Creative Commons

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Creative Commons official logo from the Creative Commons website

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization which allows its users to use free legal tools as licenses in order to protect the originality of their creative works while allowing the users to share other people's work within the legal context of the free tools as well. CC licences are intended to work worldwide and within existing boundaries of copyright law; they do not replace copyright altogether though. The licences set out for the re-use conditions of someone making use of another’s material.^[1] CC has many worldwide affiliate organizations and partners, so it can provide standardized and scrutinized license texts, translation into languages and adaptations for various jurisdictions for its users. ^[2] CC's legal tools are initially divided into two categories: first, a set of six licences, which are designed to help authors manage the exploitation of their creations and, second, the public domain tools, to facilitate authors in placing their works to the public domain or to label and discover works that are already in the public domain.^[3]

[edit] History

• Creative Commons was founded in 2001 by Lawrence Lessig, Hal Abelson, and Eric Eldred. A board of directors leads Creative Commons today; the board of directors is comprised of investors, philanthropists, entrepreneurs, and professionals in many fields like education, technology, and law. ^[4]

• In 2002, CC released its first set of Copyright Licenses that were free to the public. In the years following the release, Creative Commons grew exponentially and was ported to over 50 affiliate networks.^[5]

• In 2004, there was an estimated 4.7 million licensed by the end of the year. In that year, CC License 2.0 released. ^[6]

• Then by 2005, Creative commons grew to over 20 million licensed works and License 2.5 was released before the end of the year for improvements of the License 2.0 regarding the language of the Standard Attribution. ^[7]

• In 2007, the licenses in use reached 90 million. License 3.0 was released. The education project was released. It created an infrastructure to make education tools and projects easier to use and share. ^[8]

• In 2008, Lawrence Lessig stepped down from his position of CEO. ^[9]

• After years of continuous growth, Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation projects migrated to use CC BY-SA in 2009.^[10] Licenses in use reached 350 million. Wikipedia migrated to Creative Commons: Attribution – Share-A-like as its content licensing.^[11]

• In 2013, Creative Commons created 4.0 Public Licenses which marked an influential role for the Open Content Movement. The new licenses aimed to be an international tool that fostered the development of the semi-commons. ^[12]

• As of 2014, 882 Million licenses in use. ^[13]

• Today in 2015, there are more than 100 affiliates working in 75 jurisdictions around the world for Creative Commons. ^[14]

[edit] Copyright and Licensing

Creative Commons promotes copyright reform instead of going against it. Their website states that “while free licensing is important, it is not enough to reform copyright alone.” ^[15] Creative Commons serves as an alternative to copyright. ^[16] The CC method of protecting authorship rights falls between open source and full copyright protection. Using the Creative Commons license, an author can choose to seek attribution, limit modifications, prohibit commercial uses, or demand that others similarly share any work derived from the protected material. ^[17] Lawrence Lessig wanted CC to be in the middle of two extreme views to copyright. He describes the views as "one demanding that all rights be controlled, and the other arguing that none should be controlled. Creative Commons provides a third option that allows authors to pick and choose which rights they want to control and which they want to grant to others." ^[18] In 2009, CC released a new infrastructure for licensing called CCO that allows owners like designers and artists of copyright- or database-protected content to waive those interests in their works and place their work in the public domain, so others may reuse or edit the works for any purposes without restriction under copyright or database law. CC0 is a special license used to specifically work with the public domain. Creative Commons users choose from a range of permissions available while retaining copyright. ^[19]

[edit] The Licenses

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Creative Commons Chart

The CC licenses are intended for the copyright owner to allow certain types of usage, such as copying or modifying the contents while constricting other forms of use, for instance by prohibiting commercial reuse. These licenses differentiate in the amount of restrictions placed on the reuse of the work. ^[20] Another important aspect to these licenses is that placing CC license code on digital content not only provides a human readable license, but also provides a machine readable version of the license which enables computers to determine how the content may be reused. Machine readable licenses enable others to create automated services based on the type of reuse that is granted by the content owner. ^[21]

The licences themselves are made up of three layers: the common deeds or human readable code which sets out simplified terms of re-use, the machine-readable code which standardizes the format for inclusion of the licence or citation in metadata, and underpinning this is the actual legal code. ^[22]

These main licenses, permitting free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted work, are as follows:^[23]

• CCO No Rights Reserved, providing an opportunity to opt out of copyright and database protection

