Everything You Need to Know About Creative Commons aka Openverse

Openverse has its origin embedded in copyrights, with a long and interesting journey. Before we understand how it will revolutionize WordPress, let’s first get to know about Creative Commons (CC).

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization, a global network, and a global movement taking its inception from people around the world, who wish to share their knowledge, creativity, ideas, on a flexible term rather than following the default copyright laws. All this sharing is enabled via a set of open copyright licenses.

A brief history of Creative Commons
Creative Commons was started as a retaliation to the outdated copyright legislation laws. The clock turns back to 1998, when the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) was enacted, extending the term of copyright for every work to an additional 20 years. This law meant that the existing period, which is 50 years plus 20 years, makes it a total of 70 years. So, 70 years after the creator’s demise, the work will be made available to the public.

The end of a copyright term is very important, as when something moves to the public domain, it’s subjected to trials, errors, creativity, innovations, experiments, and much more. And we all know that is what leads to innovation, and the birth of unique patents or copyrights. But for this journey to start, 70 years is a big time to wait.

Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford law professor, representing Eric Eldred, a web publisher, challenged this law, which went up the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. In the end, they lost the case, named Eldred v. Ashcroft.

This did not go as a lost cause and marked the creation of Creative Commons licenses in 2002. This does not mean that copyright is gone, it is still present, and it’s automatic whether you like it or not. CC licenses allow creators to share their work (if they wish to!) and still be in line with the copyright laws.

Today, over 2 billion CC licenses are used around the world across 9 million websites. CC licenses allow creativity, remix, and innovation. This goes a long way, not only in nurturing evolution and growth but also in bringing together creators, thinkers, and visionaries. There are still areas where copyright rules hinder all of this, such as documentary films, academic research, more.

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