[Overview]
Creative Commons (CC) was founded in 2001 by Lawrence Lessing, a
professor at Stanford Law School, California. As stated on its website,
"Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it
easier for people to share and build upon the work of others,
consistent with the rules of copyright. We provide free licenses and
other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator
wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any
combination thereof." There were one million Creative Commons licensed
works in 2003, 4.7 million licensed works in 2004, 20 million licensed
works in 2005, 50 million licensed works in 2006, 90 million licensed
works in 2007, and 130 million licensed works in 2008. Science Commons
was founded in 2005 to "design strategies and tools for faster, more
efficient web-enabled scientific research." ccLearn was founded in 2007
as "a division of Creative Commons dedicated to realizing the full
potential of the internet to support open learning and open educational
resources."