Creative commons was invented by Lawrence Lessig so that people can put their creativity, and share online without having to worry that other people will steal or copy their ideas. Creative commons helps “allow creators of content to communicate which rights they reserve and which rights they waive for the benefit of other users.” (wired.co.uk ) There are many different licenses that users can choose from the vary from very protective, or just a little protective. Some of these include: Attribution (CC BY), Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA), Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC), Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND) (wired.co.uk). Flikr, Wikipedia, and many other popular sites online have some sort of creative commons linked to it. The benefits of using creative commons is that it is easy to use and understand and they allow for people to create, edit, add ideas, and view your work, to the extent that you want. Some disadvantages, unfortunately, include the fact that once you decide on an agreement you cannot change it; you are stuck with what you pick. Creative commons also only includes new work, after the licence is put into place, leaving all older work left without protection.