Creative Commons

Encouraging the ecology of creativity

2007

This document is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0

creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
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I. Creative Commons’ Mission

Creative Commons’ mission is to enable the legal sharing

and reuse of cultural, educational, and scientific works.
To this end, we offer free and easy-to-use tools to creators
and the public to assist them in harnessing the creativity
that new technologies make possible — a read/write culture
in which we can engage with the content that surrounds
us, as distinct from a read–only culture in which we can only
passively receive content.
This paper provides a brief overview of what Creative
Commons offers, what we have achieved so far and
what we are working to achieve in the future.

II. The Problem Creative Commons Seeks To Address

Creative Commons was founded in 2001 to address the fol-

lowing problem — on the internet there’s no way to “use” a
work without simultaneously making a “copy.” This implicates
copyright law — the law that grants creators exclusive rights
to control certain activities in relation to their work.
Due to the nature of modern technologies, people are
connected in ways never before possible. Now the public can
distribute works in a variety of formats of a high, and often,
professional quality and can work collaboratively across
boundaries of time and space. In addition, digital technologies
offer new ways to create, share and remix new, derivative,
and collective works. All of these activities implicate the
exclusive rights of the copyright owner.
As a result (and, of course, subject to fair use), any digital or
online use of a work could be said to first require permission.
And it is this feature (or bug, depending upon your perspec-
tive) that Creative Commons was formed to address.
Creative Commons provides creators with a simple way
to say what freedoms they want their creative works to
carry— to say that they welcome people making some of the
uses of their work that new technologies make. This makes it
easy for others to share or build upon creative work. Creative
Commons makes it possible for creators to reserve some
rights while licensing others to the public, hence our mantra
‘some rights reserved,’ as opposed to the default
‘all rights reserved’ level of copyright protection that
requires you to ask permission first. In this way, Creative
Commons offers private voluntary tools for creators to adopt
to create a public good — a pool of cultural, educational, and
scientific content that can be legally and freely accessed,
used, and repurposed.

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 The Story of Alejandra

We invite you to consider the story of Alejandra — a hypothetical

modern day high school science teacher, blogger, and author.
She encompasses many of the Creative Commons success
stories (some of which are described in Section V).
To illustrate the impact that Creative Commons has had to date
and what more we hope to achieve, we have told each installment
of Alejandra’s story in three parts — an ‘all rights reserved’
copyright world without Creative Commons, a world with Creative
Commons, and a possible future that we are working to enable.

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 Blogging
Like many people, Alejandra decided to set up a blog and
used the open source and most popular self-managed
blogging software — WordPress. Her motivation in setting
up the blog was to spare herself the time it takes to phone
and email family and friends with updates about her life and
to see if anyone else shares her interests. On her blog, she
posts her musings about and experiences with teaching, her
observations on life and information about history, science,
and other topics that interest her. She also uploads some of
her personal photos to Flickr, the online photo sharing site
owned by Yahoo!. Using the Flickr badge tool, Alejandra
also displays photos from her Flickr photostream on her blog.

In a world without Creative Commons licensing...

Alejandra’s blog immediately attracts an ‘all rights reserved’ course, are not precisely sure what those are and
level of copyright protection. Unless Alejandra has a deep where the line falls. So often potential use and reuse of
understanding of copyright law, or has access to a lawyer, creative works is chilled because there is no easy way to
who can assist her in clearly signaling that she is happy for know when to ask for permission and whether that
people to make more use of her blog than is permitted by permission will be forthcoming.
fair use and other exceptions to copyright law, her blog can
Asking for permission can be as simple as finding her email
never be re-used. An ‘all rights reserved’ level of copyright
address on her blog and sending her an email or leaving a
protection means that no one can copy and repost her blog
request in the comments field on her blog. However, this
entries to their own site without contacting her and asking
increases the transaction costs for Alejandra’s material
for her permission. No one can translate them into Spanish or
being used. It requires that the person seeking permission
Chinese to enable people who do not speak English to read
speaks English sufficiently fluently and have the time and
her blog without contacting her for separate permission. No
patience to contact Alejandra. Alejandra would never know
one can include her photos in a book and sell the book with-
the people who may want to use her content because they
out contacting Alejandra and asking for her permission first.
do not make it to the point of contacting her via her blog.
Someone can, of course, use her blog posts consistent with
their rights under fair use laws but many people, of

