What is Creative Commons?

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that develops copyright licenses and other tools used by individuals, nonprofits, governments, and companies to encourage sharing and innovation. Our free tools provide a simple, standardized way for creators to keep their copyright while allowing certain uses of their work a some rights reserved approach to copyright. CC licenses incorporate a unique and innovative three-layer design, with a traditional legal tool (Legal Code), a human readable deed (Commons Deed), and a machine readable format that describes license information in a way search engines and other kinds of technology can understand. Creative Common licenses and tools are already in use by educators, schools, content platforms, and publishers. Our licenses make textbooks and lesson plans easy to find, easy to share, and easy to customize and combine helping to realize the full benefits of digitally enabled education.

About
Our vision is nothing less than realizing the full potential of the Internet universal access to research and education, full participation in culture to drive a new era of development, growth, and productivity. Why CC?
The idea of universal access to research, education, and culture is made possible by the Internet, but our legal and social systems dont always allow that idea to be realized. Copyright was created long before the emergence of the Internet, and can make it hard to legally perform actions we take for granted on the network: copy, paste, edit source, and post to the Web. The default setting of copyright law requires all of these actions to have explicit permission, granted in advance, whether youre an artist, teacher, scientist, librarian, policymaker, or just a regular user. To achieve the vision of universal access, someone needed to provide a free, public, and standardized infrastructure that creates a balance between the reality of the Internet and the reality of copyright laws. That someone is Creative Commons.

Our mission Creative Commons develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation. What we provide
The infrastructure we provide consists of a set of copyright licenses and tools that create a balance inside the traditional all rights reserved setting that copyright law creates. Our tools give everyone from individual creators to large companies and institutions a simple, standardized way to keep their copyright while allowing certain uses of their work a some rights reserved approach to copyright which makes their creative, educational, and scientific content instantly more compatible with the full potential of the internet. The combination of our tools and our users is a vast and growing digital commons, a pool of content that can be copied, distributed, edited, remixed, and built upon, all within the boundaries of copyright law. Weve worked with copyright experts around the world to make sure our licenses are legally solid, globally applicable, and responsive to our users needs. If youd like to see what kinds of companies and organizations are using Creative Commons licenses to realize the full potential of the Internet, visit our Who Uses CC? page. For those creators wishing to opt out of copyright altogether, and to maximize the interoperability of data, Creative Commons provides tools that allow work to be placed as squarely as possible in the public domain.

Where were going

We build infrastructure at Creative Commons. Our users build the commons itself. We are working to increase the adoption of our tools, to support and listen to our users, and to serve as a trusted steward of interoperable commons infrastructure.

Your support
In order to achieve the vision of an Internet full of open content, where users are participants in innovative culture, education, and science, we depend on the backing of our users and those who believe in the potential of the Internet. We are alive and thriving thanks to the generous support of people like you. Spread the word about CC to your friends and family, and donate to help maintain Creative Commons as a robust, longlived, and stable organization.
Creative Commons is a Massachusetts-chartered 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charitable corporation. For more information, see the corporate charter, by-laws, most recent tax return and most recent audited financial statement.

History
Founding
Founded in 2001 with the generous support of the Center for the Public Domain, CC is led by a Board of Directors comprised of thought leaders, education experts, technologists, legal scholars, investors, entrepreneurs and philanthropists.

Creative Commons licenses

In December 2002, Creative Commons released its first set of copyright licenses for free to the public. Creative Commons developed its licenses inspired in part by the Free Software Foundations GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) alongside a Web application platform to help you license your works freely for certain uses, on certain conditions; or dedicate your works to the public domain. In the years following the initial release, Creative Commons and its licenses have grown at an exponential rate around the world. The licenses have been further improved, and ported to over 50 jurisdictions.

Science
Since 2005, Creative Commons has undertaken projects to build commons-based infrastructure for science through identifying and lowering unnecessary barriers to research, crafting policy guidelines and legal agreements, and developing technology to make research, data and materials easier to find and use.

Education
Creative Commons also works to minimize legal, technical, and social barriers to sharing and reuse of educational materials, with dedicated projects in this field since starting in 2007.

Global infrastructure for sharing

Creative Commons licenses, public domain tools, and supporting technologies have become the global standard for sharing across culture, education, government, science, and more.

2001

Creative Commons founded.

2002

Version 1.0 licenses released.

2003

Approximately 1 million licenses in use.

2004

Estimated 4.7 million licensed works by the end of the year. Version 2.0 released.

2005

Estimated 20 million works. Version 2.5 released. Science projects at Creative Commons launched.

2006

Estimated 50 million licensed works.

2007

Estimated 90 million licensed works. Version 3.0 released. 5th birthday of CC licenses. Event featured performance by Gilberto Gil. Education projects launch.

2008

Estimated 130 million CC licensed works. Lawrence Lessig steps down as CEO, replaced by Joi Ito. New Nine Inch Nails album released under CC. CC launches fundraising campaign with support from Jesse Dylan and Jonathan Coulton.

2009

Estimated 350 million CC licensed works. CC0 launched. Wikipedia migrates to CC Attribution-ShareAlike as its main content license.

About The Licenses

What our licenses do
The Creative Commons copyright licenses and tools forge a balance inside the traditional all rights reserved setting that copyright law creates. Our tools give everyone from individual creators to large companies and institutions a simple, standardized way to grant copyright permissions to their creative work. The combination of our tools and our users is a vast and growing digital commons, a pool of content that can be copied, distributed, edited, remixed, and built upon, all within the boundaries of copyright law.