Creative Commons Poised for New Growth Phase with Key New Hires and Expansion into Science
The Silicon Valley nonprofit takes on new personnel as it prepares to explore a Science Commons, continue its rapid international expansion, and build upon the precocious success of its first two years.
SAN FRANCISCO, USA November 10, 2004 Creative Commons, a nonprofit dedicated to expanding the range of creative and intellectual works free to share and build upon, today announced the creation of two new staff positions as the organization makes the transition from meteoric start-up to online institution and begins applying its model to scientific research.
Silicon Valley veteran Mark Resch joins Creative Commons as its overall Chief Executive Officer, while entrepreneur and metadata expert John Wilbanks joins as the Executive Director of Science Commons, a newly formed branch of the organization.
Creative Commons’ long-time core staff, led by Executive Director Glenn Otis Brown, Assistant Director Neeru Paharia, and international affairs directors Christiane Asschenfeldt and Roland Honekamp, will continue on in more specialized versions of their roles. Under this leadership team, the number of web pages carrying Creative Commons copyright licenses has grown from zero, in December 2002, to around five million today. The nonprofit now offers its free legal tools in nine different languages, with around three dozen more translations in draft. The organization’s most recent accomplishments include the sampling- and copying-friendly licensing of the WIRED CD, a 16-track album featuring the Beastie Boys, David Byrne, and other top artists, as well as the debut of a unique semantic-web search engine, which now ships with Mozilla’s industry-leading browser, Firefox 1.0.
“In just two years, Brown and Paharia have led the Creative Commons team from
the basement of Stanford Law School to the cover of WIRED,”
said Lawrence Lessig,
chairman of Creative Commons and professor of law at Stanford, referring to the
November issue of the magazine. “As the new overall CEO, Resch brings a specific
and crucial skill-set to Creative Commons at this phase in its growth. The core
staff are now free to focus on their intense substantive workload, while Resch will
help the expanded organization become a broad and stable movement.”
“Wilbanks’s addition as leader of the new Science Commons branch also marks a very exciting new phase,” said Lessig, “as the Creative Commons model is tested in unchartered areas of intellectual endeavor.”
Mark Resch brings to the new CEO position a wealth of experience developing successful start-up projects into mature firms. He is chairman and co-founder of the interactive system maker Onomy Labs, Inc. and was President and CEO of Commerce Net, a nonprofit industry consortium that addressed critical enablers of Internet commerce. At Xerox, Resch developed new Internet business opportunities and managed http://xerox.com worldwide. Resch was also co-founder and Vice President of Operations at Luna Imaging Inc., which created large interactive photography databases and was funded by the Getty Trust and Eastman Kodak.
Wilbanks comes to Creative Commons from a Fellowship at the World Wide Web Consortium in Semantic Web for Life Sciences. Previously, he founded and led to acquisition Incellico, a bioinformatics company that built semantic graph networks for use in pharmaceutical discovery.
Structurally, the Creative Commons corporation will consist of three parallel projects working in concert and overseen by Resch and chairman Lessig:
Functionally, both Science Commons and Creative Commons will overlap with International Commons, and current staffers will enjoy roles that span the various sections of the organization.
Brown, for example, who coined the phrase “some rights reserved” to describe Creative Commons’ middle-ground approach to copyright, will continue to coordinate messaging strategy and act as the organization’s main staff attorney. Paharia, who directed the development of Creative Commons one-of-a-kind search engine and its innovative MP3-tagging protocol, among other projects, will continue to coordinate business and technology development.
Brown, anticipating Creative Commons’ rapid growth in 2004, first proposed the creation of Resch’s CEO position over a year ago.
“Our growth has exceeded even our most optimistic expectations,” said Brown, “but by mid-2003 it was already clear that our extremely lean team had created a movement that would require new skill sets at various levels of the organization. We’ve been looking forward to focusing on our substantive legal and cultural projects full-time, and Mark Resch’s managerial expertise will help Creative Commons further accelerate its sustained and stable growth.”
About Creative Commons
A nonprofit founded in early 2002, Creative Commons promotes the creative re-use of intellectual and artistic works—whether owned or in the public domain—by empowering authors and audiences. It is sustained by the generous support of the Center for the Public Domain, the John D. and Catherine T. Mac Arthur Foundation, the Omidyar Network, and the Hewlett Foundation.
For general information, visit <http://creativecommons.org>.
About Mark Resch, the new CEO of Creative Commons
Mark Resch is deeply interested in the mutual interaction of society, business, and technology. He is Chairman and co-founder of interactive system maker Onomy Labs, Inc. Resch was President and CEO of Commerce Net, a nonprofit industry consortium that addressed critical enablers of Internet commerce. At Xerox Corporation, Resch was developed new Internet business opportunities and managed http://xerox.com worldwide. Resch was co-founder and Vice President of Operations at Luna Imaging Inc., creator of large interactive photography databases, funded by the Getty Trust and Eastman Kodak. As Vice President and Director of Computer Imaging at CRSS Architects, Inc. Resch integrated CAD, GIS, FM, and Visualization software to render data and space. As Director of Graphic Arts at Computer Curriculum Corporation, Resch supported the creation of more than 3,000 hours of interactive courseware for students at risk. Resch was assistant professor of Computer Art in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and drafted its MFA degree. Resch served as co-chair for the Association for Computer Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Computer Graphic and Interactive Techniques (SIGGRAPH) in 1993, and has served on numerous non-profit boards.
Resch is originally from Chicago, Illinois, and holds a BA in History from Grinnell College and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
About John Wilbanks, Executive Director of the Science Commons
John Wilbanks comes to Creative Commons from a Fellowship at the World Wide Web Consortium in Semantic Web for Life Sciences. Previously, he founded and led to acquisition Incellico, a bioinformatics company that built semantic graph networks for use in pharmaceutical discovery. Before founding Incellico, John was the first Assistant Director at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School and also spent time in Washington, DC, USA as a legislative aide to U.S. Representative Fortney (“Pete”) Stark. Wilbanks holds a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Tulane University.