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In a world with Creative Commons licensing...
Alejandra can choose one of CC’s six core licenses that It is also easy for Alejandra to choose the Creative Commons
matches her preferences as to how others use her content. Attribution license for both her blog and her photos because
By using a CC license, Alejandra can easily “pre-authorize” the Creative Commons license generator has been built into
certain uses of her content by members of the public so both the WordPress software tool and the Flickr site.
that her blog postings and images can be shared and
Having clearly signaled to the world that they can feel free
circulated around the world. Creative Commons makes it
to use her content under an Attribution license, Alejandra
easy for Alejandra to clearly signal that use and reuse of
is delighted to learn that her blog is being translated into
her blog content is authorized above and beyond what
Chinese and Spanish. The translations are possible because
fair use allows.
Alejandra chose a license that permits derivative works. The
Because posting to her blog and taking photos is her sites hosting the translations are funded by the placement
hobby, and her motivation is to share her ideas and of online advertisements. This is possible because the
musings with the world, Alejandra chooses the least Creative Commons Attribution license permits people to
restrictive license, the Creative Commons Attribution make commercial use. Alejandra includes links to these trans-
license. This license allows any member of the public lated sites in her blog, thrilled that people in different parts
to copy and redistribute her blog entries, adapt them of the world are sufficiently interested in what she has to say
or translate them, whether for commercial or noncom- that they have translated it.
mercial purposes without having to ask for separate
Like many people with a blog, Alejandra occasionally
permission — provided they give her attribution. This
engages in “vanity” Google searching — plugging her name
license promotes the dissemination of her ideas, builds
into Google to see where and when she is mentioned. One
up her reputation and builds a layer of permissions on
day, when she does this, she sees that the publisher of a
top of the activity possible within the realm of fair use.
commercial travel site has used six photos that she took
By placing the Creative Commons ‘Some Rights Reserved’ while on a recent vacation in Hawaii to augment its online
logo on her blog and next to her photos with the statement maps and travel guides. Again, because Alejandra chose to
“The contents of this blog, unless otherwise indicated, permit commercial use of her work, the publisher knew that
are licensed to the public under the terms of the Creative Alejandra would be happy for them to use the photos pro-
Commons Attribution license” and giving a link to the vided they give her attribution and does not have to engage
Commons Deed (the human-readable summary of the key in the time and expense of contacting her and negotiating
terms of the license), visitors to Alejandra’s blog now have permission. Alejandra is thrilled to see that her images
clear notice that they may freely use and reuse, with are valued and enjoyed by many people rather than just
attribution, her postings and images. adorning her photo wall at home.

Google

What could the future be like?

Within the brief four years that Creative Commons their use of CC-licensed content — a world in which people
licenses have been offered, we have already seen better understand when they need to ask for separate per-
the benefits it can offer bloggers and photographers mission to do the activity covered by the rights Alejandra
like Alejandra. But this is just the beginning. has reserved. Although she has used the most permissive
Creative Commons license, there may be instances when
Imagine a world in which the Creative Commons license
people still need to secure her separate permission. In this
generator is incorporated into more blogging applications
imagined future, Creative Commons’ licensing architecture
than WordPress and more online photo libraries than Flickr. In
can serve as the platform from which people can ask for
this world, a larger number of people who use the Internet to
separate permission for those rights that are reserved.
reflect on their experiences by sharing their ideas and images,
This will automate the rights clearance process, provide
can have the option to CC license their work just like Alejandra.
creators with ready feedback and possible remuneration for
They can then see what uses others have for their creativity
online uses of their work and, most importantly, by reduc-
that they themselves don’t have or haven’t thought of yet.
ing the transaction cost, encourage creativity and reuse.
Also imagine a world in which more people globally are familiar
with Creative Commons licenses and they can increase

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 Teaching
Having seen the benefits and community that can be
built from sharing materials online, Alejandra decides to
set up a new website to which to post her curriculae,
lesson plans, teaching materials and the assignments
that she gives her to students. She does this in order to
promote her student’s technical literacy, to make these
materials more easily available for those students who
want to review after class or who want to catch up if
they miss a class. She also hopes that by sharing her
materials in this fashion, she can engage with and inspire
other teachers, particularly ones in similar fields, to com-
ment on her materials and share their own versions.

