---
title: "Creative Commons"
chunk: 3/3
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:48:53.809037+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Various commentators have reported confusion in understanding what "noncommercial" use means. Creative Commons issued a report in 2009, "Defining noncommercial", which presented research and various perspectives. The report claimed that noncommercial to many people means "no exchange of money or any commerce". Beyond that simple statement, many people disagree on whether noncommercial use permits publishing on websites supported with advertising, sharing noncommercial media through nonprofit publishing for a fee, and many other practices in contemporary media distribution. Creative Commons has not sought to resolve the confusion, in part because of high consumer demand for the noncommercial license as is with its ambiguity.

=== Personality rights ===
In 2007, Virgin Mobile Australia launched a bus stop advertising campaign which promoted its mobile phone text messaging service using the work of amateur photographers who uploaded their work to the photo-sharing site Flickr using a Creative Commons by Attribution license. Users licensing their images this way freed their work for use by any other entity, as long as the original creator was attributed credit, without any other compensation being required. Virgin upheld this single restriction by printing a URL, leading to the photographer's Flickr page, on each of their ads. However, one picture depicted 15-year-old Alison Chang posing for a photo at her church's fund-raising carwash, with the superimposed, mocking slogan "Dump Your Pen Friend". Chang sued Virgin Mobile and Creative Commons. The photo was taken by Chang's church youth counsellor, Justin Ho-Wee Wong, who uploaded the image to Flickr under the Creative Commons license.

The case hinges on privacy, the right of people not to have their likeness used in an ad without permission. So, while Mr. Wong may have given away his rights as a photographer, he did not, and could not, give away Alison's rights. In the lawsuit, which Mr. Wong is also a party to, there is an argument that Virgin did not honor all the terms of the nonrestrictive license.
On November 27, 2007, Chang voluntarily dismissed the lawsuit against Creative Commons, focusing the lawsuit only against Virgin Mobile. The case was dismissed due to lack of jurisdiction and subsequently Virgin Mobile did not incur any damages towards the plaintiff.

== See also ==

Copyleft
Free content
Free-culture movement
List of major Creative Commons licensed works
Open-source license
Public-domain-equivalent license

== References ==

== Bibliography ==

== External links ==

Creative Commons 
Creative Commons wiki
Short Flash animation describing Creative Commons
Creative Commonsː Copyright Week: What happened to the Brazilian Copyright Reform? (English)
Creative Commonsː Copyright Reform (English)
"Creative Commons". Internal Revenue Service filings. ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer.