Why do we need Creative Commons?

Creative Commons is a U.S. based corporation founded in 2001 and it deals with authors copyright produced online.

So, Creative Commons (CC), helps you publish your work online while letting others know exactly what they can and can't do with your work.

Creative Commons is an alternative to copyright, where the artist/creator allows the work to be reproduced for free as long as the reproduction is for non-commercial use (like Flickr etc)

Lawrence Lessing is the father of Creative Commons. See an interview with him here http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2006-04-03-n67.html

“The licenses of CC are based on the U.S. Copyright Act in many respects. This means that, though we have no reason to believe that the licenses would not function in legal systems across the world, it is at least conceivable that some aspects of our licenses will not align perfectly to a particular jurisdiction's laws.”
http://creativecommons.org/international/

“The original non-localized Creative Commons licenses were written with the U.S. legal system in mind, so the wording could be incompatible within different local legislations and render the licenses unenforceable in various jurisdictions. To address this issue, Creative Commons International has started to port the various licenses to accommodate local copyright and private law. As of January 2007, there are 34 jurisdiction-specific licenses, with 9 other jurisdictions in drafting process, and more countries joining the project.“ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons

Now, hang on.
Here I am, a Kosovar, living in UK, dealing with US laws. My country is not a country. It is administered by United Nations. I don’t even have Kosovan passport, I have a Yugoslavian passport, although Yugoslavia doesn’t exist anymore. To my bewilderment, no country on this planet questions my passport.

My point is, as a person who belongs to no country, am I eligible to copy and paste others work without their permission? Hello, I do not belong to any country, remember?
Of course I don’t need a law to tell me how to behave but I find it very obnoxious - while I live in UK to respect US laws.











Yes, the law should be respected but we have copyright laws in UK already, we don’t need CC all away from US to tell us do’s and don’ts, although it is referring to online publications.
According to Creative Commons licence, you keep your copyright but allow people to copy and distribute your work provided they give you credit and only on the conditions you specify here.

How long does the copyright lasts for?
To re-create the functionality of a 14- or 28-year copyright, the contributor will sell the copyright to Creative Commons for $1.00 (although Creative Commons claims to be non-profitable corporation, they will still charge you) at which point Creative Commons will give the contributor an exclusive license to the work for 14 (or 28) years.
To do all this CC might also require you to register your work with the U.S. Copyright office. http://www.creativecommons.com/

I am hitting a dead end here.
It is very ethical to respect someone else’s work but I don’t see a point why should we contact US. The reality is, there is no other place to be contacted other than US.
Perhaps, the rest of the world should wake up and do something about online work, otherwise there will be a complete online totalitarianism ending in online revolution, resulting in complete anarchy, which would mean that in a very near future we will not be able to distinguish facts from fiction and copyright would sound just another made up word.