In a world without Creative Commons licensing...

Alejandra can only use those materials that she herself secure permission but with limited success because many
has created and incorporated into her lesson plans. copyright owners are large publishers who either charge
Alejandra uses a lot of content from other people in her high rates for online usage or refuse permission because
lesson plans such as photos of well-known scientists and they fear that one online copy will undercut their market.
experiments, diagrams and timelines, and articles from
This means that Alejandra can only post online an extremely
other people arguing about the different perspectives and
limited version of her lesson plans and teaching materials,
disagreements in tracking the history of science. These
having to withdraw all of the materials from other teachers,
are all materials that Alejandra has acquired and built up
archives or publishers. This decreases the efficacy of her
over her years of teaching.
site for her students who experience a comprehensive
Alejandra’s use of these other materials in the classroom is in-class teaching experience but a much more limited one
permitted under fair use and education-specific exceptions in the privacy of their home. This also adversely impacts
to copyright, without her having to contact every copyright her collaboration with other teachers because they cannot
owner for permission. However, these exceptions render it see how Alejandra uses third party materials and how she
illegal or practically impossible for Alejandra to post her teach- enhances her lessons. Similarly, she cannot see what third
ing materials online. The only way for Alejandra to include party materials other teachers use and how they use them.
these third party materials in her online lesson site is by In addition, other teachers are not certain that they can even
contacting each copyright owner for their specific permission. use or adapt Alejandra’s materials for inclusion in their own
Because many of the materials were acquired incrementally online lesson plans or their other works. This restricted
over the years, Alejandra is not necessarily sure of whom use defeats much of the purpose of Alejandra putting
to contact for some materials. For others, she does try to her lesson materials online.

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In a world with Creative Commons licensing infrastructure...
Alejandra can easily search online for relevant educational In searching the courseware for “history of science,”
content that she can legally reuse and share in her online Alejandra is pleasantly surprised to learn that there are many
lesson site using the Yahoo! and Google customized search different disciplines that discuss the history of science such
engines. In addition, Alejandra can visit other educational as women’s studies and philosophy, in addition to offerings
and teacher sites and, if they have also used a Creative in the history department. Alejandra contacts some of the
Commons license, incorporate their materials into her own. faculty members to discuss their research and approach.
She is not able to find CC-licensed material to replace all Based on these resources, she adapts her own lesson plans
of the materials she typically uses in her course but she to add more nuances that reflect these different inter-
is able to find some and in doing so re-builds her lesson disciplinary approaches to her subject.
plans so that they are not just skeletons of her own notes.
Alejandra decides to license her lesson plans under the
Through her web searches, Alejandra becomes aware of Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license to ensure
projects known as “opencourseware” projects, as part of that it is able to remixed and used together with other
which faculty members at top US universities have released “opencourseware” offerings. Alejandra sees that there are
their course materials online under a Creative Commons Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese and French translations of
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. This license the other opencourseware projects, thanks to the permissive
permits anyone to copy, adapt and redistribute the content license, and hopes that her work can be translated and
provided they do so only for noncommercial purposes localized in a similar way.
(which includes educational) provided that any adaptations
are released under the same license and provided attribution
is given back to the faculty member.

What could the future be like?

Imagine a world in which educational content is published extent, access to education. With greater participation in
in at least one online format on terms that permit educa- open educational initiatives from faculty located around
tional use and reuse in-conjunction with being published in the world, not just those located in North America and
hardcopy where the commercial publisher would retain an Europe, Alejandra can further enhance her educational
“all rights reserved” license on that content. This flexibly offerings for her students, for example, by including
licensed content could enhance global teacher collaboration materials about prominent contributions to science
and improve the learning experience for students and the made by Indian and Chinese scientists.
broader community. In addition, students and self-learners
from around the world could access materials from the
developed world more cheaply and translate and adapt them
for local conditions so that relevant knowledge is made
available and is customized for their environment. By placing
learning materials online in this fashion, this may also reduce
the cost of textbooks for students and improve, to some

