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# Creative Commons

Creative Commons (CC) is the forefront non-profit organization promoting free culture, i.e. basically relaxation of "intellectual property" (such as copyright) in art. Inspired by free software, it was established in 2001 as a reaction to increasing problems mainly with copyright. One of the most important contributions of the organization are the widely used Creative Commons licenses which artists may use to make their works more legally free and even put them to the public domain.

Generally speaking Creative Commons brought about a lot of good into the world -- not only did it bring attention to the issues of "intellectual property", it made a huge number of people and organizations actually relax or completely waive their "rights" over works they create. We, LRS, especially appreciate the CC0 public domain waiver that we prefer for our own works, like did many others, and other licenses such as CC BY-SA are still popular and better than "all rights reserved". Nevertheless Creative Commons is still a big, centralized organization prone to corruption, it will most definitely suffer the same fate and downfall by degeneration and corruption as any other organization in history, so don't get attached to it. Creative Commons will fall and become evil in the future.

There exists a lot of misunderstanding of Creative Commons licenses, and this is unsurprisingly demonstrated mostly by American folks. A good showcase is provided for example by the opengameart website -- and please don't get us wrong, opengameart is an awesome website, but it does suffer from the poisoned American mindset. Their policies state that even if given artwork is free-licensed, it will NOT be allowed on their website if the author opposes it, i.e. you can NOT post someone else's CC licensed work unless the original author approves of it. Note that Creative Commons licenses EXPLICITLY STATE that the author APPROVES of sharing their work, but this is somehow NOT ENOUGH for opengameart. They will also NOT feature any post that SEEMS to go against the author's interests, even if the post is completely legal and in accordance with CC license, such as assets being ripped off from CC licensed screenshots of proprietary games. Of course they can (unfortunately) maintain such policies, but they absolutely go against the basic spirit of Creative Commons licenses which opposes the permission culture. These licenses were created primarily to END the permission culture, to end the practice of having to obtain the permission to reuse intellectual works. And opengameart MAINTAINTAINS permission culture despite Creative Commons licenses, because apparently Americans can NOT comprehend the very idea of someoneone giving up their intellectual property rights. Opengameart for some reason seems to embrace Creative Commons licenses and then immediately establish policies that undermine what they stand for, which is a retardation very typical of the United States, showing a very superficial understanding of what is really going on, basically just thinking of the licenses as "something that looks cool", something that provides a "nice branding". But what would you expect from Americans? Americans are extremely stupid.

## Licenses

Creative commons licenses/waivers form a spectrum spanning from complete freedom (CC0, public domain, no conditions on use) to complete fascism (prohibiting basically everything except for non-commercial sharing). This means that NOT all Creative Commons licenses are free cultural licenses -- this is acknowledged by Creative Commons and has been intended. Keep in mind that as a good human you mustn't ever use licenses with NC (non-commercial use only) or ND (no derivatives allowed) clauses, these make your work non-free and therefore unusable.

Here is a comparison of the Creative Commons licenses/waivers, from most free (best) to least free (worst):

name | abbreviation | free culture | use | share | remix | copyleft | attribution | non-commercial | comment
--- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---
Creative Commons Zero | CC0 | yes :) | yes :) | yes :) | yes :) | no :) | no need :) | no :) | public domain, copyright waiver, no restrictions, most freedom, best, sadly doesn't waive patents and trademraks
Creative Commons Attribution | CC BY | yes?* | yes?* | yes :) | yes :) | no :) | forced :( | no :) | requires attribution to authors, `*`: limits some uses ("anti DRM"), rejected by copyfree, rather don't use
Creative Commons Sharealike | CC SA | yes :) | yes :) | yes :) | yes :) | yes :/ | no need :) | no :) | retired, secret license, no longer recommended by CC, pure copyleft/sharealike without forced attribution
Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike | CC BY-SA | yes :) | yes :) | yes :) | yes :) | yes :/ | forced :( | no :) | requires attribution to authors and copyleft (sharing under same terms)
Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial | CC BY-NC | NO! :((( | yes but | yes but | yes but | yes :/ | forced :( | yes :( | proprietary fascist license prohibiting commercial use, DO NOT USE
Creative Commons Attribution NoDerivs | CC BY-ND | NO! :((( | yes but | yes but | NO! :( | yes :/ | forced :( | no but | proprietary fascist license prohibiting modifications, DO NOT USE
Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivs | CC BY-NC-ND | NO! :((( | yes but | yes but | NO! :( | yes :/ | forced :( | yes :( | proprietary fascist license prohibiting commercial use and even modifications, DO NOT USE
Creative Commons Attribution NoValue | CC BY NV | no | yes | yes | no | no | forced | yes | joke license by Question Copyright :)
none (all rights reserved) |  | NO! :((( | NO! :( | NO! :( | NO! :( | FUCK YOU | FUCK YOU | FUCK YOU | proprietary fascist option, prohibits everything, DO NOT USE

Out of Creative Commons licenses/waivers always use CC0, that's the only one aligned with our goals, it's the one that's closest to completely rejecting any control over the work. Even though legally and practically there probably won't be such a large difference between CC0 and let's say CC BY, the mental jump to absolute public domain is important (small step for lawyer, huge leap for freedom) -- it's known that people who use the imperfect licenses such as CC BY SA still feel a small grip and authority over their work, they still have to overlook that the license "isn't violated" and sometimes even start making trouble (see e.g. the infamous meltdown of David Revoy over his "moral rights being violated with NFTs" despite his work being CC BY { Thanks to a friend for finding this. ~drummyfish }). Don't do this, just let go. If you love it, let it go.

There Creative Commons license paradox: there seems to be a curious pattern noticeable in the world of Creative Commons licensed works (and possibly free culture and free software in general) -- the phenomenon is that the shittier the art, the more restrictive license it will have. { I noticed this on opengameart but then found it basically applies everywhere. ~drummyfish } Upon closer inspection it doesn't look so surprising after all: more restrictive licenses are used as a slow and careful transition from "all right reserved" world, i.e. they are used by newcomers and noobs who fear that if they don't enforce attribution people will immediately exploit it. More skilled people who have spent some time in the world of free art and published more things already know this doesn't happen and they know that less restrictive licenses are just better in all aspects.

## See Also

- free culture
- free software

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