NC: 10,410,000 + 54,852,348 = 65,262,348
CC BY-NC-SA: 29,470,000 + 122,321,242 = 151,791,242
CC BY-NC-ND: 59,270,000 + 112,424,012 = 171,694,012
Public domain total: 117,181,387
- CC0: 2,740,000 + 68,152,987 = 70,892,987
- PDM: 580,000 + 5,248,400 = 5,828,400
- Retired PD tool: 40,460,000
Retired tools total: 20,000
- Sampling+: 10,000
- CC GPL: 10,000
Unknown = 50,000 + 100,000,000 = 100,050,000

Key Platforms Sharing CC Work

To be consistent with previous years, these totals were accessed during November of 2017.

Flickr

Number by license

CC0 – 1,808,499
PDM – 5,248,400
CC BY – 78,401,146
CC BY-SA – 38,667,923
CC BY-NC – 54,159,187
CC BY-ND – 21,650,940
CC BY-NC-SA – 115,876,935
CC BY-NC-ND – 99,291,797

Total: 415,104,827

Source: https://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/

YouTube

Number by license

CC BY – 49,000,000

Total: 49,000,000

Source: YouTube staff

Wikipedia

Number by license

CC BY-SA – 46,700,000

Total: 46,700,000

Source: Wikimedia staff; https://github.com/wikimedia-research/Contributors-State-of-the-Commons

DeviantArt

Number by license

CC0 – 20,015,505
CC BY – 1,305,622
CC BY-SA – 890,283
CC BY-NC – 693,161
CC BY-ND – 2,070,999
CC BY-NC-SA – 1,923,225
CC BY-NC-ND – 13,132,215

Total: 40,031,010

Source: DeviantArt staff

Wikimedia Commons

Number by license

CC0 – 2,010,188
PDM – 3,632,883
CC BY – 6,104,697
CC BY-SA – 25,099,307
CC BY-NC – 6,171
CC BY-ND – 15
CC BY-NC-SA – 231
CC BY-NC-ND – 0
CC-SA – 2,804

Total: 36,856,296

Source: Wikimedia staff; https://github.com/wikimedia-research/Contributors-State-of-the-Commons

Europeana

Number by license

CC0 – 1,836,238
PDM – 13,061,040
CC BY – 3,312,222
CC BY-SA – 2,743,573
CC BY-NC – 856,601
CC BY-ND – 95,045
CC BY-NC-SA – 2,640,115
CC BY-NC-ND – 4,174,615

Total: 28,719,449

Source: Europeana staff

Vimeo

Number by license

CC0 – 92,947
CC BY – 1,661,009
CC BY-SA – 547,189
CC BY-NC – 1,085,181
CC BY-ND – 447,652
CC BY-NC-SA – 696,539
CC BY-NC-ND – 2,048,988

Total: 6,579,505

Source: https://developer.vimeo.com/api/playground/videos

Internet Archive

Number by license

CC0 – 257,139
PDM – 678,639
CC BY – 359,278
CC BY-SA – 1,012,322
CC BY-NC – 114,159
CC BY-ND – 95,413
CC BY-NC-SA – 323,101
CC BY-NC-ND – 119,334
CC-SA – 35
CC Sampling Plus – 318
CC NC Sampling Plus – 213

Total: 3,124,392

Source: Internet Archive staff

DOAJ

Number by license

CC BY – 1,597,082
CC BY-SA – 76,531
CC BY-NC – 419,351
CC BY-ND – 16,982
CC BY-NC-SA – 185,249
CC BY-NC-ND – 395,174

Total: 2,690,369

Source: https://doaj.org/search#.WiGN4baZPOQ

Thingiverse

Number by license

CC0 – 21,610
CC BY – 1,003,958
CC BY-SA – 874,950
CC BY-NC – 190,033
CC BY-ND – 2,558
CC BY-NC-SA – 169,114
CC BY-NC-ND – 19,000

Total: 2,281,223

Source: Makerbot/Thingiverse staff

500px

Number by license

CC0 – 18,576
PDM – 22,075
CC BY – 149,961
CC BY-SA – 76,918
CC BY-NC – 189,529
CC BY-ND – 64,883
CC BY-NC-SA – 261,746
CC BY-NC-ND – 438,749

Total: 1,222,437

Source: 500px staff

Medium

Number by license

CC0 – 12,512
PDM – 123,815
CC BY – 33,833
CC BY-SA – 508,733
CC BY-NC – 12,426
CC BY-ND – 7,525
CC BY-NC-SA – 24,335
CC BY-NC-ND – 17,717

Total: 740,896

Source: Medium staff

Jamendo

Number by license

CC BY – 33,735
CC BY-SA – 110,534
CC BY-NC – 11,399
CC BY-ND – 24,813
CC BY-NC-SA – 239,989
CC BY-NC-ND – 135,656

Total: 556,126

Source: Jamendo staff

PLOS

Number by license

CC BY – 200,000

Total: 200,000

Source: http://blogs.plos.org/blog/2017/07/25/a-publishing-milestone-to-celebrate-200000-plos-research-articles-and-counting/

Free Music Archive

Number by license

CC0 – 2,249
PDM – 223
CC BY – 8,119
CC BY-SA – 3,196
CC BY-NC – 8,901
CC BY-ND – 1,270
CC BY-NC-SA – 45,694
CC BY-NC-ND – 45,284
CC Sampling Plus – 33

Total: 114,969

Source: FMA staff