Final answer:
Creative Commons licenses offer alternative protections to traditional copyright, providing a range of rights to authors while allowing others to share, use, and build upon their works. They require appropriate attribution to the author and that derivative works are shared under the same license.
Step-by-step explanation:
The term used for a license like those issued by Creative Commons as an alternative to copyright is commonly known as a Creative Commons license. These licenses provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors and creators. For example, the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA) license allows users to remix, adapt, and build upon an original work non-commercially, as long as they credit the original creator and license their new creations under the identical terms. Similarly, the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license permits users to use the work, even commercially, providing appropriate attribution to the author and licensing any derivative work under the same terms of the original license.
In essence, these licenses aim to provide an alternative to traditional copyright, enabling a more flexible and shared use of creative works. The ShareAlike term, for instance, requires that any adapted works are shared under the same license as the original, thereby promoting the distribution of creative contributions under a similar framework of legal protection and openness.