YouTube: An Insider's Guide to Climbing the Charts

Creative Commons

Creative Commons (CC) is an alternative method of licensing intellectual property that makes the work less restricted to people sharing and remixing it. Figure 6-3 shows the Creative Commons logo, and Figure 6-4 shows the website at http://creativecommons.org (URL 6.11).

Figure 6-3. Creative Commons symbol in the Creative Commons logo. Image taken from Wikipedia. License: "This image is ineligible for copyright and therefore in the public domain, because it consists entirely of information that is common property and contains no original authorship."

Figure 6-4. Creative Commons website.

Creative Commons is relatively new, formed in 2001–2002 by lawyer and Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig. Contrary to common belief, Creative Commons does not exist independent of copyright but rather is a set of self-granted reduced restrictions within copyright. Using the service is free, and the organization that administers the site survives by donations. Many people are into Creative Commons with an almost religious fervor. Lessig is regarded as a rock star by many.

Here is an explanation of the many different license combinations that I find easier to follow than the explanation on the Creative Commons site.

The original set of licenses all grant the baseline rights. The ...