CC 3.0 Licenses

Copyright Law is at an exciting crossroads as Creative Commons has issued the CC License Version 3 which heavily relies on provisions made by the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works the Rome Convention of 1961 the WIPO Copyright Treaty of 1996, the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty of 1996 and the Universal Copyright Convention.

CC's partial affirmation of the Moral Rights of the author, which US copyright law grants only in a very limited fashion is one outgrowth of the recognition of the above treaties.

The Moral Rights of the author aknowledges an emotional attachment of the author to her creation aside from monetary interests.

While Creative Commons licenses based on CC's underlying philosophy permit and even champion sampling, citing and altering of creative content, in short, generating derivative works - authors also felt their concerns regarding protecting some fundamental Moral Rights deserved some consideration.

For this reason CC states in its Wiki:
...Creative Commons licenses, with one exception, have taken the approach of not interfering with the author’s moral right of integrity in those jurisdictions that recognize this right.

Related Links:
Wikipedia list of (famous) Legal Copright Cases
Wikipedia description of a Public Domain case
Wikipedia definition of Moral Rights
Wikipdia definition of Copyright
Wikipdia list of software related copyright terms
Wikipdia description of Related Rights
Wikipedia information regarding the EU's harmonizing of the term of copyright protection