Creative Commons

Founded 2001

Founder Lawrence Lessig

Type 501(c)(3) non-profit organization

Focus Expansion of "reasonable", flexiblecopyright

Method Creative Commons license

Keypeople

Ryan Merkley, CEO

Website creativecommons.org(https://creativecommons.org)

Creative CommonsFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range ofcreative works available for others to build upon legally and to share.[1] The organization hasreleased several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons licenses free of charge tothe public. These licenses allow creators to communicate which rights they reserve, andwhich rights they waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators. An easy-to-understandone-page explanation of rights, with associated visual symbols, explains the specifics of eachCreative Commons license. Creative Commons licenses do not replace copyright, but arebased upon it. They replace individual negotiations for specific rights between copyrightowner (licensor) and licensee, which are necessary under an "all rights reserved" copyrightmanagement, with a "some rights reserved" management employing standardized licensesfor re-use cases where no commercial compensation is sought by the copyright owner. Theresult is an agile, low-overhead and low-cost copyright-management regime, profiting bothcopyright owners and licensees. Wikipedia uses one of these licenses.[2]

The organization was founded in 2001 by Lawrence Lessig, Hal Abelson, and Eric Eldred[3]

with the support of Center for the Public Domain. The first article in a general interestpublication about Creative Commons, written by Hal Plotkin, was published in February2002.[4] The first set of copyright licenses was released in December 2002.[5] The foundingmanagement team that developed the licenses and built the Creative Commons infrastructure as we know it today included Molly Shaffer VanHouweling, Glenn Otis Brown, Neeru Paharia, and Ben Adida.[6] Matthew Haughey and Aaron Swartz[7] also played a significant role in theearly stages of the project. As of November 2014 there were an estimated 880 million works licensed under the various Creative Commonslicenses.[8] As of March 2015, Flickr alone hosts over 306 million Creative Commons licensed photos.[9] Creative Commons is governed by aboard of directors. Their licenses have been embraced by many as a way for creators to take control of how they choose to share theircopyrighted works.

Contents

1 Aim and influence

2 Governance3 Affiliate network

3.1 South Korea3.2 Bassel Khartabil

4 Criticism4.1 License proliferation and incompatibility4.2 License misuse4.3 Criticism of the non-commercial license

5 See also6 References7 Bibliography8 External links

Aim and influenceCreative Commons has been described as being at the forefront of the copyleft movement, which seeks to support the building of a richerpublic domain by providing an alternative to the automatic "all rights reserved" copyright, and has been dubbed "some rights reserved."[10]

David Berry and Giles Moss have credited Creative Commons with generating interest in the issue of intellectual property and contributing tothe re-thinking of the role of the "commons" in the "information age". Beyond that, Creative Commons has provided "institutional, practicaland legal support for individuals and groups wishing to experiment and communicate with culture more freely."[11]

Creative Commons attempts to counter what Lawrence Lessig, founder of Creative Commons, considers to be a dominant and increasinglyrestrictive permission culture. Lessig describes this as "a culture in which creators get to create only with the permission of the powerful, or ofcreators from the past".[12] Lessig maintains that modern culture is dominated by traditional content distributors in order to maintain andstrengthen their monopolies on cultural products such as popular music and popular cinema, and that Creative Commons can providealternatives to these restrictions.[13][14]

Governance

Golden Nica Award (2004)

Lawrence Lessig (2008)

As of 2015, the Board of Creative Commons consists of:[15]

The Advisory Board consists of:[15]

Hal AbelsonBen AdidaRenata AvilaPaul Brest, ChairMichael W. CarrollDorothy GordonPaul KellerRyan Merkley, CEODiane Peters, Corporate SecretaryLaurie RacineThomas RubinEric SaltzmanChris SprigmanChristopher ThorneMolly Van HouwelingEsther Wojcicki, Vice ChairJongsoo Yoon

Creative Commons Japan Seminar,Tokyo (2007)

CC some rights reserved

CC's Audit Committee has three members, who are also members of the Board. As of 2015, they are Laurie Racine, Eric Saltzman and ChrisSprigman.

John AbeleCatherine CasserlyBrian FitzgeraldSue GardnerSpencer HymanJoi ItoLawrence Lessig (emeritus)Mohamed NanabhayAnnette ThomasJimmy Wales

A sign in a pub in Granada notifiescustomers that the music they arelistening to is freely distributableunder a Creative Commons license.

Affiliate networkAs of 2015, there are more than 100 affiliates working in over 75 jurisdictions to support and promoteCC activities around the world.[16]

South Korea

Creative Commons Korea (CC Korea) is the affiliated network of Creative Commons in SouthKorea. In March 2005, CC Korea was initiated by Jongsoo Yoon (in Korean: 윤종수), a PresidingJudge of Incheon District Court, as a project of Korea Association for Infomedia Law (KAFIL). Themajor Korean portal sites, including Daum and Naver, have been participating in the use of CreativeCommons licences. In January 2009, the Creative Commons Korea Association was consequentlyfounded as a non-profit incorporated association. Since then, CC Korea has been actively promoting theliberal and open culture of creation as well as leading the diffusion of Creative Commons in thecountry.

Creative Commons Korea[17]

Creative Commons Asia Conference 2010[18]

Bassel Khartabil

Bassel Khartabil is a Palestinian Syrian open source software developer and has served as project lead and public affiliate for CreativeCommons Syria.[19] Since March 15, 2012 he has been detained by the Syrian government in Damascus at Adra Prison.

CriticismAll current CC licenses (except the CC0 Public Domain Dedication tool) require attribution, which can be inconvenient for works based onmultiple other works.[20] Critics feared that Creative Commons could erode the copyright system over time[21] or allow "some of our mostprecious resources — the creativity of individuals — to be simply tossed into the commons to be exploited by whomever has spare time and amagic marker."[22]

Critics also worried that the lack of rewards for content producers will dissuade artists from publishing their work, and questioned whetherCreative Commons is the commons that it purports to be.[23]

Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig countered that copyright laws have not always offered the strong and seemingly indefiniteprotection that today's law provides. Rather, the duration of copyright used to be limited to much shorter terms of years, and some works nevergained protection because they did not follow the now-abandoned compulsory format.[24]

The maintainers of Debian, a GNU and Linux distribution known for its rigid adherence to a particular definition of software freedom,[25]

rejected the Creative Commons Attribution License prior to version 3 as incompatible with the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) dueto the license's anti-DRM provisions (which might, due to ambiguity, be covering more than DRM) and its requirement that downstream usersremove an author's credit upon request from the author.[26] Version 3.0 of the Creative Commons licenses addressed these concerns[27] and isconsidered to be compatible with the DFSG.[28]

License proliferation and incompatibility

Mako Hill asserted that Creative Commons fails to establish a "base level of freedom" that all Creative Commons licenses must meet, and withwhich all licensors and users must comply. "By failing to take any firm ethical position and draw any line in the sand, CC is a missedopportunity.... CC has replaced what could have been a call for a world where 'essential rights are unreservable' with the relatively hollow callfor 'some rights reserved.' " He also argued that Creative Commons worsens license proliferation, by providing multiple licenses that areincompatible.[29]

The Creative Commons website states, "Since each of the six CC licenses functions differently, resources placed under different licenses maynot necessarily be combined with one another without violating the license terms."[30] Works licensed under incompatible licenses may not berecombined in a derivative work without obtaining permission from the copyright owner.[31][32][33]

Richard Stallman of the FSF stated in 2005 that he couldn’t support Creative Commons as an activity because "it adopted some additionallicenses which do not give everyone that minimum freedom", that freedom being "the freedom to share, noncommercially, any publishedwork".[34] Those licenses have since been "retired" by Creative Commons.

License misuse

Creative Commons is only a service provider for standardized license text, not a party in any agreement. Abusive users can brand thecopyrighted works of legitimate copyright holders with Creative Commons licenses and re-upload these works to the internet. No centraldatabase of Creative Commons works is controlling all licensed works and the responsibility of the Creative Commons system rests entirelywith those using the licences.[35] This situation is, however, not specific to Creative Commons. All copyright owners must individually defendtheir rights and no central database of copyrighted works or existing license agreements exists. The United States Copyright Office does keep adatabase of all works registered with it, but absence of registration does not imply absence of copyright.

Creative Commons guiding thecontributors. This image is aderivative work of Liberty Leadingthe People by Eugène Delacroix.

