A collections of Creative Commons and Free Culture resources.
The organization was founded in 2001 by Lawrence Lessig, Hal Abelson, and Eric Eldred[4] with the support of Center for the Public Domain.
"A free culture supports and protects creators and innovators. It does this directly by granting intellectual property rights. But it does so indirectly by limiting the reach of those rights, to guarantee that follow-on creators and innovators remain as free as possible from the control of the past. A free culture is not a culture without property, just as a free market is not a market in which everything is free. The opposite of a free culture is a “permission culture”—a culture in which creators get to create only with the permission of the powerful, or of creators from the past.” - Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture.
Principles of Free Culture
Creativity and innovation always build on the past.
The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it.
Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past.
Ours is less and less a free society.
To uphold the original intent of the U.S. Copyright Law - the progress of science and useful arts relies on both protection for a limited time AND availability of writings and discoveries to build upon what has gone before.
Resources
Creative Commons - resource to learn more about CC and guide you through a publication / CC licensing process. Changing the way people share around the world with our Global Community and 1.4 billion pieces of content under our simple, easy-to-use open licenses.
Breakdown of licenses available for Creative Commons.
FAQ creative commons FAQ.
Resource to see interesting Q&A and questions regarding Intllectual Property / Copyright, etc.
Highlighting important issues in free culture and promoting Creative Commons.
Lessing Lectures - slideshow presentations from the Creative Commons guru advocating and explaining the principles of free culture and how this relates to copyright.