Creative commons
Creative commons is where you would make something like take a picture or write a song or a film a movie and you wanted someone else to be able to use it you could put it on creative commons and you would be able to make your own copyright rules. Like if you wanted them to be able to take your song and modify it you could do that. Or if you just wanted people to be able to use it and not do anything with it you could. Cyberlaw, James Boyle, Michael Carroll, Lawrence Lessig, Hal Abelson, Eric Saltzman, Eric Eldred founded Creative Commons in 2001. Fellows and students at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School helped get the project off the ground and, for the first couple of years of its existence, Creative Commons was housed at and received generous support from Stanford Law School and the Center for Internet & Society. Creative Commons was created intending to have people sharing there work across the world.
Different copyright rules
Attribution is the first one. This one means that they can copy, distribute, display, perform and remix what you have put on creative commons as long as they give you credit.
Non-commercial is when they can copy, distribute, display, perform and remix what you have as long as they do not use it for commercial purposes or get your permission. And of course give you credit.
Share alike is when you let people make remixes. But you only let them distribute your work with the same copyright rules as you had on creative commons and give you credit.
No derivative works is when they allow you to copy, distribute, display and perform your work but will not allow you to make changes to it in any way. And of course give you credit.
These are the different copyright options you can have. How they determine what kind copyright rules you want is when you put something on creative commons they will ask you questions. When they are done asking you questions they will give you a License depending on how you answered your questions. Giving you one or multiple of the Licenses above. You need to make sure that you double check there copyright rules though. Five years after Creative Commons came out in 2006 a Dutch tabloid put a picture in there tabloid without asking permission even though it was put down as Non commercial There was no repercussions but they had to promise not to do it again.
How you get someone else’s work.
Creative commons has a kind of search engine where you type in what you want and check mark on of the two “Search for works I can use for commercial purposes” and “Search for works I can modify, adapt, or build upon.” Those are pretty self-explanatory. After you find what you want you can copy, distribute, display, perform and remix depending on there copy right rules.
