Creative Commons Scores One of Its Biggest Wins Ever: Democracy Now!

by Marshall Kirkpatrick

The Creative Commons Foundation announced today that award winning TV and radio news show Democracy Now! will now be distributed under a CC license. Democracy Now! is broadcast daily on more than 700 television and radio stations around the US and as a podcast online.

Whether you agree with the show's political perspective or not, Democracy Now! is undeniably one of the best produced and distributed independent media projects in the world right now. If there are more high profile collections of media distributed under the innovative Creative Commons License, we don't know what they are. Creative Commons is a variation on traditional copyright that switches permission to republish content to opt-out with publisher applied conditions.

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How CC Works

Traditional copyright, as currently defined in the United States and increasingly around the world, requires by default explicit permission before any reuse of content is legally allowed. There are a variety of variations of Creative Commons, but Democracy Now for example is being distributed under a license that allows any reuse without further permission as long as that reuse includes attribution of credit to the original source, the reuse is in a noncommercial context and the original content is used in whole with no derivative works are made. It's one of the most conservative variations there is - but it's still Creative Commons.