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The Creative Commons Germany license suite is available in the following version. License your work under these licenses, or choose the international licenses. More info.

Many thanks to all who contributed to the localization of the license suite.

Creative Commons is working with European Academy of Law and Computing and the Institute of Law and Informatics at Saarland University to create Germany jurisdiction-specific licenses from the generic Creative Commons licenses.

CC Germany List

Legal Project Lead: John Hendrik Weitzmann

Public Project Lead: Markus Beckedahl

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• English explanation of substantive legal changes
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More about the European Academy of Law and Computing (EEAR), Merzig and Saarbrücken

The European Academy of Law and Computing was established in the year 2005 as a non-profit corporation situated in Merzig and Saarbrücken, near the borders to France and Luxemburg in south-western Germany. The Academy wants to build bridges between the IT sector and the world of legal professionals. Its mission therefore is threefold, combining research activities, educational courses and development of software and services.

In the area of research the Academy offers various workshops, conducts EU funded studies and hosts the Merzig Legal Database Forum (Merziger Datenbankenforum Recht), to name a few. In regard to education and additional qualification for lawyers a fully equipped test environment is on offer as well as a wide range of courses, covering topics like XML, Digital Data Management and Legal Web Services. The development activities include the German Database of Higher Education Law (KMK Hochschulrecht), the Caveat Registry Service, applications for implementing the XJustiz standard, and other projects.

More about Institute of Law and Informatics (Institut für Rechtsinformatik) at Saarland University, Saarbrücken

The ‘Saarbrücker Rechtsinformatik’ (Law and Informatics in Saarbrücken) was founded in 1988 along with the establishment of the department of law and informatics, which was originally funded by the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft (Donors’ Association for the Promotion of Sciences and Humanities in Germany) and headed by Prof. Dr. Herberger. Today the Institute of Law and Informatics at Saarland University (Universität des Saarlandes in Saarbrücken, Germany) is maintained by the Chair for Civil Law, Legal Theory and Legal Informatics Prof. Dr. Maximilian Herberger and the Chair for Civil Law, Civil Procedure and Philosophy of Law Prof. Dr. Helmut Rüßmann.

The Institute of Law and Informatics concerns itself with the question of how legal professionals can improve their ways of working with the aid of new technology. Law and informatics is part of applied information technology just like business information systems and medical informatics are. In this context the Institute of Law and Informatics feels that it is its duty to make legal information electronically available, therefore deviating from the traditional printed format, and to support the electronic exchange of legal documents. Examples include online legal databases as well as the technical maintenance of the decision databases of the Courts, for example the websites of the Federal Constitutional Court, the Social, Labour and Fiscal Courts of the Saarland as well as the Administrative Court in Frankfurt am Main.

Furthermore, the Institute of Law and Informatics deals with Information Law and legal problems of new media, especially Internet Law. The Internet poses many legal questions, which concern current and future legislation of almost all areas of law and numerous regulations. In relation to the named issues the Institute concentrates mainly on questions of civil law.

Acknowledgements

Creative Commons would like to thank the former project leads, Professor Dr. Thomas Dreier, Ellen Euler, and Oliver Meyer , and Dr. Till Jaeger, who in a shared effort adapted the CC licenses to German copyright law; the

Institute for Information Law at the University of Karlsruhe and the

Institut für Rechtsfragen der Freien und Open Source Software, for the extensive work done so far and their continuing support.

Jurisdiction: Creative Commons Germany

Date submitted: December 2010

Roadmap

Description

The German CC Jurisdiction Project aims at supporting a better way of sharing online. It does so by making the CCPL work under German law and by bridging gaps between the world in which Creative Commons was invented and everyday online reality in Germany, that exist in terms of both history of law as well as discourse of creativity.

The project has two Leads, both located mainly in Berlin. John Weitzmann as Legal Project Lead is supported by the European Academy of Law and Computing (EEAR), Markus Beckedahl as Public Project Lead is supported by newthinking communications.

Priorities for 2011

- Run one or more contests online to let fans do new designs for schwag (both graphics only and with text) and have the best produced also as parts of flyers, brochures and other new CC info material. Of course any new designs will be CC licensed and as such re-usable for others.

- Make progress on the issues of porting gaps and plain language reform, in cooperation with the Communia Network and CC Portugal, who have agreed to work on this as a CC Europe task force. The goal is to have a paper ready for the CC meeting in the 3rd quarter.

