Creative+Commons

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//"////We use private rights to create public goods: creative works set free for certain uses... We work to offer creators a best-of-both-worlds way to protect their works while encouraging certain uses of them — to declare 'some rights reserved'.////"// ("About Us")

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that provides copyright licenses primarily for digital works. Their flexible licenses allow a balance of control over creative works, between the polar opposites of total control ("all rights reserved") and public domain ("no rights reserved"). These licenses allow artists, authors and educators to make their creations free for certain uses and restricted for others, depending on the creator's preference. ("About Us")

=History=

Creative Commons was founded in 2001 by Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Stanford University. It was inspired by the Free Software Foundation's GNU General Public License (GNU GPL), allowing people to license their works under public domain while at the same time retaining their copyright for certain uses. While the GNU GPL was designed primarily for software and programming code, Creative Commons licenses were designed to accommodate other types of creative works, such as websites, graphics, photography, music, movies, literature, etc ("Creative Commons").

The initial set of Creative Commons licenses were released on December 16, 2002. The non-localized set of licenses was written based on the United States legal system. In an attempt to minimize complications with other legal systems, the [|International Commons] project was launched to localize and adopt jurisdiction-specific licenses. Licenses have already been developed for 26 countries, with those for another 21 countries soon to be completed ("Creative Commons Worldwide").

Creative Commons is currently headquartered in San Francisco.

=Licenses=

License Types
Authors can mix and match the following types of licenses to suit their own needs ("Choosing a License").
 * **Attribution** - Allows users to copy, distribute and modify a work, provided that they credit the original author
 * **Noncommercial** - Allows users to copy, distribute and modify a work for non-commercial purposes only. For commercial use, the user must receive permission from the author before they can use their work.
 * **No Derivative Works** - Allows users to copy and distribute a work, but not modify it.
 * **Share Alike** - Allows users to modify a work only if they distribute the modified work under an identical license as the original work. The Share Alike license cannot be combined with the No Derivative Works license.

Generated Licenses
Upon selecting the desired attributes, a customized license is generated for the author in three different formats ("Choosing a License").
 * **Common Deed** - An overview of the license in plain language. The common deed is easy to understand and plainly illustrates the conditions a work can be used.
 * **Legal Code** - The full license using legal terminology. The legal code is primarily used to uphold licenses in court.
 * **Digital Code** - XML metadata used by search engines and other applications to determine how a work can be used. This allows users to easily search for works that fit a certain criteria, such as those that can be used for non-commercial purposes.

=Works and Projects Using Creative Commons Licenses=

Wikispaces
Wikispaces utilizes an [|Attribution Share-Alike Creative Commons license]. This states that the content created on a Wikispaces wiki may be copied, modified and distributed provided that credit is given to the original author, as per the attribution license. It also states that any derivation of works found on Wikispaces wiki must be distributed under the same Attribution Share-Alike license.

Free Culture
An example of a book that has some rights protected under a Creative Commons license is __Free Culture__ by Lawrence Lessig (available at http://www.free-culture.cc/freecontent/). Lessig's idea of a "free culture" is one where creators and innovators rights are supported. The book is largely related to copyright protection issues, and the way the law works to protect commercial and non commercial culture.

=Criticisms=

Some criticisms have spurred in response to the Creative Commons license system. One such criticism is that Creative Commons is unnecessary. Copyright grants a set of rights to the author upon creation of a work. Since the author has exclusive rights to this work, they have the option of keeping and selling certain rights. As such, Creative Commons is merely a reinterpretation of traditional copyright itself (Tóth).

Another criticism is the mandate for only non-commercial usage of a work. It is a concept that is difficult to control, since a user can easily hide profits made from using a Creative Commons licensed work. It is also difficult to force people to pay for usage of a work when it is already widely distributed in the public domain (Dvorak).

=Works Cited=

"About Us | Creative Commons." n.d. __Creative Commons__. 21 Feb 2006 .

"Creative Commons." 26 Feb 2006. __Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia__. 26 Feb 2006 .

"Creative Commons Worldwide | Creative Commons." n.d. __Creative Commons__. 26 Feb 2006 .

Dvorak, John. "Creative Commons Humbug." __PC Magazine__. 18 Jul 2005. Ziff Davis Publishing Holdings Inc. 26 Feb 2006 .

Tóth, Péter Benjamin. "Personal feelings about the Creative Commons licenses." INDICARE Monitor Vol. 2, No. 4 (2005). 26 Feb 2006 .

=External Links=

[|Creative Commons] [|Creative Commons - A Spectrum of Rights (comic)] [|Creative Commons - How It Works (comic)]