In the media today, too often there are debates over creative control. On one end, every last use of work is regulated under the "all rights reserved" law and at the other end, there is a vision of anarchy where creators have the freedom to publish their work 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." - CC

Currently based in San Francisco, Creative Commons is a non-profit organization devoted to the range of creative works available for others to legally share and build upon.  Their aim is to grant copyright holders some rights to the public domain while retaining others through flexible copyright licensing and contract schemes. The intension of CC is to avoid problems that are created by current copyright laws that regard sharing of information.

The organization was founded in 2001 led by cyberlaw and intellectual property experts: James Boyle, Michael Carroll, Molly Shaffer Van Houweling, and Lawrence Lessig, MIT computer science professor Hal Abelson, lawyer-turned-documentary filmmaker-turned-cyberlaw expert Eric Saltzman, renowned documentary filmmaker Davis Guggenheim, noted Japanese entrepreneur Joi Ito, and public domain web publisher Eric Eldred. With a branch in Berlin, CC continues to be a growing collective effort led by a core of directors, advisors, and staff from all over the world.

In December 2002, the first CC project was launched and released a set of copy licenses free for public use. The organization was pre-dated by Open Publication License (OPL), which is a license used for creating free and open publications created by the Open Content Project, and the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) is a copyleft license for free content (intended mainly as a license for software documentation). CC is designed for other creative works such as websites, scholarship, music, film, photography, literature, courseware, etc. CC was honored in 2004 with the Golden Nica Award at the Prix Ars Electronica, for the category "Net Vision."

Lawrence Lessig, chairman of CC, believes the use of CC license will improve the exchange of creative works and raise awareness, and help the fight for fairer copyright and fair use laws.

"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. " - CC staff

Free Culture! The project provides several free licenses that copyright holders can use when releasing their works on the web. How can you apply for a Creative Commons License?

For online works, there are four different standardized types of licenses (off-line work requires mailing a letter to CC for approval). The difference between online and off-line work is that off-line do not include a metadata, which means it will not be identified via Creative Commons-customized search engine.

	Attribution. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work — and derivative works based upon it — but only if they give credit the way you request (through written form of consent)
	Non-Commercial. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work — and derivative works based upon it — but for noncommercial purposes only (not use for profit).
	No Derivative Works. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it (no altering or transforming of the original work).
	Share Alike. You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.  (transforming a piece of work available but needs to be under the same terms as the original work) .

Once you achieve a license, the appropriate license will be expressed in 3 ways:

Once you have recieved your license, include the CC “Some Rights Reserved” button on your site, somewhere near your work, so the world can be notified of the license terms. If your license is violated, as a CC licenser you have the right to sue under copyright infringement.

Who uses Creative Commons?
• Artists
• Authors
• Educators
• Media archives ( Flickr, Internet Archive, Wikimedia Commons, and Ourmedia )
• GarageBand.com
• Music Bands such as Pearl Jam ( "Life Wasted")

During its first year, CC experienced worldwide success with very little criticism. However recently, there has been critical attention focused on the CC movement and its growth on success to its values and goals.

PRO

Creative Commons allows people to exchange ideas, enhance community and collaborations without any restrictions by copyright laws. One use of Creative Commons is to allow the free distribution of your work for noncommercial purposes. Under copyright law, nobody is allowed to copy your work without your permission. Therefore the creator has entitlement and control over their work.

CON

To some, the idea of CC somehow threatens the existence of fair use. Someone can easily be have their work used without consent from the user, since the approval should be made between two parties. A CC license has no effect on the fair use of work. But Creative Commons allows others to use your work without the risk, cost, or limitations of fair use law.

In early 2006, Adam Curry sued a Dutch tabloid who published photos, without permission, from his Flickr page. The verdict was in favor of his case because it was protected under CC license. In the end the tabloid did not have to pay restitution as long as they did not repeat the offense. The Dutch Court stated that the conditions of CC licensing grant all users to have full rights of their work as long as it is under the CC license, even without agreement between two parties.

Also, some people may apply a CC license when its unnecessary. A word of advice is to study the purpose of each license and before implementing that into your website. Keep in mind that others will take use of your work. But why would people want to give away their work? Well, it’s a gamble, and it’s not for everyone. Everyone has a reason to share their work either making good use of gamble, profit, or to contribute to the world (most people think this is corny and don’t trust or believe this, and that’s fine).  However, it doesn’t make CC useless.