Tuesday, December 1, 2009

What is Creative Commons?


















Lawrence Lessig founded the Creative Commons in 2001 in response to the shrinking public domain. The Creative Commons is a modified set of free copyright licenses that which allow the copyright holder to share their work while still retaining some control over how it is used.

The idea behind the Creative Commons is to allow people to change their copyright licenses from “all rights reserved” to “some rights reserved.” This is not an alternative to copyright. It is meant to work in conjunction with copyright so that people can remix and share their ideas without fear that they will be exploited for doing so.


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Their are 4 types of Creative Commons Licenses that can be applied to your work:

  1. Attribution. You let people copy, distribute, display, perform, and remix your copyrighted work, as long as they give you credit the way you request. All CC licenses contain this property.
  2. NonCommercial. You let people copy, distribute, display, perform, and remix your work for non-commercial purposes only. If they want to use your work for commercial purposes, they must contact you for permission.
  3. NoDerivatives. You let people copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work — not make derivative works based on it. If they want to alter, transform, build upon, or remix your work, they must contact you for permission.
  4. ShareAlike*. You let people create remixes and derivative works based on your creative work, as long as they only distribute them under the same Creative Commons license that your original work was published under.




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There are three major advantages to using the Creative Commons:

  • Protection: Allows you to share work without losing your rights to it.
  • Noncommercial: Allows other people to share your work for non-commercial purposes.
  • Non Exclusive: Allowing you to have multiple licenses open with multiple parties. Allowing you to share your work with some for free and/or license it for money to others
  • ShareAlike* Lock: The ShareAlike license locks derivative works into using the same license.

There are several major cons to the Creative Commons licenses:
  • Moral Rights: Unlike a standard copyright license creative commons does not allow you to object to the derogatory treatment of your work in derivative works.
  • Non-Revocable: While creative commons licenses can be changed at any time, once the work is acquired under a creative commons license it cannot be re-licensed. Although creative commons license cannot be revoked they can be changed to prevent future use.
source: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ


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