Share, reuse, and remix - legally

The advent of the digital revolution and the Internet has changed the way a creative work is created, build on and distributed. The humble music you wrote on your computer at home can, for example, be downloaded over the Internet, remixed and riffed on by a DJ on the other side of the globe and used in an international charitable event.

Creative Commons was created to encourage this unprecedented stimulation of creativity and production of cool derivatives from existing works. Instead of telling people to lay their hands off, a Creative Commons licence says it’s okay to get involved and that you are not violating the owner’s copyright by doing so.

May the source be with you

What’s in it for you, you might ask? Well, we all don’t want to live in a world where something that’s meant to protect our work stifles creativity, collaboration and its distribution instead. As a budding musician, you may be attracted to a Creative Commons licence because you like the notion that it can be freely mashed up and remixed. If you are a scholar, you may want to build a reputation by encouraging unrestricted dissemination of your work so that your ideas can spread around the world. For a designer, the unanticipated use of your work as well as the indirect fame (and sometimes fortune!) might just be the draw.

Creative Commons is indeed about an entirely new way of thinking, acting and sharing. It’s about having the courage to do things differently and getting involved in a creative process in a deeper way than you may have felt possible. It’s meant for a culture that fears obscurity more than piracy.