copyright licenses free of charge
:: released
by creative commons
Creative Commons promotes the innovative reuse of all sorts of intellectual works. Our
first project is to offer the public a set of copyright licenses free of charge.
These licenses will help you tell others that your works are free for copying and other uses
-- but only on certain conditions. You're probably familiar with the phrase, "All rights
reserved," and the little (c) that goes along with it. Creative Commons wants to help copyright
holders send a different message: "Some rights reserved."
For example, if you don't mind people copying and distributing your online image so long as
they give you credit, we'll have a license that helps you say so. If you want people to copy
your band's MP3 but don't want them to profit off it without your permission, use one of our
licenses to express that preference. Our licensing tools will even help you mix and match such
preferences from a menu of options:
- Attribution. Permit others to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and derivative
works based upon it only if they give you credit.
- Noncommercial. Permit others to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and derivative
works based upon it only for noncommercial purposes.
- No Derivative Works. Permit others to copy, distribute, display and perform only verbatim
copies of the work, not derivative works based upon it.
- Share Alike. Permit others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical
to the license that governs your work.
When you've made your choices, you'll get the appropriate license expressed in three ways:
1. Commons Deed. A simple, plain-language summary of the license, complete with the relevant
icons.
2. Legal Code. The nitty-gritty, specific legal details that pertain to your commons deed; the
technical version of our deeds that represent your works legally.
3. Digital Code. A machine-readable translation of the license that helps search engines and
other applications identify your work by its terms of use.
If you prefer to dedicate your work to the public domain, where nothing is owned and all is
permitted, we'll help you do that, too. In other words, we'll help you declare, "No rights
reserved." >from *Creative
Commons Celebrates Release of Machine-Readable Licenses*, december 16, 2002
related context
> hessla: hacktivismo enhanced-source
software license agreement. december 5, 2002
> opus: digital
commons in culture. july 17, 2002
> creative commons:
law and technology. may 24, 2002
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