complete press contact list for creative commons

[Glenn Otis Brown <glenn AT creativecommons.org>]

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CREATIVE COMMONS POISED FOR NEW GROWTH PHASE WITH KEY NEW HIRES AND 
EXPANSION INTO SCIENCE

The Silicon Valley nonprofit takes on new personnel as it prepares to 
explore a Science Commons, continue its rapid international expansion, 
and build upon the precocious success of its first two years.

SAN FRANCISCO, USA  November 10, 2004  Creative Commons, a nonprofit 
dedicated to expanding the range of creative and intellectual works 
free to share and build upon, today announced the creation of two new 
staff positions as the organization makes the transition from meteoric 
start-up to online institution and begins applying its model to 
scientific research.

Silicon Valley veteran Mark Resch joins Creative Commons as its overall 
Chief Executive Officer, while entrepreneur and metadata expert John 
Wilbanks joins as the Executive Director of Science Commons, a newly 
formed branch of the organization.

Creative Commons’ long-time core staff, led by Executive Director Glenn 
Otis Brown, Assistant Director Neeru Paharia, and international affairs 
directors Christiane Asschenfeldt and Roland Honekamp, will continue on 
in more specialized versions of their roles. Under this leadership 
team, the number of web pages carrying Creative Commons copyright 
licenses has grown from zero, in December 2002, to around five million 
today. The nonprofit now offers its free legal tools in nine different 
languages, with around three dozen more translations in draft. The 
organization’s most recent accomplishments include the sampling- and 
copying-friendly licensing of the WIRED CD, a 16-track album featuring 
the Beastie Boys, David Byrne, and other top artists, as well as the 
debut of a unique semantic-web search engine, which now ships with 
Mozilla’s industry-leading browser, Firefox 1.0.

“In just two years, Brown and Paharia have led the Creative Commons 
team from the basement of Stanford Law School to the cover of WIRED,” 
said Lawrence Lessig, chairman of Creative Commons and professor of law 
at Stanford, referring to the November issue of the magazine. “As the 
new overall CEO, Resch brings a specific and crucial skill-set to 
Creative Commons at this phase in its growth. The core staff are now 
free to focus on their intense substantive workload, while Resch will 
help the expanded organization become a broad and stable movement.”

“Wilbanks’s addition as leader of the new Science Commons branch also 
marks a very exciting new phase,” said Lessig, “as the Creative Commons 
model is tested in unchartered areas of intellectual endeavor.”

Mark Resch brings to the new CEO position a wealth of experience 
developing successful start-up projects into mature firms. He is 
chairman and co-founder of the interactive system maker Onomy Labs, 
Inc. and was President and CEO of CommerceNet, a nonprofit industry 
consortium that addressed critical enablers of Internet commerce. At 
Xerox, Resch developed new Internet business opportunities and managed 
xerox.com worldwide. Resch was also co-founder and Vice President of 
Operations at Luna Imaging Inc., which created large interactive 
photography databases and was funded by the Getty Trust and Eastman 
Kodak.

Wilbanks comes to Creative Commons from a Fellowship at the World Wide 
Web Consortium in Semantic Web for Life Sciences. Previously, he 
founded and led to acquisition Incellico, a bioinformatics company that 
built semantic graph networks for use in pharmaceutical discovery.

Structurally, the Creative Commons corporation will consist of three 
parallel projects working in concert and overseen by Resch and chairman 
Lessig:

(1)	Creative Commons  the existing organization that focuses on 
copyright and cultural subject matter like music, images, and 
educational materials;

(2)	International Commons  the effort to adapt Creative Commons’ legal 
tools to various countries’ legal systems (over 50 and counting); and

(3)	Science Commons  a project to build on Creative Commons’ work in 
open-access scientific publishing (like MIT’s Open Courseware and the 
Public Library of Science) and apply Creative Commons’ voluntary “some 
rights reserved” approach to patents and scientific data.

Functionally, both Science Commons and Creative Commons will overlap 
with International Commons, and current staffers will enjoy roles that 
span the various sections of the organization.

Brown, for example, who coined the phrase “some rights reserved” to 
describe Creative Commons’ middle-ground approach to copyright, will 
continue to coordinate messaging strategy and act as the organization's 
main staff attorney. Paharia, who directed the development of Creative 
Commons one-of-a-kind search engine and its innovative MP3-tagging 
protocol, among other projects, will continue to coordinate business 
and technology development.

Brown, anticipating Creative Commons’ rapid growth in 2004, first 
proposed the creation of Resch’s CEO position over a year ago.

“Our growth has exceeded even our most optimistic expectations,” said 
Brown, “but by mid-2003 it was already clear that our extremely lean 
team had created a movement that would require new skill sets at 
various levels of the organization. We’ve been looking forward to 
focusing on our substantive legal and cultural projects full-time, and 
Mark Resch’s managerial expertise will help Creative Commons further 
accelerate its sustained and stable growth.”

About Creative Commons

A nonprofit founded in early 2002, Creative Commons promotes the 
creative re-use of intellectual and artistic works—whether owned or in 
the public domain—by empowering authors and audiences. It is sustained 
by the generous support of the Center for the Public Domain, the John 
D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Omidyar Network, and the 
Hewlett Foundation.

For general information, visit <http://creativecommons.org>.

About Mark Resch, the new CEO of Creative Commons

Mark Resch is deeply interested in the mutual interaction of society, 
business, and technology. He is Chairman and co-founder of interactive 
system maker Onomy Labs, Inc. Resch was President and CEO of 
CommerceNet, a nonprofit industry consortium that addressed critical 
enablers of Internet commerce. At Xerox Corporation, Resch was 
developed new Internet business opportunities and managed xerox.com 
worldwide. Resch was co-founder and Vice President of Operations at 
Luna Imaging Inc., creator of large interactive photography databases, 
funded by the Getty Trust and Eastman Kodak. As Vice President and 
Director of Computer Imaging at CRSS Architects, Inc. Resch integrated 
CAD, GIS, FM, and Visualization software to render data and space. As 
Director of Graphic Arts at Computer Curriculum Corporation, Resch 
supported the creation of more than 3,000 hours of interactive 
courseware for students at risk. Resch was assistant professor of 
Computer Art in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at 
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and drafted its MFA degree. Resch 
served as co-chair for the Association for Computer Machinery's Special 
Interest Group on Computer Graphic and Interactive Techniques 
(SIGGRAPH) in 1993, and has served on numerous non-profit boards.

Resch is originally from Chicago, Illinois, and holds a BA in History 
from Grinnell College and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute 
of Chicago.

About John Wilbanks, Executive Director of the Science Commons

John Wilbanks comes to Creative Commons from a Fellowship at the World 
Wide Web Consortium in Semantic Web for Life Sciences. Previously, he 
founded and led to acquisition Incellico, a bioinformatics company that 
built semantic graph networks for use in pharmaceutical discovery. 
Before founding Incellico, John was the first Assistant Director at the 
Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School and also 
spent time in Washington, DC, USA as a legislative aide to U.S. 
Representative Fortney ("Pete") Stark. Wilbanks holds a Bachelor of 
Arts in Philosophy from Tulane University.

Contact

Glenn Otis Brown (San Francisco)
Executive Director, Creative Commons
415.946.3065
glenn AT creativecommons.org

Press Kit

http://creativecommons.org/presskit/




Glenn Otis Brown
Executive Director
Creative Commons
glenn AT creativecommons.org
+1.415.946.3065 (telephone)
+1.415.336.1433 (mobile)
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