Creative Commons


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Creative Commons
Creative Commons logo
Founders Lawrence Lessig
Type Non-profit organization
Founded 2001
Headquarters San Francisco, California
 United States
Focus Expansion of "reasonable", flexible copyright
Method Creative Commons licenses
Website http://creativecommons.org/

Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share.[1] The organization has released several copyright licenses known as Creative Commons licenses. These licenses allow creators to communicate which rights they reserve, and which rights they waive for the benefit of other creators.

David Berry and Giles Moss have credited Creative Commons with generating interest in the issue of intellectual property and contributing to the re-thinking of the role of the “commons” in the “information age”. Beyond that Creative Commons has provided "institutional, practical and legal support for individuals and groups wishing to experiment and communicate with culture more freely".[2]

Contents

Aim

Creative Commons Japan Seminar, Tokyo 2007

The Creative Commons licenses enable copyright holders to grant some or all of their rights to the public while retaining others through a variety of licensing and contract schemes including dedication to the public domain or open content licensing terms. The intention is to avoid the problems current copyright laws create for the sharing of information.

The project provides several free licenses that copyright owners can use when releasing their works on the Web. It also provides RDF/XML metadata that describes the license and the work, making it easier to automatically process and locate licensed works. Creative Commons also provides a "Founders' Copyright"[3] contract, intended to re-create the effects of the original U.S. Copyright created by the founders of the U.S. Constitution.

All these efforts, and more, are done to counter the effects of what Creative Commons considers to be a dominant and increasingly restrictive permission culture. In the words of Lawrence Lessig, founder of Creative Commons and former Chairman of the Board, it is "a culture in which creators get to create only with the permission of the powerful, or of creators from the past".[4] Lessig maintains that modern culture is dominated by traditional content distributors in order to maintain and strengthen their monopolies on cultural products such as popular music and popular cinema, and that Creative Commons can provide alternatives to these restrictions.[5][6]

Creative Commons governance

The current CEO of Creative Commons is Joi Ito. Mike Linksvayer is vice president, John Wilbanks is Executive Director of Science Commons, and Ahrash Bissell is the Executive Director of ccLearn.

Board

The current Creative Commons Board includes: Hal Abelson, James Boyle (Chair), Michael W. Carroll, Davis Guggenheim, Joi Ito, Lawrence Lessig, Laurie Racine, Eric Saltzman, Molly Shaffer Van Houweling, Jimmy Wales, and Esther Wojcicki.[7]

Technical Advisory Board

The Technical Advisory Board includes five members. These are: Hal Abelson, Ben Adida, Barbara Fox, Don McGovern and Eric Miller. Hal Abelson also serves on the Creative Commons Board.[7]

Audit Committee

Creative Commons also has an Audit Committee, with two members. These are: Molly Shaffer Van Houweling and Lawrence Lessig. Both serve on the Creative Commons Board.[7]

Types of Creative Commons Licenses

Main article: Creative Commons licenses

The following describes each of the six main licenses offered when you choose to publish your work with creative commons license.

Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd) This license is the most restrictive of the six main licenses, allowing redistribution. This license is often called the “free advertising” license because it allows others to download your works and share them with others as long as they mention you and link back to you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.

Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike (by-nc-sa) This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. Others can download and redistribute your work just like the by-nc-nd license, but they can also translate, make remixes, and produce new stories based on your work. All new work based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also be non-commercial in nature.

Attribution Non-commercial (by-nc) This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

Attribution No Derivatives (by-nd) This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.

Attribution Share Alike (by-sa) This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use.

Attribution (by) This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered, in terms of what others can do with your works licensed under Attribution.

Legal test case

A Creative Commons license was first tested in court in early 2006, when podcaster Adam Curry sued a Dutch tabloid who published photos without permission from his Flickr page. The photos were licensed under the Creative Commons Non-Commercial license.

