Wendy Seltzer, reporting on the launch of Creative Commons Germany at the Wizards of OS conference:

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.