Creative Commons - Belgium

[Yong Liu <cuplyong AT gmail.com>]

Dear All,

At the end of last week I sent out an introductory email about the
future of Creative Commons International and iCommons. I promised
that more details would be coming this week. And here it is. This 
will not answer all your questions but I am hopeful that it will
begin to answer the question of "what is iCommons?". Christiane
Asschenfeldt (Executive Director of Creative Commons International)
intends to send a similar email re-affirming the ongoing role and 
function of Creative Commons International and together they should
provide an overall picture of the international community. For those
of you that may not have had a chance to read my earlier email, I
have included it at the bottom of this email for easy reference. 

##iCommons Information -
Location: International with an office in London, UK
Staff supported by Creative Commons: Paula Le Dieu (Director, iCommons)
Who else is iCommons?: Open to anyone that chooses to participate. 
This of course includes everyone that helps with the national porting
projects but also authors, artists, creators, producers, users,
campaigners, activists, the floss community - in fact, anyone
interested in furthering the health of the commons. 
Funded by: Creative Commons provides initial funding for a fulltime
staff role & London office costs. Long term, iCommons should aim to
be financially independent of Creative Commons.

Initial functions: 
1. To provide an online "home" for the international voice of the
Commons - eg. www.icommons.org/news
2. To provide an online "home" for a gateway to best practice Commons 
projects around the world - eg. 
www.icommons.org/projects
3. To provide an identity to unify and promote Commons campaigns and
activities around the world - eg. 
www.icommons.org/campaigns
4. To provide a gateway that connects volunteers with Commons
projects and campaigns - eg. 
www.icommons.org/commoners
5. To provide a co-ordination and facilitation role for the formation 
of international project and campaign consortiums that benefit the
Commons.

##iCommons and Creative Commons and Creative Commons International...

Creative Commons will soon celebrate another birthday. The CC staff 
are always thinking about better ways to deliver their goals and I
will continue to use my position as a CC funded staff member to
promote and facilitate the inclusion of the iCommoners' perspective
in everything they do. 

Creative Commons International, the work that Christiane and many of
you have undertaken to port and maintain licenses continues to go
from strength to strength. The legal porting process is well
developed and continues to provide guidance for those of you either 
porting or maintaining licenses. iCommons and Creative Commons
International will work closely together in recognition that many of
you will be actively participating in both the legal projects and
iCommons.

And finally, iCommons is born today! As of the end of last week, the
charitable organisation incorporated in England is legally called
iCommons. The first challenge is to create a website that provides a
home for the realisation of the functions I have outlined above. Just 
as many of you worked towards the creation of a healthy commons by
contributing to the license porting project, I am hopeful that many
of you will want to continue to inspire and facilitate the use of
those licenses and other tools and projects that grow the commons by 
contributing to, and benefiting from iCommons.

Over the next few weeks I will be asking for participation in the
first iCommons projects. Count down has begun :)

Regards
Paula

ps. please feel free to send onto country lists. 

---------------
sent: 17th November 2005
subject: Creative Commons and iCommons

Dear All,

Recently Creative Commons celebrated the 24th launch of a Creative
Commons local jurisdiction license (congratulations Slovenia!). With 
at least 70 local jurisdiction licenses expected over the next couple
of years and millions of CC licensed objects, it is clear that
Creative Commons is an extraordinary international phenomenon.
However, as we started to discuss at the iSummit in June, this rate 
of growth brings with it the need to re-think the organisational
structure and to think carefully about how Creative Commons presents
itself to an international public.

As we've grown, we've come to recognize that the diversity and energy 
of the communities that have been started under the iCommons project
need their own institutional structure. That institution needs to
support more than the licensing project that has been the core
mission of Creative Commons. 

We have therefore decided to migrate the iCommons project to its own
separate legal entity. That entity will be called "iCommons"; it will
have its own board, and is now incorporated with nonprofit status in 
the UK. I will serve as the executive director of this new entity.
For now, iCommons continues as a subsidiary of Creative Commons, and
will be supported by Creative Commons. But eventually, depending upon
how iCommons grows, it could become a wholly separate entity, devoted 
to spreading CC licenses, as well as addressing the wide range of
issues that have the attention of our iCommons partners. Whether, and
how, iCommons develops will depend upon what you decide.

Creative Commons will continue to work to launch Creative Commons 
licenses within legal jurisdictions around the world.  Christiane
Asschenfeldt will direct that project from Berlin with the help of a
new assistant, Eva Lutterbuese (
eva AT creativecommons.org ), as well as
with Tessi Rieber, who will continue to work for the Berlin office as
a student intern for two days per week.  It has been Christiane's
work so far that made the the international movement of Creative 
Commons possible. But if we are to keep the high quality that the
licensing project requires, it is essential that Creative Commons
keeps strong direction over the licensing project, as distinct from
the other great work of the iCommons community. 

Therefore, in the future, new countries entering into the porting
project will work with Christiane to launch licenses within their
jurisdiction. Those licenses will continue to be maintained both
locally and through Creative Commons. Then, depending upon the 
interest within the country, community members can then join
iCommons. We expect iCommons to be a home for many "free culture"
projects internationally. But the core will always be you.
Christiane's project to internationalize the work of Creative Commons 
will be named "Creative Commons International." That project will
continue to be supported within Creative Commons.

Over the next months, we will be adding a great deal more detail to
this new structuring and in doing so we hope we will address many of 
the questions that are raised by this first email. However it is
important to note that while the world of Creative Commons
International will be very defined in keeping with the renewed focus
on the licenses, the world of iCommons will be far more open. Start 
to think about how you think you would like to contribute to
iCommons, how it should be structured as a volunteer organisation and
about the kinds of activities it should be engaged in. Remember,
Creative Commons is supporting iCommons initially but the 
responsibility for it in the long term resides with the community.
What do you want to achieve and how can we structure it to ensure
that you succeed?

There are lots of questions that we will be answering in a second 
email that is coming on Monday, so stay tuned.


Paula Le Dieu
Executive Director
iCommons
paula AT creativecommons.org

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