Although Creative Commons offers multiple licenses for different uses, some critics suggested that the licenses still do not address thedifferences among the media or among the various concerns that different authors have.[23]

Lessig wrote that the point of Creative Commons is to provide a middle ground between two extreme views of copyright protection—onedemanding that all rights be controlled, and the other arguing that none should be controlled. Creative Commons provides a third option thatallows authors to pick and choose which rights they want to control and which they want to grant to others. The multitude of licenses reflectsthe multitude of rights that can be passed on to subsequent creators.[24]

Criticism of the non-commercial license

Erik Möller raised concerns about the use of Creative Commons' non-commercial license. Worksdistributed under the Creative Commons Non-Commercial license are not compatible with many open-content sites, including Wikipedia, which explicitly allow and encourage some commercial uses. Möllerexplained that "the people who are likely to be hurt by an -NC license are not large corporations, butsmall publications like weblogs, advertising-funded radio stations, or local newspapers."[36]

Lessig responded that the current copyright regime also harms compatibility and that authors can lessenthis incompatibility by choosing the least restrictive license.[37] Additionally, the non-commerciallicense is useful for preventing someone else from capitalizing on an author's work when the author stillplans to do so in the future.[37][38] The non-commercial licenses have also been criticized for being toovague about which uses count as "commercial" and "non-commercial".[39][40]

See also

References

Free culture movementOpen accessOpen contentOpen source

1. "Frequently Asked Questions" (http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ). Creative Commons. Retrieved 20 December 2011.

1. "Frequently Asked Questions" (http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ). Creative Commons. Retrieved 20 December 2011.2. "Wikimedia Foundation Terms of Use" (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use). Retrieved June 11, 2012.3. "Creative Commons: History" (http://creativecommons.org/about/history). Retrieved 2011-10-09.4. Plotkin, Hal (2002-2-11) (11 February 2002). "All Hail Creative Commons Stanford professor and author Lawrence Lessig plans a legal insurrection"

(http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2002/02/11/creatcom.DTL). SFGate.com. Retrieved 2011-03-08.5. "History of Creative Commons" (http://creativecommons.org/about/history/). Retrieved 2009-11-08.6. Haughey, Matt (2002-09-18). "Creative Commons Announces New Management Team" (http://creativecommons.org/press-releases/entry/3483).

creativecommons.org. Retrieved 2013-05-07.7. Lessig, Lawrence (2013-01-12). "Remembering Aaron Swartz" (http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/36298). creativecommons.org. Retrieved

2013-05-07.8. "State of the Commons" (https://stateof.creativecommons.org/report/). Retrieved 2015-03-15.9. "Explore Creative Commons" (https://www.flickr.com/creativecommons). Flickr. Retrieved 15 March 2015.

10. Broussard, Sharee L. (September 2007). "The copyleft movement: creative commons licensing"(http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_7081/is_3_26/ai_n28457434?tag=content;col1). Communication Research Trends.

11. Berry, David (15 July 2005). "On the "Creative Commons": a critique of the commons without commonalty"(http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/commons_without_commonality/). Free Software Magazine. Retrieved 20 December 2011.

12. Lessig, Lawrence (2004). Free Culture (http://www.free-culture.cc/freeculture.pdf) (PDF). New York: Penguin Press. p. 8. ISBN 1-59420-006-8.13. Ermert, Monika (2004-06-15). "Germany debuts Creative Commons" (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/15/german_creative_commons/). The

Register.14. Lessig, Lawrence (2006). "Lawrence Lessig on Creative Commons and the Remix Culture"

(https://web.archive.org/web/20080205034639/http://talk.talis.com/archives/2006/01/lawrence_lessig.html) (mp3). Talking with Talis. Archived fromthe original (http://talk.talis.com/archives/2006/01/lawrence_lessig.html) on 2008-02-05. Retrieved 2006-04-07.

