How is Creative Commons useful? What is the impact of Creative Commons?

CC licenses create a balance inside the CC’s licenses and public domain tools are used
! traditional “all rights reserved” copyright regime,
What is Creative Commons? by individuals, cultural, educational, scientific and
https://creativecommons.org and help lower the transaction costs normally research institutions, governments, and
associated with seeking permission to use companies worldwide. There are more than 400
Creative Commons (CC) is a 501(c)(3) works by granting some rights in advance. CC million CC-licensed works published on the Web.
nonprofit corporation that develops, supports, supports access to knowledge by advancing an Creative Commons has worked with copyright
and stewards legal and technical infrastructure opt-in, flexible approach to licensing creative experts around the world to make sure its
that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and content. licenses are legally sound, operable worldwide,
innovation. and responsive to the needs of users. CC tools
are increasingly of interest to policymakers in
Creative Commons is pleased to participate as those areas where access to quality educational,
a formal observer to WIPO, and has been scientific, and cultural materials has been less
mentioned in several WIPO forums already, than optimal.
including the WIPO Committee on Development
and IP (CDIP) 4th Session (November 2009)
and 5th Session (April 2010), as well as the
Enabling Creativity in the Digital Environment:
Copyright Documentation and Infrastructure
conference (October 2011).

What does Creative Commons provide?

Creative Commons offers a suite of free

copyright licenses that give creators a simple,
standardized way to retain their copyright while
allowing certain uses of their work — a “some !
rights reserved” approach to copyright. CC is the global standard for open content
licensing. CC licenses and tools are easy to
CC licenses apply to works that are protected !
understand and use, implementing a “3 layer”
by copyright law. The kinds of works that are framework that consists of 1) a deed that • 30 national governments employ CC tools to
protected by copyright law include books, simplifies the terms of each license into a few clarify how their citizens and persons around
websites, blogs, photographs, films, videos, universal icons and non-technical language, the world can reuse government-funded data,
songs, and other audio & visual recordings. 2) a license text, which has been vetted by a official reports and media, research, and
global team of legal experts, and 3) machine- educational resources. By communicating these
CC public domain tools, on the other hand, readable code that enables search and rights to users in advance, governments
enable authors and copyright owners who want discovery via search engines such as Google. support the efficient use of resources and
to dedicate their works to the worldwide public
encourage further innovation and creativity.
domain to do so, and facilitate the labeling and
discovery of works that are already free of
known copyright restrictions.
What is the impact of CC? (cont.) Creative Commons Licenses Creative Commons Affiliate Network
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CC_Affiliate_Network
• The CC0 public domain dedication is used to Attribution (CC BY)
This license grants the public permission to reproduce,
remove copyright restrictions from data sets distribute, and build upon the licensed work, including The CC Affiliate Network consists of 100+
used to conduct research to combat for commercial purposes, as long as the rights holder is affiliates working in over 70 jurisdictions to
diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis. given credit for the original work. support and promote CC activities around the
Releasing data sets directly into the public world.
Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA)
domain via CC0 facilitates widespread use of This license grants the public permission to reproduce,
that data by scientists around the world to distribute, and build upon the licensed work, including
develop vaccines and other treatments. for commercial purposes, as long as the rights holder is
given credit for the original work and any new works are
released under identical terms.
• CC licenses provide the underlying
infrastructure that supports sharing and reuse Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC)
of hundreds of thousands of Open This license grants the public permission to reproduce,
distribute, and build upon the licensed work for non-
Educational Resources, from interactive commercial purposes only, as long as the rights holder
learning objects to high quality videos to is given credit for the original work
complete courses. CC licensed educational
content can be easily discovered online, so Attribution-NoDerivatives (CC BY-ND)
teachers, students, and self-learners have This license grants the public permission to reproduce
and distribute the licensed work in its original form only.
easy access to resources they can reuse,
revise, remix, and redistribute.
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
(CC BY-NC-SA)
• The CC-powered Public Domain Mark will be This license grants the public permission to reproduce,
used to label millions of out-of-copyright distribute, and build upon the licensed work for non-
commercial purposes, as long as the rights holder is
works shared via Europeana, allowing users
given credit for the original work and any new works are
around the world to discover a rich trove of released under identical terms.
literature, art, and cultural public domain
works free of copyright restrictions. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
(CC BY-NC-ND)
This license grants the public permission to reproduce
• CC serves the needs of open access and distribute the licensed work in its original form and
publishing around the world. Individuals and for non-commercial purposes only.
open access journals use CC licensing to
release thousands of scholarly articles. CC Creative Commons Public Domain Tools
licensing makes this literature more http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/
accessible and useful by communicating
usage rights in advance, and sets up the CC0 Public Domain Dedication
conditions to enable important breakthroughs CC0 enables owners of copyright-protected content to
in science, medicine, and technology. waive copyright interests in their works and thereby
place them as close as possible to the public domain.

Public Domain Mark

Public Domain Mark (PDM) is a tool that allows works
already in the public domain to be marked and tagged in
a way that clearly communicates the work’s public
domain status, and allows it to be easily discovered.