Creative Commons has exploded with over 140 million links to their licenses. These links typically are associated with individual files and indicate the applicable license covering copyright and usage. The licenses allow files to be freely downloaded, played, shared, and distributed. Individual licenses may limit commercial use or derivatives, or require attribution. flikr, for example, provides its millions of photos under a Creative Commons license.

Creative Commons is undertaking a major fundraising drive. I hope you'll consider a donation. Check out their free music mixes and samples at ccMixter.

What is Creative Commons?

Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation, dedicated to making it simpler for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright. We provide free licenses that mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share the work, or remix the work, or both share and remix the work, as the author chooses.

We were motivated to begin this project about four years ago because we realized a point that's obvious once you see it: that however important the "all rights reserved" model of copyright is to some creators, it is not the model that works for many, maybe most. Scholars, scientists and educators, for example, are also creators, but they don't depend upon the perfect control of their work - deciding who can access it, or who can copy it, or who can build upon it - for them to have the incentive to create great works. Perhaps even more importantly, for the many who create for what our board member, Joi Ito, calls the "sharing economy," "all rights reserved" makes little sense. The millions of photos on Flickr, for example, licensed under Creative Commons licenses are made available by people who want to make their creativity available to others without demanding payment upfront, or control over how their work gets used. These people are creators - some professional, but many amateur, where amateur doesn't mean "amateurish," but rather people who do what they do for the love of their work, and not for the money. Creative Commons provides free tools to help these creators create in the way that they think best.