Wattpad has established a rather significant partnership today, bringing the realm of creative sharing to written story-telling.
The Toronto-based mutli-platform writing platform has officially rolled out creative commons 4.0 licensing options to give its over 30 million users the ability to search millions of stories to “remix” and “reimagine”. It’s the largest implementation of CC 4.0 by a social media platform.
Wattpad not only has amateur story-tellers as users, but also professional or otherwise “celebrity” writers on its platforms. Those users have many fans, some of which “remix” work, write fan fiction, translate Wattpad stories into other languages, and make anything from story trailers to story covers for their favorite writers. Similarly, Wattpad said writers want to encourage reader participation and the creation of “fan art”.
Wattpad stories using CC 4.0 licensing options will be tagged and searchable by anyone in the world. To-date more than 300,000 stories are shared under a CC licensing option on Wattpad. These options, said Wattpad in a release, “respect the desire of Wattpadders to remain anonymous (if they choose), without restricting creativity of others.”
“All knowledge and culture owes something to what came before it — it’s this public commons of ideas that forms the foundation of our society,” said Creative Commons CEO Ryan Merkley. “I’m excited that the Wattpad community will have Creative Commons’ simple, free tools to share their work, to re-use the works of others, and to contribute to the global creative community.”
Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools. The Creative Commons licenses provide a simple, standardized way to give the public permission to share and use creative work — on conditions of the creator’s choice.
“From day one Wattpad has been about self-expression and creativity. With the integration of CC 4.0 creators from around the world will be able to search millions of stories on Wattpad and use them for their own artistic pursuits,” said Co-founder and CEO of Wattpad Allen Lau. “Licensing creative works under CC 4.0 makes total sense in today’s remixing culture.”