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 III. The Creative Commons Projects

“Culture Commons” different communities that were committed to the ideas

and the practice of a commons. As we got to know these
As mentioned above, Creative Commons was incorporated
communities better, we realized that many fell outside of
in 2001 as a non-profit organization. We first offered our
the strict boundaries of Creative Commons licenses and
tools to the public in December 2002.
tools. To support and connect this community, we real-
Since our inception, we have worked on our “Culture Commons” ized that a new project was necessary — iCommons.
project, which is designed to expand the pool of creative
and educational content that is free for anyone to use,
reuse and repurpose. iCommons
However, soon after the public release of our tools, it became The mission of iCommons is to build a global movement that
apparent that we needed to work to make them relevant to would embrace and extend the infrastructure of freedom.
people in different jurisdictions and from different cultures. Launched in 2005, iCommons works to support and promote
To this end, we established in 2003 an international license the activities of the global commons community, a commu-
porting project — Creative Commons International (CCi). nity that can extend beyond just Creative Commons project
leads, to include CC activists and CC license users to include
Wikipedians, A2K communities and free software and free
Creative Commons International culture activists, to name a few.

CCi works to “port” the core Creative Commons licenses Already iCommons has brought together representatives from
to different jurisdictions around the world. The “porting” this community as part of the recent iCommons Summit held
work involves both linguistically translating the licenses in Rio de Janeiro in June 2006. At the Summit new plans for
and legally adapting it for the particular jurisdiction in ques- projects and collaboration were forged.
tion. This work is lead by volunteer teams in each jurisdic-
tion who are committed to introducing CC to their country
and who consult extensively with members of the public Science Commons
and key stakeholders as part of the porting process.
Launched in early 2005, Science Commons is designed
Once the main porting work has been completed, CCi to extend the approach of enabling sharing and collaboration
continues to collaborate with the international affiliates into academia and the sciences.
to maintain the licenses and adapt later versions of the
The Science Commons project is based on the belief that
licenses, to disseminate information about the licenses and
science and education depend on the ability to observe,
to share responsibility for the conduct of legal research.
learn from, and test the work of others. Science Commons
In this way, CCi works to maintain an international license
works to apply the Creative Commons model of standardized
architecture and an international network of legal experts.
legal agreements and simple technical tools to build a
As CC licenses were “ported” to different jurisdictions “science commons.”
around the world, we became acquainted with many

IV. The Creative Commons Tools

Creative Commons offers a suite of legal and tech tools both commercial and noncommercial purposes and places
free to the public for them to use. no requirements on the licensing of derivatives, provided
attribution is given. The most restrictive is the Attribution-
NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license, which permits only
Creative Commons licenses verbatim reproduction and distribution for noncommercial
purposes, provided that attribution is given—essentially,
Creative Commons licenses provide a simple way for noncommercial file sharing.
owners of copyright to mark their work with the free-
doms they intend it to carry. These freedoms are of Once a person selects the license that matches their prefer-
two types — the freedom to share, and the freedom ences, they receive the license expressed in three different
to remix — and of course, the two freedoms can be formats: (i) the human-readable Commons Deed which sets
combined. Users can also limit these freedoms in out the key license elements and contains human readable
three significant ways — first, by restricting commercial license buttons; (ii) the lawyer-readable Legal Code that
uses, and second, by restricting any derivatives, or contains the actual license; and, (iii) the machine-readable
third, if derivatives are allowed, by requiring they Resource Description Framework metadata that describes
be licensed in the same way. the key license terms and is then searchable by the custom-
ized “find” technologies (discussed in the Find tools).
These elements combine to produce six different li-
censes. The least restrictive is the Attribution license,
which authorizes both verbatim and derivative use for

