I’m a few days behind on this one, but Creative Commons launched version 3.0 of their Creative Commons licenses. These updates clarify a few issues, add better internationalization support, and increase compatibility with other content licenses. You can read more background (and many more details) at the CcWiki page on the Creative Commons Version 3.0 licenses.
Some background for those of you who don’t know much about Creative Commons: CC makes it easier for you, as a content creator, to tell others what they can and cannot do with the stuff you make. So, instead of the “you can’t do anything with my content unless you ask me first” situation created by copyright law here in the U.S.A., CC licenses make it easier to share your stuff.
For example anything I publish here on my blog is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 license (I just updated to v3.0). If you look on the right side of any of my blog pages, you should see a graphic and a link to the Creative Commons page describing what this means, in plain English: You can reuse any of the stuff on my blog, as long as you:
- Give me credit for my work in the form of a link, etc. (Attribution)
- Don’t use it for commercial purposes (NonCommercial)
- Make any derivative works available under a similar license so that others can reuse it too. (ShareAlike)
I’ve also made my Flickr photos and my del.icio.us bookmarks available to everyone under the same type of license, in case anyone wants to use them for any non-commercial purpose.
I’m a huge fan of the Creative Commons organization and its founder, Larry Lessig. They’re doing a great service in helping people share and reuse/remix their creations.