Michael Carroll

Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization 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 organization 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 standardized licenses for re-use cases where no commercial compensation is sought by the copyright owner. The result is an agile, low overhead and cost copyright management regime, profiting both copyright owners and licensees. Wikipedia is using one of its licenses.

The organization was founded in 2001 by Lawrence Lessig, Hal Abelson, and Eric Eldred with support of the Center for the Public Domain. The first article in a general interest publication about Creative Commons, written by Hal Plotkin, was published in February 2002. The first set of copyright licenses was released in December 2002. In 2008, there were an estimated 130 million works licensed under Creative Commons. As of October 2011, Flickr alone hosts over 200 million Creative Commons licensed photos. Creative Commons is governed by a board of directors and a technical advisory board. Their licenses have been embraced by many as a way for creators to take control of how they choose to share their intellectual property. There has also been criticism that it does not go far enough, or discourages regional cultural production.

Michael W. Carroll is a Professor of Law and Director of the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at American University's Washington College of Law. Carroll is one of the founding Board Members of Creative Commons, a not-for-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative work available for others to legally build upon and share. He also is a member of the National Academy of Sciences' Board on Research Data and Information.

Carroll's scholarly work focuses on intellectual property law and the law of electronic commerce. Carroll also is an active advocate for open access to the peer-reviewed scholarly periodical literature. He has written and lectured on the subject, and he is the author of the SPARC Author's Addendum. He currently serves on the Advisory Board of the National Security Law Brief.