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Nothing in this design is intended to modify, or qualify, in ccPublisher is an easy-to-use “drag and drop” tool that
any way the law of “fair use” or “fair dealing.” Creative facilitates marking content with a Creative Commons
Commons licenses add either freedoms or security beyond license and uploading of that content to the location of
those provided by “fair use” and “fair dealing.” They are not the uploader’s choosing; the default upload location is the
intended to clarify or enumerate the contours of Internet Archive, which offers free hosting. ccPublisher is
“fair use” or “fair dealing.” cross-platform compatible and its code is licensed under
the CC-GNU General Public License so that anyone can
adapt the tool for their own content uploading systems.
Internationalization of CC Licenses
ccPublisher has also been internationalized so that the
As of September 2006, CC licenses have been ported user interface appears in languages other than English.
to 33 jurisdictions around the world; including Argentina, In a groundswell of community support, five language
Brazil, China, Croatia, Denmark, Israel, South Korea, translations were included in the initial release, all
Mexico, South Africa and Spain. With the launch of translated by community members in a period of two
the CC licenses in South Africa in June 2005, Creative weeks. Currently, ccPublisher is available in English,
Commons licenses are now offered on every populated Chinese (Taiwan), Croatian, Dutch, Polish and Spanish.
continent. CCi is continuing to work with new jurisdic-
tions to add to Creative Commons global legal network.
The Collaboration Tool
In March 2006, the enforceability of Creative Commons
licenses was tested before a court in Amsterdam. The com- To facilitate collaboration and allow people
mercial publisher of a magazine had used photos of Adam to see the interrelationship between
Curry, a well-known podcaster and former MTV VJ, from creativity and re-creativity, we developed
his Flickr account that were CC-licensed. The court held ccMixter. ccMixter is a site that invites
that the publisher had violated both the “Attribution” and creators to exercise their rights to rip, mix
“NonCommercial” license restrictions and had failed to and mashup under those Creative Commons licenses that
properly identify that a Creative Commons license applied allow derivative works and sampling. The site enables art-
to the images. This decision is an important first step in ists to see both who has remixed their work and to display
demonstrating the efficacy of CC licenses in different those tracks that they themselves have remixed in creating
jurisdictions around the world. their own music. In this way, people can track the geneal-
ogy of creativity because ccMixter tracks the relationship
between sampled tracks, allowing people to trace the his-
The “Find” tools tory and referencing between music and encouraging further
remixing and reuse. Currently, ccMixter hosts around 5,000
Tapping into the machine-readable expression of the tracks of which about half are remixes.
Creative Commons licenses, Creative Commons worked
with key technology companies to develop search To extend the collaborative potential of
engines that read CC-metadata. ccMixter beyond the site, we released
the engine of the software that powers
In 2005, both Yahoo! and Google developed search engines the site as “ccHost.” ccHost has been
that filter searches to find only Creative Commons-licensed developed and extended from its initial
works according to their license terms. These search filters use as ccMixter so that it applies to all media types, whilst
are now included in the “Advanced Search” page of both retaining the key strengths of ccMixter — namely allowing
search engines and also Creative Commons’ own “ CC for content to be hosted, commented on, and remixed in
Search.” These search tools make it easy for members of such a way as to show the interrelationship between it. We
the public to find content that is available under a have engaged in this development work in order to make
Creative Commons license, by license type, and to enjoy it easier for others to share and remix all content types.
the benefit of greater access to and greater freedom of
use of CC-flexibly licensed content. This year, thanks to its extension, ccHost has grown from
the engine that powers ccMixter.org into a community-
In addition to Yahoo! and Google’s customized search, powered, self-sustainable, and award winning Open Source
the popular online photo community Flickr recently project that is used by Open Clip Art Library (www.opencli-
introduced the ability to search through some of the part.org), Open Source Cinema (www.opensourcecinema.
18 million CC-licensed images hosted on Flickr; and, org), ccMixter South Africa, the Netherlands-based Simuze.nl
BlipTV, an online video site, also enabled search of its and others. In addition, several educational projects are installing
CC-licensed videos. We have added these searches to ccHost to support and enable the sharing of teaching material.
the “CC Search” page to encourage the development
of more content-specific CC-customized searching. In keeping with our dedication to building a global digital
commons, version 3.0 of ccHost adds full localization sup-
port for languages around the world including Portuguese,
The “Publish” tool Chinese (traditional and simplified) German, French, and
Dutch. ccHost is available under the CC- GNU General Public
Creative Commons developed a desktop client — License. In August 2006, we were thrilled to learn that ccHost
ccPublisher — that enables easy publishing of content was awarded the Linux World Product Excellence Award for
to the Internet. This tool was developed in response to “Best Open Source Solution”.
the realization that many people who wanted to publish
online, lacked the resources and knowledge to do so.

