With the advent of the widespread adoption of digital technologies and the commercial phase of the Internet in the late 1990s came the empowerment of individuals to copy and redistribute content. Accustomed to equating their permission to use content such as music, books, and movies with the scope of their physical use of the product, people readily took to these new technologies, applying the logic of the analog era. The result of the clash between this misunderstanding about the scope of permitted use under intellectual property laws and the possibility of use enabled by digital technologies has been an increasingly polarized debate, most notably in the music field. Yet the high-profile nature of the digital music wars has overshadowed another debate taking place as a consequence of the impact of digital technologies on protected materials. This debate surrounds the access to scientific and academic research, teaching tools, and data. Creative Commons and its recently launched Science Commons project, described in this article, aim to promote balance in both debates by focusing on three areas in particular: (1) licensing; (2) publishing; and (3) data. (Contains 4 notes.)