Their website allowscopyright holders to give some of their rights to any other people. They still keep some other rights. They do this throughlicenses andcontracts. Some of these make the workpublic domain oropen content. They do this becausecopyright law can stop people sharing information.
The project has different free licenses. A person who has copyright can choose which one they want to use when they publish their work. They also provideRDF/XMLmetadata. These say what the licenses are and make it easier to automatically sort out and find work that has these licenses. They also provide a 'Founder's Copyright' contract.[1] This aims to give the same effects as the originalUS Copyright did.
Lawrence Lessig is the founder and chairman of Creative Commons. Lessig started it as a way of reaching the goals of his Supreme Court case,Eldred v. Ashcroft.
