The creative commons is a outgrowth of a movement to make information more freely available by encouraging creators to license their work under terms that allow others to share and reuse their work. A variety of terms exist, one of the most frequently used being "attribution" licenses which allow reuse if the original artist is given credit.
Artists have to eat. While releasing content into the commons is good for the overall ecology in the short term, it isn't sustainable by itself. The money for sustaining content creators has to come from some external source.
The web currently is organized like a big library. Each URL directs to a particular organization which fulfulls the request.
Micropayments are an idea that's about 20 years old. The idea is simply allowing people to exchange tiny amounts of money which, when done thousands of times, becomes enough to actually run a business. The biggest use of micropayments currently are advertizing networks where companies like Google pass pennies between web content providers and businesses.