User:SaraParkwood/Creative Commons license

History and International Use
Lawrence Lessig and Eric Eldred designed the Creative Commons License (CCL) in 2001 to create a license in between the existing modes of copyright and public domain status. The CCL allows inventors to keep the rights to their innovations while also allowing for some external use of the invention. The CCL emerged from the Eldred v. Ashcroft Supreme Court Case, which ruled that the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which extended the copyright term of works to be the last living author's lifespan plus an additional 70 years, was constitutional. The original non-localized Creative Commons licenses were written with the U.S. legal system in mind; therefore, the wording may be incompatible with local legislation in other jurisdictions, rendering the licenses unenforceable there. To address this issue, Creative Commons asked its affiliates to translate the various licenses to reflect local laws in a process called "porting." As of July 2011, Creative Commons licenses have been ported to over 50 jurisdictions worldwide.

Chinese Use of the Creative Commons License
Working with Creative Commons, the Chinese government adapted the Creative Commons License to the Chinese context, replacing the individual monetary compensation of U.S. copyright law with incentives to Chinese innovators to innovate as a social contribution. In China, the resources of society are thought to enable an individual's innovations; the continued betterment of society serves as its own reward. Chinese law heavily prioritizes the eventual contributions that an invention will have towards society’s growth, resulting in initial laws placing limits on the length of patents and very stringent conditions regarding the use and qualifications of inventions.

Info-communism in the West
Info-communism found traction in the Western world after researchers at MIT grew frustrated at having aspects of their code withheld from the public. Modern copyright law roots itself in how motivating innovation through rewarding innovators for socially valuable inventions. Western patent law assumes that (1) there is a right to use an invention for commerce and (2) it is up to the patentee’s discretion to limit that right. The MIT researchers, led by Richard Stallman, argued for the more open proliferation of their software's use for two primary reasons: the moral obligation towards altruism and collaborating with others, and the unfairness of restricting the freedoms of other users by depriving them of non-scarce resources. As a result, they developed the General Public License (GPL), a precursor to the Creative Commons License based off of existing American copyright and patent law. The GPL allowed the economy around a piece of software to remain capitalist by allowing programmers to commercialize products that use the software, but also ensured that no single person had complete and exclusive rights to the usage of an innovation. Since then, info-communism has gained traction; scholars today argue that Wikipedia itself is a manifestation of the info-communist movement.