Created by Lawrence Lessig, the Creative Commons license is a popular alternative to traditional copyright and it was a big innovation that transformed Intellectual Property Law.

Authors have six different licenses to choose from to assign to their works according to their needs:

• Attribution: where other users are allowed to adapt the work and the only requirement is that they credit the original author

• Attribution-ShareAlike: similar to the one above, this license requires also that the new work is licensed under identical terms to the original

• Attribution-NoDerivs: this license allows distribution (with due credit) but no adaptation

• Attribution-NonCommercial: allows for re-adaptation but for non-commercial use

• Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: also allows for re-adaptation for non-commercial use but the new work needs to be licensed under the same conditions as the original

• Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs: the most restrictive at all, this license allows users to download the original work for free and share it for non-commercial use and does not allow re-adaptation.

The Creative Commons license allows creators to make their content easily accessible and it allows the public to exploit it without having to pay exorbitant licensing fees or having to go through a number of different intermediaries such as publishers or other rights management companies.

The Creative Commons license provide “copyright licenses and tools that create a balance inside the traditional “all rights reserved” setting that copyright law creates giving everyone from individual creators to large companies and institutions a simple, standardized way to keep their copyright while allowing certain uses of their work — a “some rights reserved” approach to copyright — which makes their creative, educational, and scientific content instantly more compatible with the full potential of the internet.” (creativecommons.org, 2011).