(presently over 50 adaptations are provided). Creative Commons is never a party in the contract of such a license (other than in connection with materials for which it holds copyright itself).
The roots of the organization go back several years before the actual foundation. In 1999 Lawrence Lessig argued that the balance between public and private interests, and between the free flow of expressions of ideas and knowledge and state-guaranteed control and monopolies must at all times be carefully crafted, in the interest of both the society and the economy of a country, and that present tendencies favor monopolies and control too much (Lessig 1999). Subsequently, Creative Commons was founded in 2001 by Lawrence Lessig, Hal Abelson, and Eric Eldred, with the first licenses issued in 2002 (Creative Commons 2011a). After years of continuous growth, an important milestone was the migration of the Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation projects to use CC BY-SA in 2009.
CC licenses have since been upheld by courts in several cases (District Court of Amsterdam 2006, Badajoz Sixth Court 2006, Tribunal de première instance de Nivelles 2009; Landgericht Berlin 2010). Using standardized licenses thus affords both licensor and licensee a certain degree of legal safety. Furthermore, many individuals and organizations world-wide are now using these licenses. This provides significant efficiency advantages in license management when creating works that are partially based on or integrate previous works (e.g., re-use of illustrations).
Creative Commons realizes that no single license is adequate for all purposes and provides a set of licenses to cover a wide range of use cases.
Logo of the CC Zero or CC0 Public Domain Dedication License – “No Rights Reserved” (CC BY, Creative Commons)A special case is the “no rights reserved” or “rights-release” license, CC0 or CCZero. Not all jurisdictions have the concept of a public domain and in some jurisdictions specific rights cannot be released. CC0, as a license, describes a degree of freedom that is as close as possible to the concept of a public domain. The CC0 license is useful when the re-use of works shall be made as easy as possible. Some copyright owners release valuable works in this way, but the majority of applications are works where the eligibility for copyright is doubtful anyways (data containing occasional free-form text comments, simple graphics, icons, etc.).
All other current CC licenses are combinations of four conditions, each represented by a concise summary plus either specific clauses or modifications in the full legal code.
Icon of the Attribution (= BY) condition (CC BY, Creative Commons)All current CC licenses (except CC0) contain the “Attribution” condition (abbreviated “BY”), requiring appropriate attribution of the creators of a work. In the case of derived works, this condition also requires clear statements or methods to enable the user to understand the kind of changes made during a derivation. The Attribution condition is similar to the scientific community standard that all information sources must be appropriately cited. The community standard,
