{"slug": "filthy-human-hands-license-v1-0", "title": "Filthy Human Hands License v1.0", "summary": "Russ Sharek and Liam Woodard released version 1.0 of the Filthy Human Hands License on 2026-03-02, a custom content license that bars any use of covered works for training autonomous agents, generating AI-created content, or data mining and scraping. The license also prohibits use by organizations or businesses with more than 50 employees, with an exception for ISPs and hosting services to reproduce works for display and distribution, and requires attribution plus a ban on uses promoting bigotry. The authors said they wrote the license so people, not machines, could play with and remix their creative work.", "body_md": "As fancy primates, we regularly produce bits of interesting human-made ephemera as part of our ongoing creative explorations.\n\nSome of these are easily shareable.\n\nHistorically, it’s been possible to offer such goodies under extremely\npermissive Creative Commons licenses. In the age of “artificially\nintelligent” machines mulching all of human expression and creativity,\nthere’s a need to be clear that we want **people** to play\nwith our toys.\n\nIn short, we made a ridiculous thing with our silly human brains, using our filthy human hands, in order to inspire our messy human hearts.\n\nIt is with strong encouragement, and a few simple rules, that we invite you to use your brains, hands, and hearts to play along with us.\n\nNo part of a work under this license may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purposes of training autonomous agents, generating anything created by artificial intelligence (AI), any form of data mining/scraping, or related systems and technologies.\n\nNo part of a work under this license may be used or reproduced in any manner by organizations or businesses with more than fifty (50) employees. An exception is granted to allow ISPs and other hosting services to reproduce the work for the purposes of display and distribution.\n\nNo part of a work under this license may be used or reproduced in any manner which promotes bigotry of any kind. This includes but is not limited to fascism, racism, sexism, misogyny, ableism, transphobia (including erasure and/or denial of nonbinary identities), homophobia, ageism, sane-ism (including denial of multiplicity and/or plurality), and discrimination against non-human identities.\n\nAny use of any form of a work under this license must include an attribution crediting the original creators for their contribution.\n\nBeyond these restrictions, a work under this license is otherwise released by its creator for exploring, playing with, remixing, and enjoyment.\n\nGo make something beautiful.\n\nThe Filthy Human Hands License was created by Russ Sharek and Liam Woodard\n\nFor more information: [https://whirling.top/fhh](https://whirling.top/fhh)\n\n2026-03-02 - Filthy Human Hands (FHH) Licence v1.0 released.\n\nFrequently Asked Questions.\n\nIt may come as an uncomfortable surprise to discover that everything in the known world is actually made up, including this license.\n\nDiscomfort can be an excellent teacher. If it helps, the authors of this license are fairly certain that the reader is as real as they are.\n\nCopyright law, as written and enforced, protects the interests of large corporations. As such, it’s likely that you are correct. This is likely true of any open or permissive license.\n\nAs clowns, we’re *especially* human. However, a number of our dear\nfriends don’t identify as such. We wanted to include their wondrous\ncreativity, so we broadened the anti-discrimination clause a bit to make\nroom.\n\nThe potential sentience of LLMs, overglorified search engines, world-burning grift machines, or the toaster in our kitchen is not a topic we are interested in debating. The sentience of our protogen, cyborg, and human/machine hybrid friends is respected despite its absolute ability to muddy this issue.\n\nThe EU defines the upper limit of a “small business” as having fifty (50) or less employees.\n\nMark Twain once said that the only thing worse than a young pessimist was an old optimist.\n\nSome (actual) clowns wrote it so they could give away some creative stuff.\n\n[Russ Sharek](https://russ.whirling.top) and [Liam Woodard](https://socialgaff.whirling.top).\n\nAdditionally, some friends from the small internet provided useful resources and ideas:\n\nThe Filthy Human Hands License is licensed under the Filthy Human Hands License. An attribution to its creators is listed in the LICENSE itself.\n\nFollow its guidelines, and have fun!\n\nDuring renovation of the [Delrita Reading\nRoom](https://russ.whirling.top/ramblings/delrita.html) in [This Old\nClown House](https://mastodon.art/tags/ThisOldClownHouse), Russ Sharek\nput a paint covered hand on the wall and photographed it. The photo was\nlater manipulated using Inkscape, and the handprint extracted in vector\nform.\n\nThe resulting SVG file is available for use under the Filthy Human Hands v1.0 License.\n\nOne of the unfortunate realities of the internet is that websites come\nand go.  So we can ensure that the project thrives despite these sorts\nof challenges, we’ve set up an official URL which redirects to wherever\nthe project might move over time.  To be sure you’re always getting the\n“official” version of the site, please link to [https://whirling.top/fhh](https://whirling.top/fhh)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/filthy-human-hands-license-v1-0", "canonical_source": "https://whirling.top/fhh/", "published_at": "2026-11-11 14:10:18+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-11-11 14:21:53.358332+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-policy", "ai-ethics", "generative-ai"], "entities": ["Russ Sharek", "Liam Woodard", "Filthy Human Hands License", "Creative Commons", "European Union"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/filthy-human-hands-license-v1-0", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/filthy-human-hands-license-v1-0.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/filthy-human-hands-license-v1-0.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/filthy-human-hands-license-v1-0.jsonld"}}