Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a type of copyright license that allows people to choose the level at which they would like to maintain rights to their works. With Creative Commons, you can choose to allow your works to be used for commercial purposes and to be added to or built upon. You can also choose to allow some of those things, or none. This is obviously a huge development in the future of creativity as well as education. People now have the option to share their works and have them built upon while still maintaining some level of rights protection. This license was built for collaboration and the spreading of ideas. This also opens up doors for educational uses. Creative Commons licensed works can be used freely without any fear of copyright infringement or need to acquire permission. Eliminating the need for permission makes Creative Commons a time saver as well. Sites such as flickr.com now have searches specifically for Creative Commons licensed photographs. Don't want to waste time with giving credit and making links to photographers on your next project? Don't. Provided, of course, that you use Creative Commons photographs.
For more information on Creative Commons, check out the website here.