What is Creative Commons?
You may have noticed the small icon at the bottom right side of the window stating that some rights are reserved under a creative commons license. Creative commons is a little hard to explain. It essentially is a set of free licenses that can be used by the authors of a work to permit reuse of their work under certain conditions.
The following is taken from the Main Creative Commons site.
Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright.
We provide free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof.
The licenses appear to be country-specific. Here is a link to the Canadian Creative Commons site. The real appeal of these licenses appears to be their simplicity. The license that would perhaps be the most applicable to academics is the version which allows reuse providing that the original author is attributed.