What is Creative Commons?

CC BY 4.0, 2023, Chris Chang

“What is Creative Commons?” by Chris Chang is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Introduction
 ● Historical Background
The Fundamental ● What are the issues?
Tension ● Why they matter?
Historical Background

The birth of internet in 1989 sparked many exciting new ideas, one of which is the
dissemination of knowledge and information. Eric Eldred, a literacy advocate, started
to re-publish works of others in public domain. The works in public domain are free to
be used or recreated without paying fee or credit to the owners.
CTEA

In 1998, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) was introduced,
which extended copyright terms in the United States by 20 years. Unlike the original
Copyright Act of 1976 which allowed the copyright term of the life of the author plus
50 years, or 75 years from publication or 100 years from creation, the new 1998 CTEA
extended these terms to life of the author plus 70 years and for works of corporate
authorship to 120 years after creation. It ended up preventing many works from
entering the public domain in 1998 and following years.
Eldred v. Ashcroft

Eric Eldred, an internet publisher of the public domain works, became the lead
petitioner to challenge the new CTEA law in court was represented by
Lawrence Lessig. The Supreme Court of the United States decided that 20-year
retroactive extension of existing copyright terms in the 1998 CTEA did not violate the
Copyright Clause or the First Amendment of the Constitution and was constitutional (a
7-2 decision on January 15, 2003).
Creation of Creative Commons

Despite the setback in court, Lessig and others were inspired by Eldred, who had the
pioneering idea of freely sharing the public domain contents through the internet. Thus,
the Creative Commons was created as a non-profit organization in order to provide
free, public licenses that would allow creators to retain their copyrights, but still share
them with public on more flexible terms. Once created, it has become a global
movement.
 ● What is CC?

● What is CC trying to accomplish

with its licenses?

What is CC? ● The number of CC-licensed works

available today

● Ways to get involved with CC and

the CC Global Network
What is Creative Commons?

● Creative Commons is an internationally active non-profit organization that

provides free licences for creators to use when making their work available to the
public.
● Creative Commons works within copyright law. It allows creators to grant
permission to everyone in the world to use their work in certain ways.
● Creative Commons continues to assist and advocate for users to overcome
obstacles to the sharing of knowledge and creativity.
What are CC licenses trying to accomplish?

● Creative Commons licenses give everyone from individual creators to large

institutions a standardized way to grant the public permission to use their creative
work under copyright law.
● The Creative Commons copyright licenses and tools forge a balance inside the
traditional “all rights reserved” setting that copyright law creates.
● With Creative Commons licenses, creators are empowered to give permission to
everyone to use, share, and remix their work without needing to ask.
Creative Commons Licences - 3 Layers

● The Legal Code - The legal code is the terms and conditions of the license that are
enforceable in court. This layer makes the base of the license.
● Common Deeds - The common deeds are the web pages that lay out the terms of
the licenses in language for a layperson.
● Machine Readable Version - The final layer of the license is a machine readable
version that helps software with the creation, distribution, reproduction, and
discovery of Creative Commons works.
Creative Commons License - 4 Elements

Attribution or BY. All Non-Commercial or NC. Share Alike or SA. This No Derivatives or ND.
licenses must include This means the work is symbol means that if any This means that users
this element. only available to use for adaptations or derivatives cannot share
non-commercial are made that they must derivatives or
purposes. be shared using the same adaptations of the
license type as the work.
original.
Creative Commons License - 6 Types
CC BY This license is the most permissive of the licenses. It requires users
to give attribution to the creator. From there, users can distribute,
build upon, remix, and adapt the source. Commercial use is allowed
with this license.

CC BY- This license also requires the user to give attribution to the creator and
SA allows user to distribute and use the work in the same way as the CC
BY license, including commercial use. However, for users who create
a derivative of the work, they must use the same license as the
original work.

CC BY- This license also requires attribution to the creator. Users can
NC distribute, adapt, remix, and build upon the original work, as long as it
is for non-commercial purposes.
Creative Commons License - 6 Types
CCBY- This license has the same requirements as the CC BY-SA license.
NC-SA If the user creates a derivative of the work, then the user must use
the same type of license. The use must also be for non-
commercial purposes.

CC BY- This license allows users to copy and distribute materials with
ND attribution to the creator. However, this license does not allow you
to build upon, adapt, or remix the content. The distribution can be
for commercial use.

CC BY- This license has the same parameters as the BY-NC license,
NC-ND however, the distribution can only be for non-commercial use.
Creative Commons License - Public Domain

CC Zero or This tool allows creators to donate their work to the public domain
CC0 to the greatest extent that they can. It allows creators to take a "no
rights reserved approach." It has the same three layers as a CC
License. The legal code includes a fall back license for jurisdictions
that do not allow a creator to fully dedicate their work to the public
domain.

Public This is a mark that is used on works that have no copyright

Domain restrictions. This mark has no legal implications when attached to
Mark a work. It's purpose is only to inform others that the work is in the
public domain.
CC Licensed Works

How many CC licensed works are there?

Currently over 2 billion CC-licensed works, including literary works, videos, photos,
audio, open education, and scientific research, exist across millions of websites, such
as Wikipedia, Flickr, YouTube, DeviantArt, Wikimedia Commons, Stack Exchange,
MDN, Internet Archive, Khan Academy, LibreTexts, OpenStax, MIT
OpenCourseWare, WikiHow, TED, OpenStreetMap, GeoGebra, Doubtnut, Fandom,
Afruino, ccmixter.org, Ninjam, etc.
Creative Commons Global Network

The Creative Commons Global Network, formal affiliate network restructured as a

network organization in 2018, is the home for a community of advocates, activists,
scholars, artists, and users working to strengthen the Commons worldwide.

Creative Commons is the global standard for sharing content for use and re-use, but the
organization relies on people to be able to exist. Get involved!
Timeline
Sonny Bono Copyright Creative Commons HQ MIT OpenCourseware
Term Extension Act opens on the ground adopts CC 1.0 license on
(CTEA) enacted floor of Stanford Law January 18, 2003
School on May 16, 2002

1998 2001 2002 2002 2003

Creative Commons First set of Creative

founded on January 16, Commons Licenses,
2001 version 1.0, released on
December 16, 2002
Cory Doctorow One million works Over 50 millions of
publishes first CC officially CC licensed on works are CC licensed
licensed novel: Down December 31, 2003 and CC Search launches
and Out in the Magic
Kingdom

2003 2003 2003 2004 2006

Rice Connexions (now Version 2.0 of CC

OpenStax CNX) licenses released and
publishes OER with CC nearly 5 million works
license CC licensed
CC launches version 3.0 CC0 introduced: CC0 Version 4.0 of CC
of the licenses on 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) licenses released on
February 23, 2007 on March 11, 2009 November 26, 2013

2007 2008 2009 2012 2013

First appearance of CC0 UNESCO Paris OER

in the wild Declaration approved by
world governments
CC publishes CC Open Education CC joins six other
Intergovernmental Platform launches on organizations to launch
Organization (IGO) May 31, 2017 the Movement for a
licenses Better Internet

2013 2014 2017 2019 2022

First CC Institute for 2 billion works licensed

Open Leadership on on December 31, 2019
January 9, 2014
Thank You!