CC and CC+ Overview
for the World Wide Web
http://creativecommons.org/projects/ccplus

Creative Commons (CC) provides free copyright licenses whichempower authors and creators to mark their creativity with thefreedoms they intend it to carry. In this document we describe
conceptually a technology we’ve developed to enable a simple
click-through to rights or opportunities beyond those offered in
the standard CC licenses. With this capability, it is simple forrights holders to marry standard CC licenses with other options
beyond those provided within a CC license. For example, alicensor offering content under a CC BY-NC license (requiringattribution, but restricting use to noncommercial use only) could
specify a broker (like a third party service on a website) thatwould handle commercial rights associated with the content.
Because CC licenses are non-exclusive, there is no Creative
Commons-based limit to such multi-licensing.

For example, an artist might license a song on his web page.
That webpage would display the CC license iconwith code that is linked to a “Commons Deed”:

Background

Creative Commons is a Massachusetts non-profit corporationthat offers free copyright licenses to creators who want to clearlymark their content with certain freedoms. These licenses releasesome of the exclusive rights granted automatically by copyright
law to the general public, while reserving other rights to thecopyright holder — thus its slogan, “Some Rights Reserved.”
Using the CC infrastructure, copyright holders may grant others
the freedom to:
1. Share their work, or
2. Remix their work, or
3. Both.
These freedoms may be conditioned, or limited, by:
4. Limiting such uses to non-commercial activities, or
5. Requiring adopters share-alike — meaning derivativesof the original work must be licensed in a similar way, or
6. Both.
These choices are then represented through a CC license iconon the web that:
1. Displays the freedoms offered,
2. Links to a “Commons Deed” that explains
the freedoms in a human-readable way.
3. Links to a license that enforces the freedoms, and
4. Links to metadata that describes thefreedoms in a machine-readable way.

In the four years since its launch, Creative Commons has become
the preeminent “user-generated content” licensing entity. The
project has sister projects in over 70 jurisdictions around theworld, each working to port its core licenses to local law; 40of those countries have completed their work to date. License
uptake has in turn grown dramatically in scope and quantity. CC
licences are now being used by everyone from bloggers to majorlabel artists.
As CC has grown, it has developed closer relationships with
important content and application companies. Six Apart
integrated Creative Commons licenses into their blogging
software early on. Flickr has included CC licensing options in
its photo service from the start. Online video sites blip.tv andRevver have both integrated CC licenses into video uploads
while YouTube has integrated a system called “audioswap” toenable YouTube users to draw upon Creative Commons licensed
content to produce their own video content and “swap” out audio
files found to be used illegally. And the list goes on, as Creative
Commons has worked with Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, Appleand many other companies working to lower the transaction costassociated with sharing and re-use of content in the new world.

CC+In its initial development, Creative Commons focused upon the“sharing economy.” Its objective has always been to provide a legalframework to protect content intended by its copyright holder to beshared or remixed freely. The objective so far has not been to facilitate
the cross-over from the “sharing economy” to the “commercialeconomy.” Nothing in the CC charter opposed such a cross-over;indeed, the messaging around Creative Commons encouraged it.

CC and CC+ Overview for the World Wide Web

But nothing in the architecture of the CC infrastructure enableda simple way for artists to signal and embed the ability to link the“sharing economy” to a “commercial economy.”In December, 2006, this limit began to change. Creative
Commons announced a beta protocol that would enable CC
licensed content to be directly linked to commercial uses of that
content. Using this protocol, CC licensed content could include
links to rights or uses beyond those provided by the Creative
Commons license. And, while CC will never itself provide
those commercial links, it will enable others to use this CC+
infrastructure to leverage commercial value out of otherwise
freely distributed content.
With this new protocol, for example, a musician might license asong under a CC BY-NC-ND license — encouraging people tononcommercially share the song, but not to remix it, or otherwise
make derivatives of the work. Using this new infrastructure, however,
the artist may indicate a simple way that people could link back to acommercial site to secure rights beyond those granted
automatically. The “Commons Deed” signals that ability through anew icon, and a link from that icon to the appropriate site.

Thus, the Commons Deed now looks like this:Clicking on the “permissions beyond” icon would then take you
to a commercial site — again, not run by Creative Commons— where the terms for the rights beyond those granted by CC
licenses could be negotiated. In this example, the Pump Audiolink looks like this:

There is no limit to the commercial opportunities that might bespecified beyond those in the CC license. The CC+ link could
be to a site that offers one the ability to purchase a CD or t-shirt
with a specific photo that is licensed under a Creative Commonslicense. Or, this CC+ link additionally could be to an agency thatsells commercial rights to that photo. The protocol is a generalfacility to link CC licensed work with commercial opportunities.
Anyone may use this protocol to enable hybrid creativity (See
“CC+ Technical Implementation” document).
This new protocol offers an obvious opportunity for Creative
Commons licensed content to provide competition to proprietarycommercial content. Because the infrastructure permits any
rights organization or agent to be named to handle rights beyond
those granted by the CC license, CC+ encourages competition
among these organizations or agencies. Since CC+ gives
creators a way to monetize uses beyond the non-commercial
sharing enabled by the Internet, CC+ encourages artists to maketheir work available using this infrastructure. Finally, because theCC licenses have become pervasive standards with large-scale
adoption for user-generated content licenses, organizations
trying to build businesses around such content will have an
obvious incentive to use the standards set by Creative Commonsrather than reinventing the wheel by building their own.

More Information
Please visit http://creativecommons.org/
Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under

Share, reuse, and remix — legally.
www.creativecommons.org

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/