15. "Board of Directors - Creative Commons" (http://creativecommons.org/board). Creative Commons. Retrieved 2015-03-10.16. "CC Affiliate Network" (https://wiki.creativecommons.org/CC_Affiliate_Network). Creative Commons. Retrieved 15 March 2015.17. "Creative Commons Korea" (http://www.cckorea.org/xe/?mid=main). CCkorea.org. Retrieved 20 December 2011.18. "CC Asia Conference 2010" (http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CC_Asia_Conference_2010). Creative Commons. 21 July 2010. Retrieved 20 December

2011.19. "Syria" (http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Syria).20. Paley, Nina (2010-03-04). "The Limits of Attribution" (http://blog.ninapaley.com/2010/03/04/the-limits-of-attribution/). Nina Paley's Blog. Retrieved

2013-01-30.21. John Dvorak (July 2005). "Creative Commons Humbug" (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1838244,00.asp). PC Magazine22. Schaeffer, Maritza (2009). "Note and Comment: Contemporary Issues in the Visual Art World: How Useful are Creative Commons Licenses?"

(http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_7081/is_3_26/ai_n28457434?tag=content;col1). Journal of Law and Policy.23. Elkin-Koren, Niva (2006). "Exploring Creative Commons: A Skeptical View of a Worthy Pursuit" (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?

abstract_id=885466). The Future of the Public Domain (P. Bernt Hugenholtz and Lucie Guibault, eds.).24. Lessig, Lawrence (2004). "The Creative Commons". 65 Mont. L. Rev. 1.25. "Debian Social Contract" (http://www.debian.org/social_contract). Debian. 2004-04-26. Retrieved 2013-11-26.26. Evan Prodromou (3 April 2005). "Summary of Creative Commons 2.0 Licenses" (http://evan.prodromou.name/ccsummary/ccsummary.html). debian-

legal (mailing list).27. Garlick, Mia (2007-02-23). "Version 3.0 Launched" (http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7249). Creative Commons. Retrieved 2007-07-05.28. "The DFSG and Software Licenses - Creative Commons Share-Alike (CC-SA) v3.0" (https://wiki.debian.org/DFSGLicenses#CreativeCommonsShare-

Alike.28CC-SA.29v3.0). Debian Wiki. Retrieved 2009-03-16.29. Benjamin Mako Hill (29 July 2005). "Towards a Standard of Freedom: Creative Commons and the Free Software Movement"

(http://mako.cc/writing/toward_a_standard_of_freedom.html).30. "CC Learn Explanations: Remixing OER: A guide to License Compatibility" (http://learn.creativecommons.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/cclearn-

explanations-cc-license-compatability.pdf). Creative Commons CC Learn. Retrieved 29 November 201031. "Can I combine two different Creative Commons licensed works? Can I combine a Creative Commons licensed work with another non-CC licensed

work?"(http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ#Can_I_combine_two_different_Creative_Commons_licensed_works.3F_Can_I_combine_a_Creative_Commons_licensed_work_with_another_non-CC_licensed_work.3F). FAQ. Creative Commons. Retrieved 16 September 2009.

32. "Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 Unported" (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/). Creative Commons. Retrieved18 November 2009.

33. "Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 Unported" (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/). Creative Commons. Retrieved18 November 2009.

34. Stallman, Richard M. "Fireworks in Montreal" (http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/entry-20050920.html). FSF Blogs. Retrieved 18 November 2009.35. Orlowski, Andrew (July 2009). "The Tragedy of the Creative Commons" (http://andreworlowski.com/2009/07/16/the-tragedy-of-the-creative-

commons/).36. Erik Moeller (2006). "The Case for Free Use: Reasons Not to Use a Creative Commons -NC License" (http://www.technologyreview.com/InfoTech-

Software/wtr_16073,300,p1.html). Open Source Jahrbuch.37. Lessig, Lawrence (2005). "CC in Review: Lawrence Lessig on Important Freedoms" (http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5719). Creative

Commons.38. "On Free, and the Differences between Culture and Code" (https://sites.google.com/site/hmdmhdfmhdjmzdtjmzdtzktdkztdjz/commons) (video). 23C3

Who can you trust?. 2006. google video docid=7661663613180520595. Retrieved 2014-02-07.39. Gordon Haff (2007-11-26). "Does the Noncommercial Creative Commons license make sense?" (http://www.cnet.com/news/does-the-noncommercial-

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External links

Official website (https://creativecommons.org/)Creative Commons wiki (https://wiki.creativecommons.org/)Creative Commons Videos with subtitles (https://wiki.creativecommons.org/Videos)Short Flash animation describing Creative Commons (http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Creative_Commons&oldid=655815411"

Categories: Creative Commons Computer law organizations Copyleft Copyright law organizations Free musicIntellectual property organizations Organizations established in 2001 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations

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