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  • From: Lawrence Lessig <lessig AT pobox.com>
  • To: cc-lessigletter AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [cc-lessigletter] CC in Review: Lawrence Lessig on iCommons
  • Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 19:32:28 -0800

This email is part of a weekly series written by Lawrence Lessig and others about the history and future of Creative Commons. If you would like to be removed from this list, please click here:
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Alternatively, if you know others who might find these interesting, please recommend they sign up at
http://creativecommons.org/about/lessigletter ]


Two weeks ago, I described our first efforts to build CC internationally. That was the beginning of the "iCommons Project." Directed from Berlin, this project began with a single objective: to "port" Creative Commons licenses into the law of local jurisdictions. Our aim was to build an infrastructure of free licenses internationally so that creative work could move from jurisdiction to jurisdiction while preserving the freedoms that the creator chose. In less than three years, we have over 70 volunteer projects working to port Creative Commons licenses and 25 jurisdictions that have already launched their local licenses.

This first effort to build an international Commons has been much more successful than I ever imagined. There were many sleepless nights when I worried whether we would find any international partners Let's just say the sleeplessness has now moved far from that concern. Indeed, if anything, we've seen the iCommons project become much more than we imagined. As CC projects developed around the world, they connected with movements that had the same ideals. These ideals of a "Commons" are not American. They are human. And as iCommons opened channels of discussions of these ideals, we began to recognize that the iCommons Project would have to grow.

Last June, around a hundred of our volunteers from more than 40 of our iCommons jurisdictions gathered in Boston for the first iCommons Summit. We began a discussion then about how we could best support this growing international movement. And as I listened to the iCommons participants describe the work that they wanted to do, I realized then that iCommons promised to become much more than the (relatively) simple project that Creative Commons was. Creative Commons was launched to build an infrastructure of freedom; iCommons promised to build a global movement that would embrace and extend (in the best possible way) that infrastructure of freedom.

So in June, we began to discuss publicly an idea that had been suggested by one iCommons participant — that we separate iCommons into its own organization, led by the many young leaders of this movement from around the world. And with this email, I am very happy to announce that we have done just that.

iCommons is now a separate nonprofit, organized under the laws of Britain. Its board will comprise a wide range of activists from around the world. And while iCommons will continue to support the spread of Creative Commons licenses, it will also do much more. iCommons will become the core of a federation of movements all pushing to enable creativity and the spread of knowledge and culture internationally.

Creative Commons will seed this movement with financial and organizational support (yet another reason we need your support!). But as iCommons becomes its own movement with its own voice, the role of Creative Commons in this federation will be just one of many.

What happens then to the project designed to port Creative Commons licenses internationally? That work will remain with Creative Commons. Christiane Asschenfeldt will continue to lead that part of our project. But its work will be focused upon building the legal infrastructure that Creative Commons needs internationally. Christiane will continue to identify international volunteers to help port our licenses in their local jurisdictions. We will continue to celebrate as these licenses are locally launched. And some (we hope all) of these local partners of Creative Commons will join iCommons.

So "what more than licenses" is Creative Commons? We're building an infrastructure of free licenses internationally. We're working with scientists and scholars to extend these ideals to science. And now we've helped seed an international movement that will work with artists, educators, collecting rights societies, museums, publishers and governments, to build upon this infrastructure free cultures.

Creative Commons is all this that these emails have described. More importantly, it is all this that needs your support.

In the next two weeks, I'll describe two other new initiatives that will define our work over the next year. And then this path of missives will turn to consider some criticisms of what we've done and where we're going. Stay tuned, but fear not: I promise to be finished by Christmas!

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Before I end this week's email, some news from the fundraising-front: On November 3 in San Francisco, over 120 supporters and friends of Creative Commons attended a cocktail event to celebrate new iCommons board member Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia. The event was sponsored by the law firms that first launched Creative Commons, Cooley Godward, and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, as well as a new supporter of CC – Scharffen Berger Chocolate. Thanks to everyone who helped make that event a success. And after you view some of the photos from the event, please feel free to join them in supporting CC today!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/49051714@N00/sets/1383014/


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To link to or comment on this message, go to:
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5700

Week 6 - What is Science Commons? By John Wilbanks, Science Commons Executive Director
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5695

Week 6 - What is Science Commons? By John Wilbanks, Science Commons Executive Director - Spanish Version
http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/translations/lessig-letter-6-es.pdf

Thanks to Maria Cristinia Alvite for translation.

Archive of Lessig Letters
http://creativecommons.org/support/letters

Support the Commons
http://creativecommons.org/support

Learn More
http://creativecommons.org/learnmore

For comics and movies: http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/how1,
http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/








  • [cc-lessigletter] CC in Review: Lawrence Lessig on iCommons, Lawrence Lessig, 11/16/2005

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