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 V. The Creative Commons Achievements to Date

Over the past 5 years, Creative Commons has The band, which is highly concerned with making works of
witnessed a phenomenal growth in license adop- art and artists from culturally isolated countries more acces-
tion, an array of high-profile license adopters and sible to the international public, says that it has been able
important relationships with prominent technology to attract more fans than ever (including many in countries
companies. Together these developments have that would not have been open to them as members of the
established Creative Commons licensing as part conventional Israeli music industry) as a result of using an
of the dialogue about online rights regulation and open, CC-based approach to distribution.
integrated our tech tools into key parts of the
Film — Teach: In 1999, director Davis Guggenheim (who
digital infrastructure.
recently also directed An Inconvenient Truth) and producer
Julia Schachter created a film chronicling the experiences of
teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
License Adoption
The filmmakers created two powerful documentaries: the
One year after Creative Commons licenses were Peabody Award-winning The First Year and Teach – which is
released to the public, in December 2003, we counted a short film created to attract talented and passionate
1 million linkbacks to licenses. By December 2004 people to the teaching profession.
there were 16 million linkbacks to licenses.
But after a few years, Guggenheim and Schachter realized
By December 2005, this number climbed to
that while a fair number of people had seen their film, there
45 million linkbacks.
was still an enormous audience who hadn’t. They also real-
Most recently — in June 2006 — this number ized that there was a free and easy solution: the Web. So, in
has grown even more exponentially with February 2006, Guggenheim and Schacter made Teach avail-
140 million linkbacks recorded. able under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
NoDerivatives license and offered the film online to the
public for free. At a live screening in San Francisco hosted
Stories of License Adopters by Creative Commons, the filmmakers explained that the
CC license was the perfect tool for artists looking to have
In addition to a phenomenal growth in the quantity of their work be more freely available to the world. After all,
license adoption, we have also learned of incredible stories of Guggenheim noted, the whole point of making documen-
how Creative Commons licensing has assisted authors and taries – which there is generally a limited market for – is to
has enabled more flexible use of copyrighted material. High- have them be seen by as many people as possible. This
profile license adopters include David Byrne and Brian Eno, is especially true with Teach, he continued, as it was es-
who CC-licensed their album “Bush of Ghosts” and Pearl sentially designed to be a recruitment film for teachers.
Jam who CC-licensed a music video. In addition to these
well-known adopters, we also seen experiences that dem- Education — MIT OpenCourseWare: MIT’s OCW project
onstrate the important cultural contributions that flexibly is designed to provide free access to the prestigious
licensed content can enable. Below we offer examples university’s course materials for people around the world.
from music, film and education. It is a Web-based electronic publishing initiative with the
goal of putting materials from virtually all of MIT’s under-
Music — Nimrod Lev and Rhythm Beating Silence: Nimrod graduate and graduate courses online and under the CC
Lev is a well-known and award-winning Israeli singer/song- Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license by 2008.
writer. He is one of the rare musicians who “made it” — he Since its launch in 2002, MIT OpenCourseWare has
was signed to Israeli media giant Hed Artzi, was featured posted 1,285 sets of course material from 33 disciplines
prominently on Israeli radio and MTV, and had a huge com- online. Visitors to the site come from over 200 countries.
mercial hit with the song “That’s All the Magic.” But Lev felt Significantly, the Creative Commons license used by
exploited by his label who controlled his music and didn’t MIT offers a free and easy way for MIT course materials
fairly share its financial rewards. As a result, Lev chose to to be translated into other languages and customized
leave the conventional music industry and use the Web to for local context. Says one OCW user in Azerbaijan:
freely and independently distribute his music. In an interview
with the popular Israeli news Web site Nana, Lev stated: “This is a wonderful initiative, something I’ve been dreaming
about! It gives great opportunities for studying new things
“Do you know an Israeli artist who turned rich from selling and improving my current education. Commercial distance
their CDs? I don’t. These record companies and various fed- education is too expensive for people in the country where I
erations represent themselves and not us, and as a result we live, but what you did make: quality education really available.”
see almost no money. If they are going to fight the file sharers,
they should not do it on our backs, and definitely, not in our
names...“ I believe that the accessibility to music is the basic Technical Implementation
right of each person, and we must fight for its preservation.”
Embedding the option of choosing a Creative Commons
These days, Lev and his band, Rhythm Beating Silence, use license into the technical infrastructure of the architec-
Creative Commons licenses for their music, videos, and art. ture and applications of the Internet is a key part of real-
The trio capitalizes financially on the online viral success izing our mission. Adding to the success of the search
of their creativity by playing shows and working on tools developed by Yahoo! and Google, we have also
commissioned projects. witnessed recently another important implementation.

