Talk at the Creative Commons’ 10th birthday celebration in Berlin, December 8, 2012

1. Creative Commons:
Useless (historical) Facts
Leonhard Dobusch
Freie Universität Berlin - School of Business & Economics
10 Years of Creative Commons
December 8, 2012, Berlin

2. I. The Name

3. I. The Name
©
All rights reserved Some rights reserved

4. I. The Name
Constitutional
Copyright

5. I. The Name

6. II. The Concept - Central or Decentralized?
“ The overarching structural question is whether the
Commons should be centralized around a particular
”
website or distributed over the Internet.

7. II. The Concept - a Conservancy?
“ the concept of an intellectual property conservancy.
”
Eric F. Saltzman (May 1, 2001)

8. II. The Concept - enough storage capacity?
“ [A] Commons defined by quantity of content available
(or number of donations) will require more storage space
and less screening of content, while one focused on quality
will require expert content-selection, but perhaps
correspondingly less storage capacity. Servers, storage, and
salaried editors all cost money, and as a not-for-profit
entity, we must choose our expenses carefully.
”

9. II. The Concept - First Mock Page

10. II. The Concept - Tax Deductions?
“ We first pounded the promise of tax deductions as a
”
motivation for donors of intellectual property.
Eric F. Saltzman (May 1, 2001)

11. II. The Concept - the Greatest Concerns
“ It is too easy to imagine a scenario in which a
completely unregulated Commons turns into either a
junkyard for worthless content, or alternately, a repository
of Internet pornography.
”

12. III. The Licenses - Modules
CC Zero Attribution ShareAlike NonCommercial No Derivatives

13. III. The Licenses - Wording
„Artistic GPL“ ShareAlike
Public Domain License CC0
Additional Restrictions Attribution
NonCommercial Use Only
Unmodified Use Only No Derivatives

14. III. The Licenses - Inflation
Developmental Nations License
Sampling
Sampling Plus
Academic Use Only (not implemented)
Timed Donation (not implemented)

15. IV. Humbleness:
“ [T]here is no guarantee that if we build it, they will come.
”

16. V. World domination:

17. Sources:
Documents of the Creative Commons meeting at May 7,
2001 at Harvard Law School‘s Berkman Center, online:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/creativecommons/
[26.11.2012]
Interview with Lawrence Lessig, Founder of Creative
Commons
Interview with Mike Linksvayer, former Vice-CEO of
Creative Commons