The beauty of Some Rights Reserved

ACRL -The beauty of "Some Rights Reserved: Introducing Creative Commons to librarians, faculty, and students"
C&RL News, November 2008Vol. 69, No. 10
by Molly Kleinman

This short article details the background of Creative Commons licenses, explains the various types, and gives some tips on introducing them to faculty and students. It also links to some useful resources.

"Founded by a group of intellectual property and technology experts in 2001, Creative Commons has emerged as a major player in the growing movement to provide an alternative to “All Rights Reserved.” Their goal is “to build a layer of reasonable, flexible copyright in the face of increasingly restrictive default rules.”3 They appear to be succeeding. As of this writing, Creative Commons licenses are available in 44 countries, with 9 more on the way. There are more than 60 million photographs available under Creative Commons licenses on the popular photo sharing Web site Flickr (flickr.com); nearly 10,000 sound clips, samples, and remixes on the music site ccMixter (ccmixter.org); and materials from 1,800 undergraduate and graduate level MIT courses in the MIT OpenCourseWare program (ocw.mit.edu)."