San Francisco, USA — January 7, 2007

Creative Commons today announced that generous support from a variety
of key technology companies — including Microsoft, Mozilla, Digital
Garage, Yahoo!, Macrovision, Red Hat, DivX, Tucows and Second Life —
pushed Creative Commons' fundraising campaign to an extraordinary
success. In combination with the proceeds from the Wired Benefit
Concert, other significant corporate contributions from Google and Sun
announced earlier in the campaign, and contributions from Ariel
Capital Management, Brave New Films, Current TV, and Wiki-How, these
new contributions combined to push the total amount raised to close to
$500,000 — more than 1.6x the original target of $300,000.

Notably, the largest corporate contributions have come from Mozilla
and Microsoft.

Microsoft's contribution is the corporation's second to Creative
Commons and follows the release in June 2006 of the Microsoft Office
CC licensing plug in, which allows people to easily apply a Creative
Commons license to their Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents
(http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5948). Mostly recently, it
joined with Google and Yahoo! to release a joint sitemap protocol
(http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/6154) under CC
Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/).

"Creative Commons aims to advance innovative thinking about copyright
in our information-based society," said Tom Rubin, Associate General
Counsel of Microsoft. "By providing new ideas that leverage the
flexibility of copyright, Creative Commons has pioneered solutions
that benefit both creators and the public. Microsoft is pleased to
support programs that strive to respect intellectual property rights
while benefiting creators, consumers and society at large."

Mozilla has been a long time supporter of Creative Commons. A
Creative Commons search option in the pull-down search menu within all
versions of Mozilla Firefox has enabled more than 80 million people to
easily locate intellectual property available under a Creative Commons
license.

"Creative Commons has provided a trusted framework for the exchange
and flow of information assets online," said Christopher Beard, vice
president of marketing and product management at Mozilla. "We're
extremely pleased to continue our support of a fellow public benefit
organization that has established itself as a leader in shaping the
future of the Internet."

Yahoo! and Red Hat were also second time contributors, while Digital
Garage, Macrovision, Second Life, DivX and Tucows contributed to the
San Francisco based non-profit for the first time. Many of these
companies have also made important technical contributions to Creative
Commons as well. Yahoo, for example, has developed a search portal
that filters results on Creative Commons licenses. And since its
launch, Second Life and Creative Commons have worked together to
assure that the rights to content created in Second Life remain with
the author – not the company. Second Life has also become an important
forum for debates surrounding Creative Commons and the global digital
commons. Most recently it was the platform used for Lawrence Lessig to
publicly announce his retirement as Creative Commons Chairman —
passing a virtual torch to CC's new chairman, the Japanese venture
capitalist, Joi Ito.

"Our community of authors, scientists, creators and educators has
made Creative Commons the success it has become," CEO Lawrence Lessig
commented. "But it is an extraordinary reward to see that success
recognized by some of the most important Internet technology
companies. We, like they, build infrastructure for the digital age.
They make moving bits easier; we make moving the rights associated
with those bits easier as well."


About Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a not-for-profit organization, founded in 2001,
that promotes the creative re-use of intellectual and artistic
works—whether owned or in the public domain. Creative Commons licences
provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors,
artists, and educators that build upon the "all rights reserved"
concept of traditional copyright to offer a voluntary "some rights
reserved" approach. It is sustained by the generous support of various
organizations including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation, Omidyar Network, the Hewlett Foundation, and the
Rockefeller Foundation as well as members of the public. For general
information, visit http://creativecommons.org


Corporate Contacts:

Microsoft
Jason Matusow
jasonma@...

Mozilla
Alex Guerra
Senior Account Executive
aguerra@...

Digital Garage
Yoshito Funabashi
pr@...

Yahoo
Kiersten Hollars
Corporate Communications
Kiersten@...

Macrovision
Julia Hughes
Public relations
jhughes@...

Red Hat, Inc.
Kerri Catallozzi
Corporate COmmunications Coordinator
kcatallo@...

DivX
Tom Huntington
thuntington@...

Tucows
Leona Hobbs
Communication Manager
lhobbs@...

Second Life
Cory Ondrejka
CTO Linden Lab
cory@...

Wired
Perri Dorset
Executive Director, Communications
Perri_dorset@...

Google, INC.
Megan Quinn
meganq@...

SUN Microsystems
Andreas Schwarz
andreas.schwarz@...

wikiHow
Jack Herrick
Founder
wiki@...

Current TV
Joel Hyatt
CEO
Current Media
118 King St.
San Francisco, CA 94107


Creative Commons Contact:

Melissa Reeder
Development Co-ordinator
melissa@...
415 946 3068


Press Kit
http://creativecommons.org/presskit