Creative Commons
Founded in 2001, Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization which aims to facilitate the legal sharing of creative works. To this end the organization provides a number of copyright license options to the public, free of charge. These licenses allow copyright holders to define conditions under which others may use a work and to specify what types of use are acceptable. Terms of use have traditionally been negotiated on an individual basis between copyright holder and potential licensee. Therefore, a general CC license outlining which rights the copyright holder is willing to waive enables the general public to use such works more freely. Four general types of CC licenses are available. These are based upon copyright holder stipulations such as whether he or she is willing to allow modifications to the work, whether he or she permits the creation of derivative works and whether he or she is willing to permit commercial use of the work. Individuals may register for a CC license via the Creative Commons website. As of 2009 approximately 130 million individuals had received such licenses.
Read more about this topic: Copyright, Transfer and Licensing, and Assignment
Famous quotes containing the words creative and/or commons:
“We must be physicists in order ... to be creative since so far codes of values and ideals have been constructed in ignorance of physics or even in contradiction to physics.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“[I]n Great-Britain it is said that their constitution relies on the house of commons for honesty, and the lords for wisdom; which would be a rational reliance if honesty were to be bought with money, and if wisdom were hereditary.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)