creative commons licence targeted for developing nations

[Paolo Brunello]

I like these CreativeCommons guys!

paolo

> Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 17:25:19 -0400
> From: Andy Carvin <acarvin a edc.org>
> Subject: [DDN] New Creative Commons License "Frees Creativity Across
> 	the Digital Divide"
> To: digitaldivide a milhouse.edc.org
> Message-ID: <41509C3F.7000800 a edc.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
>
> Blog: New Creative Commons License
> "Frees Creativity Across the Digital Divide"
>
> http://edwebproject.org/andy/blog/
>
> Interesting news from the folks who run the Creative Commons  
> initiative:
> they've just announced a Developing Nations Copyright License that can
> be used by content developers to encourage free use of their content in
> the developing world.
>
> http://creativecommons.org/license/devnations
>
> As I reported last December from the World Summit on the Information
> Society, Lawrence Lessig and his colleagues have been developing this
> idea "so content may be tagged as being freely available for people in
> the developing world." Thanks to the work of Jamie Love, they now have
> the first release of the license, which became available last week.
>
> So what's the big deal about this copyright license stuff? Well, it's a
> big deal to two groups of people: people who create content and people
> who want to use content. For people who create content, copyright
> licenses are a way of protecting their work, making sure that the work
> is used in ways that are acceptable to them -- picture songwriters,
> authors, filmmakers, bloggers, anyone who likes to follow their  
> creative
> muse. And for people who want to use content - pretty much everyone in
> the known universe -- a copyright license tells them when they're using
> someone's content in a fair, reasonable way. So if I'm a guy creating a
> website about dolphins and I find a nice picture of a bottlenose  
> dolphin
> in someone's website, the polite thing to do would be to find out from
> them if I've got permission to use it. Not to mention the fact I could
> get sued for using it without permission, particularly if I took the
> picture from someone who sells pictures of dolphins for a living.
>
> Creative Commons makes all of this easier by creating a user-friendly
> way for content producers to assign copyright licenses to their work.
> For example, if you look on the left-hand side of my blog's homepage
> (http://www.edwebproject.org/andy/blog/), you'll see a button saying
> that my blog is published under a Creative Commons license that allows
> anyone to republish my stuff as long as it's for noncommercial purposes
> and that they pass along the same copyright privileges I've set up for
> myself. Anyone who's got content they'd like to share publicly while
> preserving their ownership of it can go to www.creativecommons.org and
> design a license for themselves -- a bit of computer code they insert  
> on
> their website. Once you've placed it on your website, everyone who
> visits your site will have access to an easy-to-read explanation of the
> license, plus a legal deed written for all you lawyers out there. Even
> better, the computer code added to the Web page means that your license
> can be read by search engines and the like, so they'll note the
> copyright status for your content.
>
> So now comes along this new Developing Nations license. What this
> license means is that you, as a content producer, can differentiate how
> your content gets used by others based on whether they live in a
> developed or developing country. By creating a Developing Nations
> license for your website -- or for your video, song, photo collection,
> what have you -- you grant anyone living in one of the qualifying
> countries the right to copy, distribute, display and perform your work,
> as well as make derivative works (ie, works based on your original
> content), as long as they give you credit for the work, and pass along
> the same license rules if they redistribute it. So if a person from
> Uganda visits your website, they can use this license to copy your work
> freely, redistribute it, etc, while someone from the United States  
> would
> need to get your permission first.
>
> I've been wondering since last December when this new license would  
> come
> out, and am really curious to see how it gets used. Will content owners
> embrace the idea? Will Internet users in less-developed countries take
> advantage of it? In some of the discussions on the Creative Commons
> website, some people have described the idea as "paternalistic" and
> "throwing scraps to those third world types..." Others are cynical from
> the perspective that people with Internet access in the developing  
> world
> are already "elites" within their nations and don't need this kind of
> assistance. I think these positions insult both the thousands of people
> who use Creative Commons licenses and don't see their work as "scraps,"
> and are eager to work with people from the rest of the world who have  
> an
> interest in accessing a greater diversity of knowledge and creating new
> knowledge in the process.
>
> Perhaps I'm just being naive, but I'm hopeful about this new license.
> Only time will tell to see if it's used in ways that are truly
> beneficial to promoting knowledge sharing and development.
>
> Meanwhile, below is a list of countries that *don't* qualify for  
> getting
> access to content through the Developing Nations license:
>
>      Andorra, Aruba, Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Bahrain, Belgium,
> Bermuda, Brunei, Canada, Cayman Islands, Channel Islands, Cyprus,
> Denmark, Faeroe Islands, Finland, France, French Polynesia, Germany,
> Greece, Hong Kong, Greenland, Guam, Iceland, Ireland, Isle of Man,
> Israel, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Macao, Malta,
> Monaco, Netherlands, Netherlands Antilles, New Caledonia, New Zealand,
> Norway, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Qatar, San Marino, Singapore, Slovenia,
> South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, United
> Kingdom, United States, US Virgin Islands
>
> The list comes from the World Bank's list of high-income economies
> (http://www.worldbank.org/data/countryclass/ 
> classgroups.htm#High_income),
> which the Creative Commons folks are using as the basis for saying who
> can't take advantage of the license. If you're residing in any other
> country not listed here, you can take advantage of the rights defined  
> by
> the Developing Nations License.
>
> Have any interesting examples of how this license might be put to good
> use? I'd love to hear about it.... -andy
>
>
> Andy Carvin
> EDC Center for Media & Community
> acarvin at edc.org
>
>

===
Paolo Brunello
Via Maffei n. 6
36100 Vicenza
Italy
===
"Il vero antidoto alla paura non è la sicurezza, è la fiducia"
[E. Euli]
*
"The real antidote to fear is not security, it's trust"
===