While the verdict was in favour of Curry, the tabloid avoided having to pay restitution to him as long as they did not repeat the offense. An analysis of the decision states, "The Dutch Court’s decision is especially noteworthy because it confirms that the conditions of a Creative Commons license automatically apply to the content licensed under it, and bind users of such content even without expressly agreeing to, or having knowledge of, the conditions of the license."[8]

Creative Commons International

Main article: Creative Commons International

The original non-localized Creative Commons licenses were written with the U.S. legal system in mind, so the wording could be incompatible within different local legislations and render the licenses unenforceable in various jurisdictions. To address this issue, Creative Commons International has started to port the various licenses to accommodate local copyright and private law. As of February 2008, there are 43 jurisdiction-specific licenses, with 8 other jurisdictions in drafting process, and more countries joining the worldwide project.[9]

Projects using Creative Commons licenses

List of projects using Creative Commons licenses Several million pages of web content use Creative Commons licenses. Common Content was set up by Jeff Kramer with cooperation from Creative Commons, and is currently maintained by volunteers.

Sampling of CC adoption scope

This list provides a short sampling of CC-licensed projects which convey the breadth and scope of Creative Commons adoption among prominent institutions and publication modes.

Criticism

In 2005 David Berry and Giles Moss wrote that "questions remain about the Creative Commons project’s aims and intentions and the vision of free culture that it offers. These questions become all the more significant as the Creative Commons develops into a more influential and voluble “representative” and public face for libre culture."[10] Commentators have questioned the role that Creative Commons plays as an unconcerned corporate filter: "When one examines closely just exactly what sort of 'freedom' is ultimately to be had within these licenses, one is quick to discover that they are primarily set up as tools meant to feed directly into corporate co-option."[11] Matteo Pasquinelli (2008) describes two fronts of criticism: "those who claim the institution of a real commonality against Creative Commons restrictions (non-commercial, share-alike, etc.) and those who point out Creative Commons complicity with global capitalism". Pasquinelli specifically criticises Creative Commons for not establishing "productive commons".[12]

Critics have also argued that Creative Commons worsens license proliferation, by providing multiple licenses that are incompatible.[who?] Most notably 'attribution-sharealike' and 'attribution-noncommercial-sharealike' are incompatible, meaning that works under these licenses cannot be combined in a derivative work without obtaining permission from the license-holder.[13][14] Dvorak argues that Creative Commons licenses are "not needed" and take away "user rights".[citation needed] Pro-copyright commentators from within the content industry argue either that Creative Commons is not useful, or that it undermines copyright.[15]

Tools for discovering CC-licensed content

Audio and music

  • Electrobel Community - More than 10,000 electronic music songs released under one of the CC licences.
  • iRATE radio
  • Adrenalinic Sound - Italy
  • Gnomoradio
  • Starfrosch Community MP3 Blog with a huge Creative Commons Section
  • Dogmazic - Archive of free music based in France, one of the main actor of free music movement in Europe.
  • Pragmazic - open-music store launched by the dogmazic team.
  • Audiofarm - A community for helping people explore, share, and enjoy Creative Commons music from around the world.
  • Jamendo - An archive of music albums under Creative Commons licenses
  • Phlow - Magazine that picks Creative Commons music and music from the Netlabel Community on a daily basis
  • CCMixter - A Creative Commons Remix community site.
  • WYRR - A radio station that features Creative Commons music & allows listeners to download songs from its playlist.

Photos and images

See also

Footnotes

  1. ^ (Creative Commons FAQ)
  2. ^ Berry & Moss 2005
  3. ^ "Founder's Copyright". Creative Commons. Retrieved on 2006-04-07.
  4. ^ Lessig, Lawrence (2004). Free Culture (PDF), New York: Penguin Press, 8. 
  5. ^ Ermert, Monika (2004). "Germany debuts Creative Commons". Register 1: e9. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0000009, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/15/german_creative_commons/. 
  6. ^ Lessig, Lawrence (2006). "Lawrence Lessig on Creative Commons and the Remix Culture" (mp3). Talking with Talis. Retrieved on 2006-04-07.
  7. ^ a b c People - Creative Commons
  8. ^ "Creative Commons License Upheld by Dutch Court". Groklaw (2006-03-16). Retrieved on 2006-09-02.
  9. ^ project
  10. ^ Berry & Moss 2005
  11. ^ Martin Hardie and "Creative License Fetishism"
  12. ^ Pasquinelli, Matteo. "The ideology of Free Culture and the Grammar of Sabotage", Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2008
  13. ^ [1]
  14. ^ [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
  15. ^ Nimmer 2005 (need to find full details of ref)

References

External links

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