Syb Groeneveld, the Creative Commons ambassador in Russia since 2008, will be leaving our country after several failures to adapt licenses to our legislation.

Creative Commons – series of copyleft licenses, comprehensible in both legal and ordinary people languages. The main point of each license is about users’ voluntary refusal of their literary copyrights, letting, for instance, distribute or even commercially exploit their pieces of work.

Prior to Groeneveld’s coming to Russia, his activity on Creative Commons implementation had been more successful. For example, as early as in 2004 with the support of Dutch Department of Education, he managed to adapt the licenses to local laws. Yet our country has turned out to be a far more tough nut.

Despite of being told by some representatives of State Duma, that licensing doesn’t go together with the RF laws (it happened in 2008), Groeneveld didn’t give up right away. He called 4 round-table conferences. As a result there were some decisions worked out, which let adapt licenses with minor amendments to laws. Later in the same year of 2008, free licensing promotion stopped because of money shortage.

In the middle of May 2010, Creative Commons cancelled a big conference in Moscow where Lawrence Lessig (the founder of Creative Commons) was meant to take part in. And that was "the final nail in the coffin".

Nevertheless, when Syb Groeneveld was asked, whether Creative Commons licensing implementation in Russia is still possible, he replied: “ I think it is possible, and we yet need to work not only on free licenses, but also on laws. So far, it seems to me, that Civil Code needs amendments and revision to be done. The message of law is good, but its interpretation frequently suffers”.