Creative Commons has a simple motto: “Share, reuse, and remix — legally.” We have a seperate assignment on Lawrence Lessig. If you would like to report specifically on the founder of Creative Commons, go here.
The nonprofit’s Web site sums up its mission this way:
Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved."
In 2002 Wired magazine explained how it all began.
Less than five years ago, Disney's copyright on Mickey Mouse was set to expire.
But rather than let Mickey go free and enter the public domain, Disney campaigned with other Hollywood studios and major record labels to press Congress to pass…a law that extended copyright protection for another 20 years.
But recent copyright extension laws such as the CTEA [that's, no joke, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act] are too restrictive, leaving fewer creative works in the public domain, critics say.
That's why a group of legal scholars and Web publishers are launching a nonprofit intellectual property conservancy to help artists, writers, musicians and scientists share their intellectual works with the public on generous terms.
The Creative Commons website explains what exactly they created, and how it works:
A Creative Commons license is based on copyright… The kinds of works that are protected by copyright law are books, websites, blogs, photographs, films, videos, songs and other audio & visual recordings, for example…
Creative Commons licenses give you the ability to dictate how others may exercise your copyright rights—such as the right of others to copy your work, make derivative works or adaptations of your work, to distribute your work and/or make money from your work…
"Right now there's no easy way for copyright holders to allow certain uses of their work while retaining their copyright," Glenn Otis Brown, Creative Commons' executive director, told Wired. "Our licenses are a best-of-both-worlds way to keep your copyright while sharing to the extent you want to."
