This document summarizes the early development of Creative Commons and discusses key issues addressed in its founding, including: 1) Whether to have a centralized website or distributed model, with concerns about sufficient storage capacity. 2) The concept of an "intellectual property conservancy" to manage copyrighted works. 3) Early discussions around tax deductions to incentivize donations of intellectual property and concerns about unregulated content becoming a "junkyard" or hosting pornography. 4) The development of Creative Commons licenses including options for attribution, sharing, non-commercial use, no derivatives, and additional restrictions.

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