Creative Commons was founded in 2001 to develop legal tools that enable sharing and reuse of creativity and knowledge. Their main solution is a set of copyright licenses that allow creators to select which rights they wish to reserve and which permissions they want to grant, providing a standardized way to give broad permissions for others to legally share, use, and build upon creative works. The licenses address the problems with traditional "all rights reserved" copyright that makes sharing and collaboration online difficult, by offering creators an alternative of "some rights reserved" and lowering transaction costs for the public seeking to make use of licensed works.

3. Nonprofit organization
Free copyright licenses
Founded in 2001
Operate worldwide

4. Creative Commons develops,
supports, and stewards legal and
technical infrastructure that
maximizes digital creativity,
sharing, and innovation.

5. The problem:
traditional copyright
does not work well for
sharing and free online
collaboration.

6. • Supposed to “promote the Progress of Science and useful
Arts”
• Automatic
• in U.S., lasts for life of author + 70 years
• “bundle of rights” = reproduce, make derivative works,
distribute, public performance
• Have to ask permission
• Infringement is expensive ($750-$150k)
• Safety valves (fair use)
• Public domain = no copyright protection
• Facts not protected
Features of copyright today

7. FAST
FWD

8. With the web,
It’s so damn easy to share

9. But how to ask
permission?

10. How to support those that
just want to share?

11. CC’s solution:
A standardized, legally
robust way to grant
copyright permissions to
creative works.

12. “Lowers transaction costs”

13. (1) CC Copyright Licenses

14. CC licenses build on
traditional copyright
• “All Rights Reserved” to “Some Rights Reserved”
• Gives creators a choice about which freedoms to
grant and which rights to keep
• minimizes transaction costs by granting the
public certain permissions beforehand

15. All CC licenses are
combinations of 4
elements:
License Building Blocks

16. http://creativecommons.org/choose/
Creative Commons License Chooser:

18. Public Domain Dedication
Licenses

19. Anatomy of a CC License:

24. 75 jurisdictions

27. Who uses
Creative Commons?

34. status quo

36. optimal with open
policy adoption

38. status quo

40. optimal with open
policy adoption

45. ●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●

48. http://www.whitehouse.gov/open

49. http://www.opengovpartnership.org/

50. http://www.theguardian.com/public-leaders-network/2015/feb/20/open-data-day-fairer-taxes

51. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2012489
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2012489

53. https://project-open-data.cio.gov/

54. https://project-open-data.cio.gov/license-examples/

55. https://law.resource.org/

56. https://open.fda.gov/terms/

57. http://cairns.typepad.com/blog/2011/01/open-grantmaking-in-practice-not-just-in-principle-1.html

58. This work is dedicated to the public domain.
https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/.
Attribution is optional, but if desired, please attribute to Creative Commons. Some
content such as screenshots may appear here under exceptions and limitations to
copyright and trademark law--such as fair use--and may not be covered by CC0.