- Act as cooperation partner for re:publica 2010 and put CC-relevant topics on the agenda of the conference. One way to go forward on this one will be to individually invite possible adopters to learn more about the CCPL and its application at re:publica. Another part of this item is to establish re:publica as a background for regular CC Europe meetings..

- Build the basic structure and introductory texts for the CC Commentary and build a group of volunteers to work on the first set of content. Some positive replies have already been received on the latter, but more needs to be done.

- Boost social media integration and donation functions on our website.

Project Composition

Legal Lead

John H. Weitzmann supported by EEAR

Public Lead

Markus Beckedahl supported by newthinking communications

Affiliate Team (all part-time only)

Tim Baumann, Filmmaker (Team Speaker Film/Video)

Ulrike Elteste, Lawyer

Ralph Hecksteden, Jurmatix GbR (Sysadmin)

Professor Dr. Maximilian Herberger, Law Professor, Saarland University

Ronen Kadushin, Designer (Team Speaker Design)

Sarah Leiendecker, Institute for Law and Informatics, Saarland University

Sabine Micka, EEAR (Accounting/Donations)

Hans-Martin Schmidt, Lawyer (Team Speaker Open Data)

Klaas Schmidt, Lawyer

Wolfgang Senges, Media Consultant

Michael Weller, Lawyer, EEAR

Helpers and Interns

From time to time we have additional volunteers (and regular interns at newthinking communications) helping with everyday work or special projects.

Web resources

Jurisdiction website

Our website runs on Wordpress, with a theme modified from one of the previous themes of creativecommons.org. Next items on the agenda for the site are a better integration of our social media channels (identi.ca and twitter), an easy web-based donation scheme (using either PayPal or Sofortüberweisung.de), a remodeling of our FAQ section and integration of a module to aggregate CC news.

CC Category within netzpolitik.org Weblog

Markus Beckedahl is a very sought-after evangelist for freedom of the internet, open government and – as CC Germany Public Lead – also for CC licensing. He runs one of the top ten weblogs in Germany, netzpolitik.org, which contains a separate category for CC-related topics with hundreds of articles.

Internal ATeam Wiki

For internal coordination of the Affiliate Team and for material collection and other purposes the EEAR maintains a moinmoin wiki that all team members can access.

Metrics

We see the numbers of CC licenses or CC licensed content as a rather arbitrary factor, because the sheer numbers themselves do in no way reflect quality and relevance of the so lincensed content. They also tend to distort debates about the benefits and downsides of alternative licensing away from the aspect of individual creators making licensing decisions. We see more value in highlighting certain projects, groups or individuals that in our opinion are possible role models for CC licensing.

Competitions

CC DE Schwag Competition

In cooperation with Wikimedia Germany we want to run an online competition to make new designs for CC schwag and merchandising material. This is meant to raise awareness of how diverse the group of CC licensors and re-users is and to also benefit the project in terms of material to promote CC's cause. The winners will be announced at one of the larger gatherings of net-minded people in Berlin (28C3, re:pubica, Linuxtag, …).

Workshops, Presentations and Strategic Talks

People from the CC DE Affiliate Team (ATeam) and the two project leads are frequently invited to talk about CC and alternative licensing and write articles and papers on the topic. There have also been individual consultations and strategic talks on the CCPL and their application with several stake holder institutions, one of the most prominent being the CC-GEMA dialogue, an exchange with the leading German collecting society for musical works. Other such consultantions have been held with public broadcasters, political and philathropic foundations and media or companies in.

Institutional and Project Cooperations

CC Germany is always open to cooperate with other groups and institutions if this apprears to be beneficial to our common(s) cause. In the past, such cooperations have existed f. e. with the German Film Museum Deutsche Kinemathek, the Board of Open Youth Education of the State of Baden-Württemberg and others. At the moment and in the coming year we will especially cooperate with Google Germany's policy group and their Co://aboratory and also with the activists of the C3S project that explored the pros and cons of setting up a collecting society for CC content.

Regional Collaboration

Since 2009 there is a regional collaboration on European CC Projects under the name CC Europe. It is not formalized and has developed out of the Communia Project, a EU-funded Thematic Network on the digital public domain to which many European CC Projects are members. CC Germany hat built and runs the CC Europe website at http://europe.creativecommons.org as a central entry point for anyone interested in CC licensing and related topics at the European level. In addition to that we maintain the CC Europe mailinglist and coordinate regional meetings and more.

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