Founding of Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that provides free copyright licences which allow creators to share their work with the public on chosen conditions. It was founded by the legal scholar Lawrence Lessig and others, partly in response to the increasing restrictions of copyright law on the sharing of material over the internet. Its licences let authors choose whether others may copy, modify or use the work commercially, and whether credit must be given, with the most common requiring attribution. The organization also created a public domain dedication. Creative Commons licences are used by Wikipedia, Flickr, many universities and museums, and millions of individual creators.

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