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About Creative Commons
' Creative Commons
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is devoted to expanding the range of creative work available for others to build upon and share.
Creative Commons is a non-profit corporation founded on the notion that some people may not want to exercise all of the intellectual property rights the law affords them. We believe there is an unmet demand for an easy yet reliable way to tell the world “Some rights reserved” or even “No rights reserved.” Many people have long since concluded that all-out copyright doesn’t help them gain the exposure and widespread distribution they want. Many entrepreneurs and artists have come to prefer relying on innovative business models rather than full-fledged copyright to secure a return on their creative investment. Still others get fulfillment from contributing to and participating in an intellectual commons. For whatever reasons, it is clear that many citizens of the Internet want to share their work—and the power to reuse, modify, and distribute their work—with others on generous terms. Creative Commons intends to help people express this preference for sharing by offering the world a set of licenses on our Website, at no charge.Who started Creative Commons? Cyberlaw and intellectual property experts James Boyle, Michael Carroll, and Lawrence Lessig, MIT computer science professor Hal Abelson, lawyer turned-documentary filmmaker-turned-cyberlaw expert Eric Saltzman, and public domain Web publisher Eric Eldred founded Creative Commons in 2001. Fellows and students at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School helped get the project off the ground. Creative Commons is now based at and receives generous support from Stanford Law School, where we share space, staff, and inspiration with the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society.What problem does Creative Commons intend to solve? Creative works are automatically copyrighted as soon as they “are fixed in a tangible medium of expression.” The moment you lift your pen from a cocktail napkin doodle, you earn an exclusive right to copy and distribute that doodle. In some countries, including the United States, no copyright notice is required. Many people may prefer an alternative to this “copyright by default,” particularly those who do their creating on the Internet—a place that has always promised unfettered communication and collaboration. In theory, anyway. In fact, there is no easy way to announce that you intend to enforce only some your rights, or none at all. At the same time—and again, because copyright notice is optional—people who want to copy and reuse creative works have no reliable way to identify works available for such uses. We hope to provide some tools that solve both problems: a set of free public licenses sturdy enough to withstand a court’s scrutiny, simple enough for non-lawyers to use, and yet sophisticated enough to be identified by various Web applications.Who’s Behind Creative Commons in Austria? The Austrian Computer Society (OCG) has made its services available to Creative Commons International as partner institution in Austria. Concrete activities will be coordinated through a working group within the OCG.
This working group is chaired by Georg Pleger; vice-chair is Jodok Batlogg. The process of adaptation to Austrian law will be a joint effort involving the Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences, the Tyrolean Educational Service, PUBLIC VOICE Lab and the OCG. Legal expert Julia Küng from the Institute for Legal Questions Regarding Free and Open Source Software (ifrOSS) was responsible for producing the Austrian licensing texts. Various institutions and projects are currently involved in preparations for switching over to Creative Commons licenses for the production of content. For example, teaching materials in the media design competence network coordinated by the Vorarlberg University of Applied Sciences are being made mutually available under CC licenses. And concrete projects are already being discussed in the area of digital materials for classroom use.
For the latest updates, log on to http://creativecommons.at.
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