Creative Commons Licenses Finally Becoming More Common

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization which aims to expand the variety of creative works that are available for others to legally alter, build upon, edit, and share with other individuals. The organization was founded by two men we have learned about throughout the semester, Lawrence Lessig, Eric Eldred, and Hal Albeson. Since the organization was founded in 2001, the licenses have been supported by many people who support the act of the creators of works to have control and rights over how they share and distribute their copyrighted works to the public and licensees.

            The Creative Commons licenses are the copyright licenses that the organization developed for the creators and owners of work to control what rights of the works are reserved, and which are best to be waived in order to benefit citizens other than the creators. These licenses are free to the public, and are very easy to read and understand, that are based on copyright laws. These Creative Commons licenses allow the copyright owner and the licensee to create their own negotiations under the section of the copyright law that states, “All rights reserved,” allowing to the copyright owner to dictate some of their own negotiation of rights.

            Warbreaker is a fantasy novel that is an example of a work that falls under the Creative Commons licenses. The novel was originally written by Brandon Sanderson, who later released a few other rewrites of the novel, releasing one chapter at a time, and now the entire novel is available digitally through Sanderson’s online website. Because this novel is under the Creative Commons license, Sanderson had the ability of publishing the new additions to the book on his own website, rather than through a publisher, without concerns of the copyright laws.

            Move Under Ground is a novel written by Nick Mamatas that is a mash up of a variety of other works including the style of Jack Kerouac, and Cthulhu Mythos by H.P Lovecraft, creating a horror novel with an interesting plot. Mamatas makes multiple references to Kerouac’s On the Road by mentioning the characters of the novel, using some exact phrases, as well as mentioning Kerouac himself. Through the Creative Commons license, this book is available to be read at its website for free download.

            A Briefer History of Time, by Eric Schulman is a humorous parody of the original novel titled, A Brief History of Time by author Stephen Hawking. The cover of the book, as well as the title was parodied from the original, with Schulman detailing what he believed to be the fifty-three most important events of the earth, all characterized in one book. Ironically, I learned, Stephen Hawking wrote a sequel to his book a few years later, and that book he also titled, A Briefer History of Time, at first without realizing the parody that was written of his original novel. Schulman’s novel is aimed at teaching the public on actual events, while also allowing the reader to laugh and joke with the simplest aspects of life, such as “why, even though the Universe is expanding, it doesn’t get any easier to find a parking space,” (Schulman). This novel is available under the Creative Commons Attribution- Share Alike License, which I will go into detail about now.

            The Creative Commons license is a public copyright license that helps enable the free distribution of the copyrighted work from the creator of the work to the licensees. There are four different baseline rights of Creative Commons licenses that are attribution, share-alike, non-commercial, and no derivative works. Each different type of right for a license has different icons that symbolize the purpose of the right. These are then used to create a total of sixteen different combinations, six of which are the regularly used licenses.

            The six regularly used Creative Commons licenses are as follows: Attribution alone, Attribution- No Derivatives, Attribution- Share Alike, Attribution- Noncommercial, Attribution- Noncommercial- No Derivatives, and Attribution- Noncommercial- Share Alike. Each of these licenses controls certain rights for the owner of the copyright as well as the licensees.

            The Creative Commons Attribution- Share Alike license allows individuals to share, copy, alter, remix and distribute a work so long as the altered work is attributed to the author or owner of the original that is specified, without suggesting that they supported the creation of your personal work. Basically, this means that you do not need to ask permission of the owner or creator of the original work, but you must give credit where credit is due, and acknowledge the fact that ideas, characters, etc. are from another individual’s work, not purely your own. Additionally, if the work is altered in any way from the original, that is, remixed, transformed, etc. the work may only be distributed if the license of the original work is the same, or similar in any way. Under each of the five others, the requirements are slightly different to apply to the different varieties of licenses.

            I chose to discuss this type of Creative Commons license because it is one of the most common, if not the most common type of license used. The requirements for this type of license are basic. Each of the three listed novels above are examples of the Attribution- Share Alike Creative Commons license, accrediting the original versions of each, as well as allowing the distribution to occur on individual websites.

            The Creative Commons licenses are useful and important because they allow the creator of a work to select which rights they reserve, and which can be waived to benefit the recipients of the work, or other individuals who wish to alter the work in some way. It is crucial to remember that these licenses are based upon copyright, not in place of it, because this is where many individuals accidently misuse the licenses. Lawrence Lessig strongly believes that work needs to be less strictly copyrighted so that individuals have the capability of making new creative works, allowing collaboration between individuals and already published works. The Creative Commons licenses provide potential interaction between the copyright owner and the licensees, and are becoming increasingly accepted by the public.

"Creative Commons." Creative Commons United States. 2013. 29 Nov. 2013 
        <http://us.creativecommons.org/>.
"Creative Commons." Wikipedia. 2013. 30 Nov. 2013. 
        <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons>.
"History." Creative Commons. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Nov. 2013.