Creative Commons Germany launches with a bang, announcing not only German licenses, but lots of newly unrestricted material. Janko Roettgers announced the relicensing of his book, Mix, Burn & R.I.P. by a major German publisher; the team of CH7 showed their CC-licensed film, which has been downloaded more than 70,000 times already.

If copyright in the U.S. creates entangling defaults, international copyright adds even more layers of potential incompatibility. Continental European countries recognize moral rights (droit moral); each country specifies the author's exclusive rights and options in its own terms. To be understood by lawyers, the licenses need to speak in these terms of art; to be understood by artists and facilitate international collaborations, the licenses must convey similar meaning in each national instance. The iCommons licenses translate the CC "some rights reserved" concept to help creators through the cross-border copyright muddle.

Personally, I'm looking forward to the cc-enabled translation of Janko's book, since it's beyond my rudimentary German!