12
Microsoft released the Creative Commons Add-in able from the “File” drop-down menu. Upon selecting
for Microsoft Office in June 2006. This software tool the CC option, the user is presented with the standard
enables the easy addition of CC licenses to works cre- Creative Commons license generator and can select the
ated in Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Excel, license of their choosing. Once the license has been
and Microsoft Office PowerPoint. The tool is available chosen, the tool adds the Creative Commons logo, the
free of charge at Microsoft Office Online and will en- name of the selected license, and a link to the license’s
able the 400 million users of Microsoft Office around terms to documents created with Microsoft Office.
the world to easily select Creative Commons licenses
The first document to be CC-licensed using this tool
when they are directly working in an Office program.
was the text of Brazilian Minister of Culture Gilberto
Once the Creative Commons Add-in is installed, the Gil’s iCommons Summit keynote speech. The speech
option to choose a Creative Commons license is avail- was made available in both English and Portuguese.

VI. The Important Work Still To Do

The work that Creative Commons has done over the past tools that people use everyday. We’ve seen, through the
five years has been an enormous success. But there is much example of Flickr and soon, no doubt through the example
more to do. We have gone from the basement at Stanford of Microsoft, that people are more than eager to use our
Law School to the cover of Wired magazine, collaborated licenses when the option to do so is easy and intuitive.
with key industry players and featured as part of government
• Expanding work in education: A key part of our future
delegate submissions before the World Intellectual Property
activities includes engaging with educators and education
Organization. Now that we have established Creative
groups/projects to ensure that much more educational
Commons as part of the debate and the practice surround-
and instructional content is available to people at all levels
ing the regulation (both private and public) of creative,
of education and across the geographic and economic
educational and scientific materials, we face perhaps our
spectrum. Our licenses provide a simple way for this
biggest challenge of consolidating on that initial success
to happen; now we have to make sure that the people
and demonstrating the benefit of “free culture.” Our work
building tools and resources know how to properly
over the coming years will focus on the following areas:
integrate CC into their projects.
• Building a stable “free culture” infrastructure: Creative
Through these important projects, Creative Commons can
Commons, of course, is not the only entity crafting licenses
continue to revive the principles of balance, compromise,
designed to dedicate certain copyrights to the public. In ad-
and moderation both online and offline and, in doing so,
dition to our work, the Free Software Foundation’s “Free
promote and enable participatory culture. Our ongoing work
Documentation License” has become an important free
will allow us to consolidate on our previous successes and
culture license, as it is the framework for Wikipedia. In addi-
demonstate the importance of “free culture.”
tion, the BBC’s Creative Archive License, and the French Art
Libre license have become important elements in the “free
culture” ecology. Unfortunately, these different licenses
have not been designed to interoperate: content licensed
under one can’t be reused under another. And this incom-
patibility will increasingly threaten the potential that these
different projects all seek to realize. To help resolve this
problem, Creative Commons will lead a project to estab-
lish an infrastructure for interoperable licenses. The aim
will be to enable creative work licensed under sufficiently
similar licenses to move between those licenses. That
process will be directed by a board independent of,
but started by, Creative Commons.
• Extending the base we’ve already built: In addition
to these new projects, we will of course continue what
we’ve been best at: increasing the breadth of high-profile
projects that we can use to showcase the benefit of CC
legal and technical tools. We’ve proven that when we set
the example for how content can be effectively and, on
occasion lucratively, shared and reused, people follow suit.
We need to develop and publicize new success stories
around video, educational content, images and music.
We need to continue to work with more software com-
panies to get CC options built into the Web and desktop

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