Creative Commons (CC) is an American
non-profit organization
A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...
and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of
creative works
A creative work is a manifestation of creative effort including fine artwork (sculpture, paintings, drawing, sketching, performance art), dance, writing (literature), filmmaking, and composition.
Legal definitions
Creative works require a cr ...
available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several
copyright
A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...
licenses, known as
Creative Commons license
A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyric ...
s, free of charge to the public. These licenses allow authors of creative works to communicate which rights they reserve and which rights they
waive
A waiver is the voluntary relinquishment or surrender of some known right or privilege.
Regulatory agencies of state departments or the federal government may issue waivers to exempt companies from certain regulations. For example, a United St ...
for the benefit of recipients or other creators. An easy-to-understand one-page explanation of rights, with associated visual symbols, explains the specifics of each Creative Commons license. Content owners still maintain their copyright, but Creative Commons licenses give standard releases that replace the individual negotiations for specific rights between copyright owner (licensor) and
licensee
A licensee can mean the holder of a license or, in U.S. tort law, a licensee is a person who is on the property of another, despite the fact that the property is not open to the general public, because the owner of the property has allowed the li ...
, that are necessary under an "
all rights reserved
"All rights reserved" is a copyright formality indicating that the copyright holder ''reserves'', or holds for its own use, all the rights provided by copyright law. Originating in the Buenos Aires Convention of 1910, it is unclear if it has any ...
" copyright management.
The organization was founded in 2001 by
Lawrence Lessig
Lester Lawrence Lessig III (born June 3, 1961) is an American academic, attorney, and political activist. He is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the former director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard ...
,
Hal Abelson, and
Eric Eldred with the support of
Center for the Public Domain
The Center for the Public Domain was a charitable foundation created in 1999 by Bob Young as the Red Hat Center. It provided free online legal resources, sponsored public domain spaces on the Internet, and campaigned for copyright reforms.