Creative Commons

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[edit] What is Creative Commons?

Creative Commons (CC) official home page gives the creators of intellectual property - such as authors, musicians, podcasters, scientists, artists, software developers and educators - a framework and philosophy for marking their creative output with the sharing rights they choose and want it to carry. Any owner of a creative work can use CC to change copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved."

"Too often the debate over creative control tends to the extremes. At one pole is a vision of total control — a world in which every last use of a work is regulated and in which all rights reserved (and then some) is the norm," say Creative Commons. "At the other end is a vision of anarchy — a world in which creators enjoy a wide range of freedom but are left vulnerable to exploitation. Balance, compromise, and moderation — once the driving forces of a copyright system that valued innovation and protection equally — have become endangered species."

Creative Commons is working to revive these values and uses "private rights to create public goods: creative works set free for certain uses".

[edit] How does Creative Commons work?

Creative Commons helps those who share their creative works with a system that works within the spectrum of possibilities between full copyright ("all rights reserved")and the public domain ("no rights reserved"). Their licenses help maintain the copyright of producers of creative works whilst at the same time allowing and even inviting certain uses of the work i.e. — a “some rights reserved” copyright system. Each licence is defined by a formal declaration of terms example licence with terms and has a logo system (see below).

CC3.0 licence logo

[edit] Types of Creative Commons licence

With a Creative Commons licence, the owner of the work keeps their copyright but allows people to copy and distribute the work provided they give attribution or credit and within specified conditions regarding ammendment and commercial exploitation.

traydio for example, uses the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported Licence see the licence This licence allows unlimited sharing of traydio's audio files, but asks that downloaders attribute the creator and/or owner; that they do not alter the work; or exploit it commercially.

[edit] What are "Commoners"?

Commoners are the community who use Creative Commons licencing i.e. that use CC to share their work

[edit] Who runs Creative Commons?

Creative Commons is a Massachusetts-chartered tax-exempt charitable corporation.