Copyright, Fair Use, & Creative Commons

In 2002, Creative Commons (CC) began with the goal of enabling creators to share their content online and to make the sharing of creative works more readily available to everyone while also allowing them to maintain their copyrights. A full history of Creative Commons and its relationship to the Copyright Act and its future extension in 1998 and the creation of the World Wide Web are found at Creative Commons (Unit 1 - The Story of Creative Commons). 

Creative Commons is: 

1. An organization that provides CC licenses, public domain tools, and support for open movements worldwide

2. A set of licenses that work with copyright that allow creators to freely share their content online 

3. A global movement that supports open movements worldwide. This community works to support open initiatives, including, but not limited to, open source software, open data, open science, and open educational resources.