20 The History of Creative Commons II
As a set of legal tools, a nonprofit, as well as a global network and movement, Creative Commons has evolved in many ways over the course of its history.
Now we know why Creative Commons was started. But what is Creative Commons today? Today, CC licenses are prevalent across the web and are used by creators around the world for every type of content you can imagine. Open movements, which extend beyond just CC licenses, are global networks of people committed to the idea that the world is better when we share knowledge or culture openly, and work together. Creative Commons is the nonprofit organization that stewards the CC licenses and helps support these open movements.
Why CC Matters
When you think about Creative Commons, do you think about the licenses? Activists seeking copyright reform? A useful tool for sharing? Symbols in circles? Something else? Are you involved with Creative Commons as a creator, a reuser, and/or an advocate? Would you like to be?
Creative Commons Today
Today, the CC licenses and public domain tools are used on over 2.5 billion works, from songs to YouTube videos to scientific research. The licenses have helped global movements come together around openness, collaboration, and shared human creativity. CC the nonprofit organization, once housed within Stanford Law School, now has a staff working around the world on a host of different projects in various domains.
We’ll take these aspects of Creative Commons—the licenses, the movement, and the organization—and look at each in turn.
Creative Commons Licenses
CC legal tools are an alternative for creators who choose to share their works with the public under more permissive terms than the default “all rights reserved” approach under copyright. The legal tools are integrated into user-generated content platforms like YouTube, Flickr, and Jamendo, and they are used by nonprofit open projects like Wikipedia and OpenStax. They are used by formal institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Europeana, and individual creators.
In addition to giving creators more choices for how to share their work, CC legal tools serve important policy goals in fields like scholarly publishing and education. Collectively, the legal tools help create a global digital commons of diverse types of content—from picture storybooks to comics—that is freely available for anyone to use.
CC licenses may additionally serve a non-copyright function. In communities of shared practices, the licenses act to signal a set of values and a different way of operating.
For some users, this means looking back to the economic model of the commons. As economist David Bollier describes it, “a commons arises whenever a given community decides it wishes to manage a resource in a collective manner, with special regard for equitable access, use, and sustainability.” Wikipedia is a good example of a commons-based community around CC licensed content.
For others, the CC legal tools and their buttons express an affinity for a set of core values. CC buttons have become ubiquitous symbols for sharing, openness, and human collaboration. The CC logo and icons are now part of the permanent design collection at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City.
While there is no single motivation for using CC licenses. There is a basic sense that CC licensing is rooted in a fundamental belief that knowledge and creativity are building blocks of our culture rather than simple commodities from which to extract market value. The licenses reflect a belief that everyone has something to contribute, and that no one can own our shared culture. Fundamentally, they reflect a belief in the promise of sharing.
The Movement
Since 2001, a global coalition of people has formed around Creative Commons and open licensing. This coalition includes activists working on copyright reform around the globe, policymakers advancing policies mandating open access to publicly funded educational resources, research and data, and creators who share a core set of values. Most of the people and institutions who are part of the CC movement are not formally connected to Creative Commons.
There are many ways to participate in the broader Creative Commons community. Informally, there is a community Slack where anyone may join to discuss CC and related issues, For a more formal and active participation, the CC Global Network (CCGN), is a place for everyone interested in and working with open movements. The hundreds of CCGN members come from diverse backgrounds and include lawyers, activists, scholars, artists, and more, working on a wide range of projects and issues connected to sharing and collaboration. To learn more, see if there is a Chapter in your country or contact network-support@creativecommons.org.
The Network Platforms are the thematic areas of the Network where volunteers collaborate on activities and projects. CC’s Network Platforms are open to everyone and include the Open Education Platform, a Copyright Platform, and an Open Culture Platform.
The CC network members and volunteers include Wikipedians, Mozillians, open access advocates, and many more people, contributing to different open efforts around the world.
Open source software is cited as the first domain where networked open sharing produced a tangible benefit as a movement that went much further than technology. The Conversation’s Explainer overview of other movements adds other examples, such as Open Innovation in the corporate world, Open Data (see the Open Data Commons) and Crowdsourcing. There is also the Open Access movement, which aims to make research widely available, the Open Science movement, and the growing movement around Open Educational Resources. And more cultural heritage institutions are releasing public domain works, and openly licensing their online collections, becoming part of the “Open Culture” movement.
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
- This chapter makes use of material from “Unit 2: Copyright Law,” Creative Commons, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
