CC-0 is a brand new Creative Commons license, whose official launch is expected in December, that signals the absence of any copyright or related rights associated with a work.
The creation of CC-0 is heralded by the release into the public domain of a free archive of federal case law, including all Courts of Appeals decisions from 1950 to the present and all Supreme Court decisions since 1754, through Carl Malamud’s Public.Resource.Org.
The data is being provided by Fastcase, a provider of next-generation American legal research, which has agreed to provide Public.Resource.Org with 1.8 million pages of federal case law. This is a marked departure for the online legal research industry, much of which charges libraries, institutions, legal firms, and courts very expensive subscription fees to access this information.
The transaction represents a one-time purchase of the data; the corpus will be integrated into on-going services provided by AltLaw and the Legal Information Institute, ensuring continuity into the future. Further releases of data, including Federal District and pre-1949 Appellate decisions, may be forthcoming.
More information at Public.Resource.Org.