Creative Commons
Creative Commons licenses provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists, and educators. We have built upon the "all rights reserved" concept of traditional copyright to offer a voluntary "some rights reserved" approach. We're a nonprofit organization. All of our tools are free.
About Us
"Some Rights Reserved": Building a Layer of Reasonable Copyright
Too often the debate over creative control tends to the extremes. At one pole is a vision of total control -- a world in which every last use of a work is regulated and in which "all rights reserved" (and then some) is the norm. At the other end is a vision of anarchy -- a world in which creators enjoy a wide range of freedom but are left vulnerable to exploitation. Balance, compromise, and moderation -- once the driving forces of a copyright system that valued innovation and protection equally -- have become endangered species.
Creative Commons is working to revive them. We use private rights to create public goods: creative works set free for certain uses. Like the free software and open-source movements, our ends are cooperative and community-minded, but our means are voluntary and libertarian. We work to offer creators a best-of-both-worlds way to protect their works while encouraging certain uses of them -- to declare "some rights reserved."