{"id":103,"date":"2025-12-18T18:40:59","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T23:40:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/openscholarship\/chapter\/what-is-creative-commons\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T16:11:33","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T21:11:33","slug":"what-is-creative-commons","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.bccampus.ca\/openscholarship\/chapter\/what-is-creative-commons\/","title":{"raw":"What is Creative Commons?","rendered":"What is Creative Commons?"},"content":{"raw":"In the Open Education - Creative Commons<\/a> chapters we will explore how the principles and strategies of open access publishing and open research can be applied to teaching and learning. The use of [pb_glossary id=\"306\"]open copyright licenses[\/pb_glossary] and internet technologies have the potential to reduce student costs and lower access barriers to education by making it more distributed, equitable, and open. We\u2019ll be begin with a look at Creative Commons \u2013 Creative Commons licenses are the most commonly used type of open copyright license used for the sharing and reuse of learning materials in education.\n

Creative Commons as an Organization<\/h2>\nCreative Commons (CC) is both a nonprofit organization and a worldwide community. It was founded in 2001 in the United States, by Lawrence Lessig, Hal Abelson, and Eric Eldred. As noted in the CC Certificate program for Educators and Librarians<\/a>, the founding of CC was in part in response to the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) in the U.S., which extended for another 20 years the term of copyright for every work in the United States, from the life of the creator plus 50 years, to life of the creator plus 70 years. Lessig (a Stanford Law Professor) and Eric Eldred (a publisher dedicated to publishing works that had passed into the public domain) challenged the constitutionality of CTEA; their case,\u00a0Eldred v. Ashcroft<\/a>, went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where they lost. The nonprofit CC organization was inspired by the goal to make more creative works freely available on the internet, even while working within the terms of copyright laws.\n\nThough CC was started in the U.S. (and is still headquartered there), it is now a global organization and network that \u201chelps overcome legal obstacles to the sharing of knowledge and creativity to address the world\u2019s pressing challenges\u201d (Creative Commons: What We Do<\/a>).\u00a0The\u00a0CC Global Network<\/a>\u00a0has hundreds of individual and institutional members, as well as\u00a0chapters in many countries<\/a>\u00a0(including\u00a0CC Canada<\/a>). There are also several\u00a0Creative Commons Platforms<\/a>, which are groups of people who work across countries and chapters on particular topic areas, including Copyright Reform, Open Education, and Galleries, Libraries, and Archives (among others).\n

General Overview of Creative Commons Licenses<\/h2>\nThis video from Creative Commons provides an overview of the purpose of using Creative Commons licenses.\n\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=q0VzUigrb_g\n

Wanna Work Together?<\/a> (2009). By Creative Commons<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\nCreative Commons is perhaps best known for their suite of CC licenses. These are built on top of copyright in the sense that they allow creators to retain copyright while at the same time granting others permission to use the works under the conditions stated in the license. In addition, \u201cCC licenses work around the world and last as long as applicable copyright lasts (because they are built on copyright) and as long as the user complies with the license\u201d (CC Certificate for Educators & Librarians, 3.1<\/a>)\n\n\"\"This means that anyone who owns copyright in a work (see the Defining Intellectual Property<\/a> chapter) could choose to add a CC license to that work, granting permission to others to use, revise, redistribute that work under certain conditions\u2013depending on the type of license chosen (see below). It also means that if a work has a CC license, those who want to use it do not have to contact the copyright holder to ask for permission so long as they are using the work under the terms of the license.\n\nEach CC license has three layers. First, there is the legal code, with terms and conditions that can be enforceable in a court. Second, there is a \u201ccommons deed\u201d that summarizes the legal terms and conditions in more plain language. See, e.g.,\u00a0the legal code of the CC Attribution license (CC BY 4.0)<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0the commons deed of CC BY 4.0.\u00a0<\/a>\n\nThere is also a third layer of CC licenses, which is machine-readable code that allows software and search engines to recognize that a work is CC licensed. Creators can access machine-readable html by using the\u00a0CC license chooser<\/a> and then embedding that html code into a web page. In addition, if works are\u00a0shared under a CC license on some content-sharing platforms<\/a>\u00a0(such as YouTube, Flickr, Wikimedia Commons, and more), these platforms include the machine-readable code when you share your work with a CC license. See, for instance, how to add CC licenses to SoundCloud<\/a>.\n

