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There is probably no mass media technology that could compete with
cyberspace in terms of propagating and circulating ideas and human
expressions. The Internet is now the leading repository of music,
video, photographs, live journals, books, presentations, documents,
and other forms of artistic, literary, educational and even
scientific creations.
The existing copyright regime applies, and
provides legal protection, to this intellectual property works
expressed in digital form. The arrangement is of course perfect
especially so that in many countries copyright attaches to the work
from the moment of creation. But this legal safeguard could also
stifle creativity, public exposure, and in a sense impose some
restraint on the creator’s freedom of choice particularly on the
manner on how the netizens could use, exploit or distribute the
work. And this is what Creative Commons seeks to address.
Creative Commons, a nonstock, nonprofit global
movement of prestigious organizations and stakeholders now existing
in more than fifty countries, provides free tools that let authors,
scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work
with the freedoms they want it to carry. They can use CC to change
copyright terms from “All Rights Reserved” to “Some Rights
Reserved”.
Creative Commons is not anticopyright. On the
contrary, it is based on, and works within the framework of,
copyright and recognizes that every intellectual creation in the
digital world is entitled to both legal and moral respect.
Certainly, Creative Commons does not deny the
commercial use or distribution of works. Come to think of it, it can
even open up better avenues for subsequent commercial opportunities.
Pure and simple, what Creative Commons provides
the authors, artists, educators, and scientists is the option, to
let the world knows exactly how they want their works or creations
used, distributed or even exploited, as a legal alternative to the
default regime called copyright. In short, Creative Commons is all
about freedom, promoting free culture and knowledge sharing.
While copyright principles are almost uniform in
every country that recognizes it since the 1886 Berne Convention for
the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, some of its terms
still vary. Thus, Creative Commons embarked on porting its
licenses in each country affiliated with it to make sure that local
CC licenses conform to domestic copyright laws.
In the Philippines, this author is the legal and
public lead of the project jurisdiction with the Arellano University
School of Law, through its e-Law Center, as the lead public
institution.
The country has successfully ported its local
Creative Commons license last December 15, 2007, and is now
available for pinoynetizens to use.
Tomorrow, January 14, the Arellano Law School
will hold the official public launching of Creative
Commons—Philippines and its ported licenses. The launch will be
preceded by open sessions on free and open source software and
e-learning. The event will be capped with a CC-PH concert featuring
local bands and the Arellano Law Singers, who will perform their
original works under a Creative Commons license.
Artists, educators, scientists, authors,
bloggers and creators of works who use the Internet as a medium may
now avail of the Creative Commons Philippines License Version 3.0 by
visiting the website—www.creativecommons.org or
www.philippinecommons.org, and there they can choose their option
or freedom.
With Creative Commons, it is perfectly legal to
share, remix and share. (www.soriano-ph.com)
Those interested to take part in the launching
may send the author an email at jimmy@soriano-ph.com.
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