Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization based out of San Francisco dedicated to the establishing of new copyright-licenses to allow for the expanded use of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. Founded in 2001, by our good friend Lawrence Lessig, Hal Abelson, Eric Eldred with the help of the Center for the Public Domain, the first creative commons licenses were created in 2002. The licenses allow for "baseline" rights outlined by the artist/creator that dictate how their content/product can be used. The four main licenses are:


- Attribution (by): Licensees may copy, distribute, display and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only if they give the author or licensor the credits in the manner specified by these.

- Noncommercial or NonCommercial (nc): Licensees may copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only for noncommercial purposes.

- No Derivative Works or NoDerivs (nd): Licensees may copy, distribute, display and perform only verbatim copies of the work, not derivative works based on it.

- ShareAlike (sa): Licensees may distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs the original work. (See also copyleft.)

Here's a pretty sweet video from the Creative Commons website explaining the licensing system.