[Summary]
Long after copyleft, a term invented in 1984 by Richard Stallmann, a
computer scientist at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology),
Creative Commons (CC) was founded in 2001 by Lawrence "Larry" Lessig, a
professor at Stanford Law School, California. As explained on its
website in 2009: "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." Who has used Creative
Commons? O’Reilly Media for example, as well as Wikipedia and the
Public Library of Science (PLoS). There were one million Creative
Commons licensed works in 2003, 4.7 million works in 2004, 20 million
works in 2005, 50 million works in 2006, 90 million works in 2007, 130
million works in 2008, and 350 million works in April 2010.
***
The web allowed people to distribute their works globally, thus the
need for a Creative Commons license, created in 2001 to make it “easier
for people to share and build upon the work of others”. Copyleft showed
the way as early as 1984.
# Copyleft
The term "copyleft" was invented in 1984 by Richard Stallman, a
computer scientist at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). As
explained on the GNU Project’s website: "Copyleft is a general method
for making a program or other work free, and requiring all modified and
extended versions of the program to be free as well. (...) Copyleft
says that anyone who redistributes the software, with or without
changes, must pass along the freedom to further copy and change it.
Copyleft guarantees that every user has freedom. (...) Copyleft is a
way of using the copyright on the program. It doesn't mean abandoning
the copyright; in fact, doing so would make copyleft impossible. The
word 'left' in 'copyleft' is not a reference to the verb 'to leave' --
only to the direction which is the inverse of 'right'. (...) The GNU
Free Documentation License (FDL) is a form of copyleft intended for use
on a manual, textbook or other document to assure everyone the
effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without
modifications, either commercially or non commercially."
# Creative Commons
Creative Commons (CC) was founded in 2001 by Lawrence “Larry” Lessing,
a professor at Stanford Law School, California. As explained 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."
# How has used Creative Commons?
O’Reilly Media, founded by Tim o’Reilly in 1978 to publish computer and
high-tech books, began using the Creative Commons Founders’ Copyright
in 2003.
Launched in 2001 as a free online collaborative encyclopedia, Wikipedia
has offered articles that stay the property of their authors, and can
be freely used according to Creative Commons or GFDL (GNU Free
Documentation License).
The Public Library of Science (PLoS) has used a Creative Commons
license for the articles of its free online scientific and medical
journals launched in 2003. The articles can be freely redistributed and
reused, including for translations, as long as the author(s) and source
are cited.
There were one million Creative Commons licensed works in 2003, 4.7
million works in 2004, 20 million works in 2005, 50 million works in
2006, 90 million works in 2007, 130 million works in 2008, and 350
million works in April 2010.