• CC BY Attribution, allowing others to distribute or further build upon the creator's work, even for commercial purposes, as long as credit for the original work is given

• CC BY SA Attribution or ShareAlike, allowing others to build upon the creator's work, even for commercial purposes, as long as the original work is credited and the new creation is licensed under the same terms as the original

• CC BY ND Attribution - No Derivatives, allowing for the redistribution, either commercially or non-commercially, as long as the work is not changed, and credit to the original is given

• CC BY NC - Non Commercial, allowing others to build upon the original work, for noncommercial purposes. The new work must acknowledge the creator, although as it is noncommercial, the derivative work does not need to be licensed on the same terms

• CC BY NC SA Attribution Non-Commercial ShareAlike, allowing others to build upon the original work, for non-commercial purposes, as long as the original is credited, and the license of the new creation is identical to the original

• CC BY NC ND Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives. Considered the most restrictive license in the set, others may only download and share original work, as long as credit is given, but cannot change the original in any way or use it for commercial purposes.

[edit] Creative Commons in Education

In educational settings, collaborative learning is used to facilitate social and emotional aspects of learning, such as trust or expectations. In order for the social and emotional aspects of learning to be beneficial, students need a willingness to share their knowledge and experiences for interpersonal interaction.^[24] The flexibility that CC allows for users to use or modify content can promote sharing or repurposing of intellectual or scholarly works. The CC mechanism makes it possible for students to use other's work and share knowledge at the same time. A student can create derivative works to generate new content through the CC sharing options. ^[25] For schools, these options provide useful ways to share their own work but also convenient ways to avoid copyright violations in work produced by their teachers and students. It is important to remember, though, that it is up to the user to understand the specific license on any work before making copies. While these alternatives are useful, their application is still very limited. Standard copyright protection still applies to the vast majority of books, videos, images, and software, virtually all the content that schools use as a tool in teaching, except for the doctrine of fair use which allows some flexibility. ^[26]

[edit] Debates and Discussions

There appears to be two main sides for the international debate over Creative Commons as a whole, and the licenses the site provides: the supporters and the critics:^[27]

• The supporters of CC licenses see them as a positive response to the challenges of copyright laws for the common people who are not familiarized with the legal language. The CC licenses are widespread and less complex. The Obama Administration licensed its presidential campaign photos and information on their site using a CC license. The licenses seem to be extremely useful for educators and amateurs in the publishing business.

• The critics of CC licenses think specific licenses cause confusion of the public domain and commons, and that CC could potentially lead to the altogether decline of the public domain concept. The critics find the Creative Commons claim of a public domain dedication, or now referred to as CCO, misleading because it fails to acknowledge the complexities behind such a license. The CC website warns users that the license may not be valid outside of the U.S. This leads to more debate about if CC can be used on a universal level, because if not, then the licenses are restricting to their users and their content.

[edit] Cultural Effects

As technology and the digital medium advance and expand to different cultures around the world, the traditional framework to studying human discourse has drastically changed. The internet provides a space with an enormous scale for expression. What seems to limit the expressions of communication are legal frameworks, such as copyright, patents, and online openness provided by free software and sites like Creative Commons or social media. ^[28] While legal frameworks are limiting expression in areas, the application of wikis, blogs, and other social platforms are increasing in order to support the level of knowledge sharing that CC engages with through the use of various media. ^[29] These ideas of communication examine the rhetorical content of the active audience; the human computer interaction. Privacy has decreased and creativity on the internet is not as free because of regulation. We can no longer understand personal and mass communication without considering the new multi-channel, multi-directional, multi-modal, and multi-time communication formats that are processed and analyzed by corporate information systems. The analysis of online communication must integrate two disciplines: human communication and information sciences.^[30] Merging these disciplines provides a more holistic understanding of how database driven, post-mass media have an impact on a globally networked society by facilitating human communication through complex information systems.^[31]

