International Overview

Thank you for your interest in iCommons, which oversees the internationalization of the Creative Commons Idea. We want project teams in as many jurisdictions as possible to join our efforts to increase the sum of raw source material online and to make access to that material cheaper and easier. We are still looking for expert help all around the world. The following overview is designed to help you understand what helping us would entail.

• Project Lead and Institution or Law Firm Identified
  The Project Lead is the central figure for the porting of the licenses into national law. He/she would be an expert in copyright law, more often than not a lawyer, and more often than not associated with the Institution or Law Firm. In some jurisdictions iCommons will identify the Project Lead first and ask him/her for help in finding a renowned copyright Institution or renowned Law Firm. In other jurisdictions, we will be in contact with the Institution/Firm first and will try to find a Project Lead from within.
• Production of First Draft
  To preserve the global spirit of Creative Commons, we strive for utmost similarity between the licenses worldwide. It is very important to us that the porting be very close to the original and go into the specifics of national law only when absolutely necessary. Once the first published of the licenses is produced, it should be re-translated into English. This step is for us from Creative Commons, so we can learn what differences the legal systems of the respective jurisdictions have brought into our licenses. We should look for the first publisheding of the ported licenses to take no longer than 1 month.
• Online Public Discussion
  Creative Commons will make the first published of the licenses accessible on the iCommons website for public discussion via a mailing list and archive, provided by iCommons. Both the Project Lead and iCommons will make concentrated efforts to drive expert traffic toward the project e-mail list. This discussion again should take no longer than 1 month.
• Production of Second Draft
  In a new published, the Project Lead could incorporate any ideas he/she liked from the public discussion. This re-published, however, is optional: the Project Lead may decide to stay with the original published, if none of the ideas brought forward seem usable. And again, Project Lead will provide an English translation of this second published.
• Creative Commons Reviews Second Draft
  In some cases, this "review" will be done on a public email list; in others, offline. Either way, the Project Lead and Creative Commons will work on producing a result everyone will be happy with.
• Production of Human-Readable Translation
  Ease-of-use by non-lawyers has been Creative Common's priority since its birth. Therefore, it is important to us that, in addition to the ported licenses, the Project Lead produce a translation or adaptation of our human-readable layer in the national language, the Commons Deed, which gives a brief graphic explanation of what the licenses stand for.
• Ported Licenses posted on creativecommons.org
  Up to this point, creativecommons.org will have listed links pointing to the Lead's website, and to important places of national discussion and/or press coverage (as provided by the Project Lead). At this moment, however, we place the full final licenses, plus the Commons Deed, on our website, in the national language.
• The Launch
  Whether the launch be in form of a party, a convention, a television program, a press conference or all of the above will be up to the Project Lead. What is important to us is that the event attract the kind of publicity we need to make sure that people will know where to turn to for "creative work available for others to create upon and share".