What are Creative Commons and what is the aim of it?

Creative Commons is a non profit organization that offers flexible copyright licences for creative work. Creative Commons enable copyright holders to grant some of their rights while restricting other rights by the use of appropriate licensing terms. It is between full copyrights – all rights reserved- and the public domain – no rights reserved.

Nowadays a lot of authors and scientists like their work to be build upon and used in further research; they want their work to be shared. Creative Commons makes that possible for them, that is the aim of Creative Commons. It helps the author to keep his copyrights while inviting certain usages of his works under his own terms.

Creative Commons was founded in 2001, based in San Francisco. On 16 December 2002 they published their first licences. Creative Commons is launching their licensing in more and more countries; different versions are needed in different countries because every country has different laws. The Netherlands joint on June 18th, 2004. The last country that joined until now is Mexico, on March 16th, 2006.

Some cartoons that explain the defenition and aim of Creative Commons in a fun way:[1]
For more information see:
1. Website of creative commons [2]
2. Wikipedia on creative commons[3]