What is Creative Commons?

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that allows artists, authors, publishers and musicians the option of creating and defining a flexible copyright for their creative works. Creative Commons was officially launched in 2001 by a group of intellectual property experts, lawyers and web publishers. Creative Commons licenses cover art, music and writing, but is not designed for software.A Creative Commons license allows creators to market their copyright conditions. Traditionally, restrict the copyright rights of others from modifying or distributing copywritten works. Creative Commons licenses offer flexibility by allowing the creator (copyright holder) the opportunity to choose what limitations they want in place with regard to specific copywritten works.How Creative Commons works
Creators login to the Creative Commons system and select what restrictions, attributes, or changes they wish to assign to their creative works. The Web site for Creative Commons will then prepare a Creative Commons license to the creative works expressed in three ways. Will provide Creative Commons: the commons deed clearly stating the licensing rights in plain English, legal code for the license and a digital license code. Digital code can be embedded in websites and search engines. Yahoo has a new Creative Commons Search which identifies works and recognizes any licensing conditions. Searches can be conducted for different types of licenses. Creative Commons Web site also contains a home page icon that clearly marks the creative work which some rights reserved or no rights reserved. There are a number of licensing options for the copyright holder. Assign a Creative Commons license does not mean that the copyright holder give up rights to a piece of art, it simply means some conditions could be placed on the use of creative works.Examples of creative common license options
A Creative Commons license enables copyright holders to grant some of their rights to the public while retaining other rights. NonCommercial -a non-commercial license lets others copy, distribute, perform creative works and derivative works, but only for Noncommercial purposes (anyone using the creative works do not profit from it).ShareAlike -A ShareAlike license allows others to distribute derivative works under a license that is identical to that held by the original copyright holder. noderivative Works -A NoDerivative Works clause allows others to copy, distribute, display and perform the exact copywritten works and no derivative works can be created. Attribution -an Attribution license means creative works can be copied, distributed, displayed or performed and derivative works can be created, provided that appropriate credit to the original copyright holder has been given.Many artists feel that a Creative Commons license increases their exposure but still allow them to retain their rights to the creative works, a balance between ownership, credit and use. In the end, a Creative Commons license enables copyright holders to grant some of their rights to the public while retaining others; with Creative Commons copyright holder retains the flexibility to control all rights to their creative works. About the author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing and publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. Sharon also manages marketing for Note Page http://www.notepage.net a wireless text messaging software company.

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