[edit] External Links

Creative Commons Website

U.S. Copyright Website

[edit] References

1. ↑ Gulley, N. (2013). Creative Commons: challenges and solutions for researchers; a publisher's perspective of copyright in an open access environment. Insights: The UKSG Journal, 26(2), 168-173. doi:10.1629/2048-7754.107
2. ↑ Hagedorn, G., Mietchen, D., Morris, R. A., Agosti, D., Penev, L., Berendsohn, W. G., & Hobern, D. (2011). Creative Commons licenses and the non-commercial condition: Implications for the re-use of biodiversity information. Zookeys, 150127-149. doi:10.3897/zookeys.150.2189
3. ↑ Giannopoulou, A. (2014). The Creative Commons licences through moral rights provisions in French law. International Review Of Law, Computers & Technology, 28(1), 60-80.
4. ↑ http://creativecommons.org/about/history
5. ↑ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
6. ↑ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
7. ↑ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
8. ↑ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
9. ↑ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
10. ↑ Hagedorn, G., Mietchen, D., Morris, R. A., Agosti, D., Penev, L., Berendsohn, W. G., & Hobern, D. (2011). Creative Commons licenses and the non-commercial condition: Implications for the re-use of biodiversity information. Zookeys, 150127-149. doi:10.3897/zookeys.150.2189
11. ↑ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
12. ↑ Myška, M. (2015). The new Creative Commons 4.0 licenses. Grey Journal (TGJ), 1158-62. "CREATIVE COMMONS. 4.0 [online]. Accessed 8 October 2014]. Available from:https://wiki.creativecommons.org/4.0"
13. ↑ http://creativecommons.org/about/history
14. ↑ http://creativecommons.org/about/history
15. ↑ http://creativecommons.org/about/reform
16. ↑ http://creativecommons.org/about/reform
17. ↑ Bathon, J. (2013). Staying on the Right Side of Copyright in Education. T H E Journal, 40(12), 21-24.
18. ↑ http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5719
19. ↑ http://creativecommons.org/about/cc0
20. ↑ Snijder, R. (2015). Better Sharing Through Licenses? Measuring the Influence of Creative Commons Licenses on the Usage of Open Access Monographs.Journal Of Librarianship & Scholarly Communication, 3(1), 1-21. doi:10.7710/2162-3309.1187
21. ↑ Snijder, R. (2015). Better Sharing Through Licenses? Measuring the Influence of Creative Commons Licenses on the Usage of Open Access Monographs.Journal Of Librarianship & Scholarly Communication, 3(1), 1-21. doi:10.7710/2162-3309.1187
22. ↑ Gulley, N. (2013). Creative Commons: challenges and solutions for researchers; a publisher's perspective of copyright in an open access environment. Insights: The UKSG Journal, 26(2), 168-173. doi:10.1629/2048-7754.107
23. ↑ Pejšová, P., & Vaska, M. (2015). Free Licences and Creative Commons: A Powerful Tool for Open Access Publishing in Grey Literature. Grey Journal (TGJ), 11(2), 89-97.
24. ↑ Liu, C., Lin, C., Deng, K., Wu, Y., & Tsai, C. (2014). Online knowledge sharing experience with Creative Commons. Online Information Review, 38(5), 680-696. doi:10.1108/OIR-12-2013-0280.
25. ↑ Liu, C., Lin, C., Deng, K., Wu, Y., & Tsai, C. (2014). Online knowledge sharing experience with Creative Commons. Online Information Review, 38(5), 680-696. doi:10.1108/OIR-12-2013-0280.
26. ↑ Bathon, J. (2013). Staying on the Right Side of Copyright in Education. T H E Journal, 40(12), 21-24.
27. ↑ Corbett, S. (2011). Creative Commons Licences, the Copyright Regime and the Online Community: Is there a Fatal Disconnect?. Modern Law Review, 74(4), 503-531. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2230.2011.00858.x
28. ↑ Gallant, L. M., & Boone, G. M. (2011). Communicative Informatics: An Active and Creative Audience Framework of Social Media. Triplec (Cognition, Communication, Co-Operation): Open Access Journal For A Global Sustainable Information Society, 9(2), 231-246.
29. ↑ Liu, C., Lin, C., Deng, K., Wu, Y., & Tsai, C. (2014). Online knowledge sharing experience with Creative Commons. Online Information Review, 38(5), 680-696. doi:10.1108/OIR-12-2013-0280
30. ↑ Gallant, L. M., & Boone, G. M. (2011). Communicative Informatics: An Active and Creative Audience Framework of Social Media. Triplec (Cognition, Communication, Co-Operation): Open Access Journal For A Global Sustainable Information Society, 9(2), 231-246.
31. ↑ Gallant, L. M., & Boone, G. M. (2011). Communicative Informatics: An Active and Creative Audience Framework of Social Media. Triplec (Cognition, Communication, Co-Operation): Open Access Journal For A Global Sustainable Information Society, 9(2), 231-246.