Creative+Commons


 * [|Website for creative commons] **

=**Copyright and The Creative Commons**= Most original works are assumed to be copyright protected with all rights reserved from the moment they are created. Unless original works or material are deemed to be in the public domain, the author’s permission must be obtained before their work can be copied, used or published. Obtaining such permission can be time consuming and expensive. Alternatively, the implications and penalties for copyright infringement can be at minimum, inconvenient for both the author and end user and at worst, harshly punitive.

With the advent of digital media and internet access to a bewildering variety of works, copyright protection has become an enormous challenge both for authors and users of their works, particularly with the increasing trend to use web sourced digital media as a basis or element for further creative work.

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization founded in 2001 to create a repository or “commons” for created works made available by their authors with “Some Rights Reserved.” Since it’s founding it has grown to include over 350 million licensed works including written material, images, motion picture, music as well as scientific, academic and educational content.

The Creative Commons licensing agreements don’t replace copyright protection but rather, allow authors to make their works available for further use with certain permissions. The result is ease of legitimate access to and use of the web’s rich offering of created material for a variety of end users including artists, students, teachers and researchers.

There are six licensing arrangements (all identified by an acronym and logo) available to providers of content to qualify the nature of their further use. In addition there are two options for dedicating works to the public domain should they qualify. While these licensing arrangements honor prevailing copyright laws and provide access they do not prevent participating parties from entering into specific agreements and terms for the use of original works.

The six licensing arrangements and their acronyms are as follows:

This is the base licensing arrangement that applies to all works on Creative Commons and requires that the authorship of the works are clearly acknowledged and credited. This license allows for the maximum dissemination of materials.
 * Attribution**
 * BY**

This license allows others to use and alter original works even for commercial use provided the original author is credited and that new work is licensed under the original author’s terms.
 * Attribution-Share Alike**
 * BY SA**

This license allows for the use and redistribution of published work even for commercial purposes provided the work is credited to the original author and is unchanged from it’s original state.
 * Attribution-No Derivatives**
 * BY ND**

This arrangement allows works to be altered and used commercially provided the original works are credited. Altered or derivative works do not have to be licensed under the same terms as the original works used.
 * Attribution-Non Commercial**
 * BY NC**

Published works can be altered or remixed but must be attributed to their author, cannot be used commercially and new work must be published under the same license as the original work used.
 * Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike**
 * BY NC SA**

This is the most restrictive license again requiring credit to the original work’s author, not allowing for commercial use or altering of original works.
 * Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives**
 * BY NC ND**

Creative Commons offers two designations for published works that make such works available in the public domain. The first designation allows authors, creators and owners of original works to place such work as completely as possible in the public domain for other’s unrestricted use. The second designation identifies works no longer restricted by copyright in a standardized way that allows such works to be easily discovered.
 * Public Domain**

The Creative Commons is a revolutionary and exciting web based repository for all manner of digitized original work made available for further use respectful of prevailing copyright law with “Some Rights Reserved.” This phenomenon allows for tremendous exposure for creators of original work and ease of access for others to build and contribute further creative content.
 * Summary**

The Creative Commons website provides detailed background on the organization’s history and background, clear explanation of licensing options and terms and ultimately, access to over 350 million licensed works; and it’s growing!

Watch any of the inventive and entertaining videos in the About Creative Commons menu on their website for an enlightening insight into this powerful web based resource!

This overview was developed entirely on information from the Creative Commons website.

Reference; http://creativecommons.org/