Creative Commons

Creative Commons

Overview

The Creative Commons idea and organization is about much more than just copyright licenses. It is about the nature of education and the open sharing of knowledge with one another for humanity’s progress. It is about community and pooling resources for equity and sustainability. It is about creativity belonging to us all. It is heartening to know that it has grown to be supported worldwide by a community of open-focused organizations, such as the Creative Commons Global Network. With nearly 2 billion Creative Commons licensed work available today, it is clear that this is a highly valued resource and to people across the world.

Get Involved

Anyone can get involved with Creative Commons. Here are some ideas for how.

• You might engage as a member of the Creative Commons Global Network.
• You can use Creative Commons licenses for sharing your creative work and using work created by others.
• You might encourage others to use the Creative Commons licenses to increase the reach of this handy toolset.
• Try the CC search engine to look for images (more information on search here).
• Install the CC browser extension to help streamline your image search.
• You might engage with the open-source and open education movements through learning and sharing good OER practices and content.
• Creative Commons offers a certification course for educators, an excellent way to dive in to learning more

Through our practice together, we can help make the world’s knowledge both fair and more open for everyone. Hope to see you there soon!

A brief history of Creative Commons

Fostering Innovation & Progress

Human knowledge and progress tend to be built on top of creative works and ideas that have come before. Ensuring that our country has a robust public domain that can be freely built upon is vital for the continued growth of industry, invention, and expression. A balance must be kept between protecting the creator and encouraging new expressions, and allowing those works to be accessed freely by others for the continuation of ideas. Without the public domain, many works would fall out of circulation and become invisible to future generations.

Copyright in Recent History

Copyright law protects the creator of a work to exclusive rights for a specific amount of time, after which it becomes available for everyone to use freely. The methods of determining this set amount of time have shifted through the years in the U.S. due to some extensions of copyright terms such as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) passed into law in 1998. The law extended copyright for every work in the U.S. to the date the creator dies plus 70 years, which was 20 years longer than it had been previously. The law was supported by large corporate companies who were about to lose the copyright to their work. On January 1, 2019, those works that had received the extra twenty years of copyright extension were released to the public domain. Since then, many more copyrighted works have been released as their terms expire each year.

A Pivotal Copyright Case

Eric Eldred was a web publisher who wanted to share out-of-print books with the world on the Internet. Along with others who actively used work from the public domain, he was interested in increasing public access to creative work. Eldred decided to file a federal lawsuit seeking to overturn the CTEA, arguing that it was unconstitutional. Stanford University professor Lawrence Lessig represented Eldred and made their arguments to the Supreme Court. In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to uphold the ruling from 1998, and Eldred lost his case. This ruling set precedents that had repercussions in later cases dealing with copyright that used similar arguments.

Barriers to Sharing & Use

What if, as a creator, you want to share your work with others for distribution, replication, or remix while you are still alive? What if you want to reshare something you didn’t create? The process of obtaining permission from the copyright holder can sometimes be a considerable barrier, yet with the Internet came the unprecedented sharing of digital work.

Growing a Community of Sharing

Frustrated by the legal loss but inspired to create an alternative for the community interested in growing the public domain, Lessig and others created a non-profit organization, Creative Commons, in 2002 to help break down this barrier. They established a set of copyright licenses that allow the creator to precisely determine and communicate the parameters under which they will enable others to use their work while still retaining copyright to the original. In addition to a public domain designator, there are six licenses that include simple yet effective details on whether work needs attribution, can be reshared, revised, remixed, or is for commercial use. These licenses are available for free to anyone for use with their work.

from “CC Story Cards” by Jennifer Moss, CC BY  4.0. 

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References

• “1. What is Creative Commons” by Creative Commons. CC BY 4.0.

• “1.1 The Story of Creative Commons” by Creative Commons. CC BY 4.0.

• “1.2 Creative Commons Today” by Creative Commons. CC BY 4.0.

• Eldred v. Ashcroft (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved January 21, 2021, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldred_v._Ashcroft
  “Eldred v. Ashcroft” by Wikipedia Authors. CC BY SA.

• Copyright Term Extension Act (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved January 21, 2021, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
  “Copyright Term Extension Act” by Wikipedia Authors. CC BY SA.

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Challenge Activity

Level 1 – Discover podcasts

Podcasting is a great way to share your knowledge and provide an alternate mechanism for your content. Did you know that Creative Commons has a podcast?

Listen to an episode of Open Minds

Level 2 – Create a podcast

Anchor.fm offers a collaborative creation and sharing platform for your podcasts.

Teaching Tip: So you want to make a podcast – practical tips for planning and getting started.

Teaching Tip: How to use podcasts in class

Podcasting Tools – a legal guide for podcasters on using music appropriately and podcast plugs that you can use to let listeners know that you have licensed your podcast through Creative Commons.