Page:Creative Commons for Educators and Librarians.pdf/17

- 4 - CHAPTER 1 of the Act. The case, known as Eldred vs. Ashcroft, went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Eldred lost, and the Act was upheld.

Enter Creative Commons

Inspired by the value of Eldred’s goal of making more creative works freely available on the Internet, and in response to a growing community of bloggers who were creating, remixing, and sharing content, Lessig and others came up with an idea. They created a nonprofit organization called Creative Commons and, in 2002, they published the Creative Commons licenses—a set of free, public licenses that would allow creators to keep their copyrights while sharing their works on more flexible terms than the default “all rights reserved” approach. Copyright is automatic, whether you want it or not; the moment an original work is fixed in tangible form, it is protected by copyright. And while some people want to reserve all of the rights to their works, many others want to share their works with the public more freely. The idea behind CC licensing was to create an easy way for creators who wanted to share their works in ways that were consistent with copyright law.

From the start, Creative Commons licenses were intended to be used by creators all over the world. The CC founders were initially motivated by a piece of U. S. copyright legislation, but similar copyright laws all over the world restricted how our shared culture and collective knowledge could be used, even while digital technologies and the Internet have opened new ways for people to participate in culture and knowledge production. Since Creative Commons was founded, much has changed in the way people share and how the Internet operates. In many places around the world, the restrictions on using creative works have increased. Yet sharing and remix are now the norm online. Think about your favorite video mashup, or even the photos your friend posted on social media last week. Sometimes these types of sharing and remix happen in violation of copyright law, and sometimes they happen within social media networks that don’t allow those works to be shared on other parts of the web.

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