Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organisation headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States, devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organisation has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons licenses free of charge to the public. These licenses allow creators to communicate which rights they reserve, and which rights they waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators. An easy-to-understand one-page explanation of rights, with associated visual symbols, explains the specifics of each Creative Commons license.
Creative Commons licenses do not replace copyright, but are based upon it. They replace individual negotiations for specific rights between copyright owner (licensor) and licensee, which are necessary under an "all rights reserved" copyright management, with a "some rights reserved" management employing standardised licenses for re-use cases where no commercial compensation is sought by the copyright owner. The result is an agile, low-overhead and low-cost copyright-management regime, profiting both copyright owners and licensees.
WILLIAM MURPHY OPERATING UNDER THE NAME INFOMATIQUE HAS MADE MORE THAN 100,000 PHOTOGRAPHS AVAILABLE UNDER A CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE. SEE BELOW
