"This add-in enables you to embed a Creative Commons license into a document that you create using the popular applications: Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office PowerPoint, or Microsoft Office Excel. With a Creative Commons license, authors can express their intentions regarding how their works may be used by others.
The add-in downloads the Creative Commons license you designate from the Creative Commons Web site and inserts it directly into your creative work. Creative Commons supports a number of languages.
To learn more about Creative Commons, please visit its web site, www.creativecommons.org. To learn more about the choices among the Creative Commons licenses, see http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/meet-the-licenses.
Microsoft Office productivity applications are the most widely used personal productivity applications in the world, and Microsoft’s goal is to enhance the user’s experience with those applications. Empowering Microsoft Office users to express their intentions through Creative Commons licenses is another way Microsoft enables users around the world to exercise their creative freedom while being clear about the rights granted to users of a creative work. In the past, it has not always been easy or obvious to understand the intentions of some authors or artists regarding distribution or use of their intellectual creations." Via Microsoft Website
Creative Commons Add-in for Microsoft Office Download
"Microsoft and Creative Commons have teamed up to release the Creative Commons Add-in for Microsoft Office, a copyright licensing tool that enables the easy addition of Creative Commons licenses to works created in popular Microsoft Office applications. The software is available free of charge at Microsoft Office Online and will enable the 400 million users of Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Excel, and Microsoft Office PowerPoint to easily select Creative Commons licenses from directly within the application they are working in. " Via Creative Commons Website
So what is Creative Commons and How will it help me?
"Structurally, Creative Commons consists of Creative Commons Corporation, a Massachusetts, US, US charitable corporation and Creative Commons International, a UK non-for-profit company limited by guarantee. Also working to promote the idea of Creative Commons are volunteer project leads in each of the jurisdictions to which Creative Commons licenses have been ported. Creative Commons International and the volunteer project leads are independent and separate entities although both work in collaboration to promote the adoption of Creative Commons licenses and tools.
The idea underlying Creative Commons is that some people may not want to exercise all of the intellectual property rights the law affords them. We believe there is an unmet demand for an easy yet reliable way to tell the world “Some rights reserved” or even “No rights reserved.” Many people have long since concluded that all-out copyright doesn’t help them gain the exposure and widespread distribution they want. Many entrepreneurs and artists have come to prefer relying on innovative business models rather than full-fledged copyright to secure a return on their creative investment. Still others get fulfillment from contributing to and participating in an intellectual commons. For whatever reasons, it is clear that many citizens of the Internet want to share their work — and the power to reuse, modify, and distribute their work — with others on generous terms. Creative Commons intends to help people express this preference for sharing by offering the world a set of licenses on our Website, at no charge." Via Creative Commons Website
