Discuss

Creative Commons has many innovations in development right now, from new license options and versions to Creative Commons Worldwide and more. This page is designed to bring you into that development process.

Sign up to take part in the development of any of the projects below. Discussion will be led and shaped by our Project Leads, experts in the field. As each discussion group arrives at a workable proposal, Creative Commons will then consider implementation. (See the illustration for an overview of the process.)

As always, our weblog will remain the general discussion area for news and developments at Creative Commons. As an issue begins to require more in-depth discussion and research, we'll choose a Project Lead and devote space on this page to its development. Think of the weblog as the place to air your new ideas, and these discussion lists as the laboratories where you can help make those ideas real.

Discussion Lists

General Creative Commons related topics: community

Discussions of new licenses: sampling, education, developing nations, translation

General questions about licenses: licenses general

New list exploring business ideas: commonwealth

Technology lists: metadata, developers

Creative Commons Worldwide discussions: icommons

New License Options

Licenses, General and Drafts

Description: Discussion of our current licenses -- including possible improvements to them.

Project Lead: Mia Garlick, Creative Commons General Counsel

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Sampling

Description: Discussion of a license option that would encourage sampling, collage, or "mash-ups." See the original proposal and discussion and the kickoff message to the group. An early message to the group also covered guidelines for discussion.

Project Lead: Negativland

• License Draft.
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Education

Description: Discussion of a license option that would encourage educational uses of a work (separate from commercial/noncommercial considerations). See the original discussion and proposal.

Project Lead: David Wiley, Founder of OpenContent and Assistant Professor of Instructional Technology, Utah State University

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Developing Nations

Description: Discussion of a license option that would permit any use of a work in a developing nation, as defined by United Nations or OECD guidelines (for example).

Project Lead: Jamie Love, Director of the Consumer Project on Technology

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Translation license

Description: Discussion of a license that would allow translations of a work into global languages.

Project Lead: Heather Ford, Reuters Digital Vision Fellow at Stanford University (http://www.hblog.org and http://reuters.stanford.edu)

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Community

Description: Wide ranging public discussion of Creative Commons not specific to our other lists.

Project Lead: Mike Linksvayer, Creative Commons CTO

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Commonwealth

Description: A list dedicated to exploring a hybrid commercial/noncommercial license to capture economic as well as non-economic incentives for IP innovation.

Marshall Van Alstyne, Associate Professor Boston University, Visiting Assoc. Professor MIT, co-chair Licensing Group for the Open Process Handbook Initiative

• Explanation of licensing tradeoffs
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iCommons

Email discussions regarding the development of licenses are available from each of the Worldwide project pages. Choose a country and look for the discussion list that interests you.

Metadata

Description: General discussion of Creative Commons' metadata strategy, including how to use our metadata and how we plan to extend it.

Project Lead: Mike Linksvayer, Creative Commons CTO

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Developers

Description: General discussion of Creative Commons' free/open source software projects and developer APIs.

Project Lead: Nathan Yergler, Creative Commons Software Engineer

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