In 2001, at a time when texts were expensive and video on the web was a far-off dream, Creative Commons (CC) began as a rejection of the expansion of copyright. In 1998, Congress passed an Act that extended the term of existing copyrights by twenty years in the United States. This 1998 extension was challenged by CC’s founder, Lawrence Lessig, all the way to the Supreme Court, but the Court upheld the Act. In reaction to this decision, a small group of lawyers, academics, and culture activists got together to try to make it easy, simple, and free to share your works on the burgeoning communications platforms of the Internet.
They couldn’t change copyright law, so they hacked it. Our founders created a release valve, built on top of the international laws and treaties that govern copyright.
I think it’s fair to say that no one knew just how successful the CC licenses would be, or how much we would need them as we entered a world where every single person could be not only a creator, but also a creator of high-quality, reusable content. The seeds of Creative Commons were planted long before social media, before ubiquitous smartphones and broadband access, and before user-generated content platforms. But these seeds set down an essential root in the open Internet, and offered a powerful tool used by individuals, governments, NGOs, and corporations to create, share, and remix content.
Today, there are more than 1.6 billion CC-licensed works hosted on over 9 million websites—including some of the most popular sites on the web. The CC licenses operate in every country and have been translated into more than 30 languages by communities in more than 85 countries. They have been used to share every type of content, from photos and videos to 3D models and datasets.
