Creative Commons develops, supports, and stewards legal

and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity,

sharing, and innovation.

Nonprofit organizationFree copyright licenses

Founded in 2001Operate worldwide

The problem: traditional copyright

does not work well for sharing and free online

collaboration.

• It’s in the Constitution!

• “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”

• attaches when an “original work of authorship is fixed in a tangible medium of expression”

• applies to published/unpublished works; you get it automatically (no registration or marking required)

• in U.S., lasts for life of author + 70 years

• “bundle of rights” = reproduce, make derivative works, distribute, public performance

Features of copyright today

• You have to ask permission

• Copyright infringement can be expensive (in U.S. $750-$150,000/work infringed)

• Safety valves on exclusive rights of authors = exceptions and limitations to copyright

• Fair use

• Federal government works not protected

• Libraries, classroom teaching exception

Features of copyright today

• Public domain = not protected by copyright

• Copyright = “all rights reserved”; Public domain = “no rights reserved”

• Don’t have to ask permission!

• in U.S., stuff that was published before 1923

• Facts not protected

• copyrighted works rise into the public domain after copyright term expires or when author puts it there beforehand

Features of copyright today

FAST FWD

With the web,It’s so damn easy to share

But how to ask permission?

How to support those that just want to share?

CC’s solution: A simple, standardized, legally robust way to grant

copyright permissions to creative works (and data).

“Lowers transaction costs”

CC’s legal infrastructure: (1) Copyright Licenses and

(2)Public Domain Tools

(1) CC Copyright Licenses

CC licenses build on traditional copyright• CC works within the existing system by allowing

movement from “All Rights Reserved” to “Some Rights Reserved”

• CC improves copyright by giving creators a choice about which freedoms to grant and which rights to keep

• CC minimizes transaction costs by granting the public certain permissions beforehand.

All CC licenses are combinations of 4 elements:

Attribution

ShareAlike

NonCommercial

NoDerivatives

License Building Blocks

Public Domain Dedication

Licenses

http://creativecommons.org/choose/

Creative Commons License Chooser:

Anatomy of a CC License:

Human

Readable Deed

Lawyer

Readable Legal

Code

Lawyer

Readable Legal

Code

<span xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#"

xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">

<span rel="dc:type" href="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text" property="dc:title">My Photo</span> by

<a rel="cc:attributionURL"

property="cc:attributionName" href="http://joi.ito.com/my_photo">Joi Ito</a>

is licensed under a

<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License</a>.

<span rel="dc:source" href="http://fredbenenson.com/photo"/>

Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at <a rel="cc:morePermissions" href="http://ozmo.com/revenue_sharing_agreement">OZMO</a>.</

span>

</span>

Machine

Readable

Metadata

Important License Attributes • All are non-exclusive, irrevocable public licenses

• All require attribution

• All permit reuse for at least noncommercial purposes in unmodified form

• Do not contract away any user rights (exceptions/limitations)

• CC licensor enters into a separate license agreement with each user

Important License Attributes

• License runs with the work, recipient may not apply technological measures or conditions that limit another recipients rights under the license, e.g. no DRM

• No warranties

• License terminates immediately upon breach

• CC is not a party to the license

(2) Public Domain Tools

CC0 Public Domain Dedication(read “CC Zero”)

Universal waiver, permanently surrenders copyright and related rights, placing the work as nearly as possible into the public domain worldwide

CC Public Domain Mark

Not legally operative, but a label to be used by those with knowledge of a work already in the public domain

Only intended for use with works in the worldwide public domain

74 jurisdictions

Who uses Creative Commons?

Wikipedia: Over 77,000 contributors working on over 22 million articles in 285 languages

Open Educational Resources

Music

Journalism/Broadcast

Publishing

Europeana: 30M metadata items under CC0, 5 million digital object with PDM and 2.8 million digital objects under one of the CC licenses

 Free Access - Rig... (3042)  Restricted Access... (866)  CC BY-NC-SA (308)  Public Domain marked (188)  Unknown copyright... (144)  Paid Access - Rig... (83)  CC BY-NC (115)  CC BY (58)  CC BY-NC-ND (40)  CC BY-SA (15)  CC0 (1)

Filter by usage rights

Thank you very much! Questions? tvol@creativecommons.org

This work is dedicated to the public domain. https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/. Attribution is optional, but if desired, please attribute to Creative Commons. Some content such as screenshots may appear here under exceptions to copyright and trademark law such as fair use, and may not be covered by CC0.