Fair dealing and CC licenses<\/h2>\nCopyright law in Canada protects a\u00a0wide range of works and is automatic upon creation of a work in a tangible form. If you wish to reproduce a substantial part of a copyrighted work, you may only copy the work if you have express\u00a0permission\u00a0from the copyright owner or if the Copyright Act specifically\u00a0allows you to do so. If you work in an educational setting, you may be familiar with \u201cfair dealing\u201d practices (in the U.S., there are similar practices for \u201cfair use\u201d).\u00a0While fair dealing<\/a> is an exception to copyright (and therefore done without permission from the creator), CC licenses are agreements you enter into with a creator, providing you advanced permission to make certain uses of the work.\n\nBoth \u201cfair dealing\u201d and CC licenses allow you to reuse or redistribute copyrighted works under particular circumstances and with certain restrictions, though these differ between the two. Generally speaking, fair dealing tends to be more restrictive than CC licenses on how much of a work you can reuse, and for what purposes.\n

Other Open Copyright Licenses<\/h2>\nCreative Common licenses are the most common license used for open content in teaching and learning contexts (e.g., text, video, images). However, software and data often feature different open licenses, such as the GNU General Public License<\/a>. that may have slightly different factors around warranties and liabilities. There are many different types of open software licenses, and the Choose a License resource<\/a> created by Git Hub provides an overview of them.\n
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Test Your Knowledge<\/h5>\n[h5p id=\"10\"]\n\n<\/div>\n \n

Adaptation Statement<\/h1>\nAdapted from the Creative Commons Certificate for Educators and Librarians Unit 1: What is Creative Commons from Creative Commons<\/a>, under CC BY 4.0<\/a> license.\n\n ","rendered":"

In the Open Education – Creative Commons<\/a> chapters we will explore how the principles and strategies of open access publishing and open research can be applied to teaching and learning. The use of open copyright licenses<\/a> and internet technologies have the potential to reduce student costs and lower access barriers to education by making it more distributed, equitable, and open. We\u2019ll be begin with a look at Creative Commons \u2013 Creative Commons licenses are the most commonly used type of open copyright license used for the sharing and reuse of learning materials in education.<\/p>\n

Creative Commons as an Organization<\/h2>\n

Creative Commons (CC) is both a nonprofit organization and a worldwide community. It was founded in 2001 in the United States, by Lawrence Lessig, Hal Abelson, and Eric Eldred. As noted in the CC Certificate program for Educators and Librarians<\/a>, the founding of CC was in part in response to the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) in the U.S., which extended for another 20 years the term of copyright for every work in the United States, from the life of the creator plus 50 years, to life of the creator plus 70 years. Lessig (a Stanford Law Professor) and Eric Eldred (a publisher dedicated to publishing works that had passed into the public domain) challenged the constitutionality of CTEA; their case,\u00a0Eldred v. Ashcroft<\/a>, went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where they lost. The nonprofit CC organization was inspired by the goal to make more creative works freely available on the internet, even while working within the terms of copyright laws.<\/p>\n

Though CC was started in the U.S. (and is still headquartered there), it is now a global organization and network that \u201chelps overcome legal obstacles to the sharing of knowledge and creativity to address the world\u2019s pressing challenges\u201d (Creative Commons: What We Do<\/a>).\u00a0The\u00a0CC Global Network<\/a>\u00a0has hundreds of individual and institutional members, as well as\u00a0chapters in many countries<\/a>\u00a0(including\u00a0CC Canada<\/a>). There are also several\u00a0Creative Commons Platforms<\/a>, which are groups of people who work across countries and chapters on particular topic areas, including Copyright Reform, Open Education, and Galleries, Libraries, and Archives (among others).<\/p>\n

General Overview of Creative Commons Licenses<\/h2>\n

This video from Creative Commons provides an overview of the purpose of using Creative Commons licenses.<\/p>\n