Feature 1

Source: http://en.wikipilipinas.org/index.php?title=Column:_Creative_Commons:_%2... (Copy here maintained to ensure that it does not become a broken link)

Hi everyone! This is Mindy, reporting for duty!

MINDY and the Wikipilipinas team attended the launching of the Philippine Creative Commons Web 3.0 at Arellano Law School last Monday. What's that? Let me explain a bit.

When you create a work of art, literature, science, or music, it is automatically covered by copyright, which, as everybody may have noticed, says "all rights reserved." This means that no one can copy, use, sell, or modify your work unless he gets your permission first.

As I see it, copyright is intended to protect the creator of a work from people stealing it and making money out of it without giving him anything. After all, the creator of the work naturally has the right to profit from that work, right? Nothing's wrong with that. If you want others to use your work without having to ask your permission, you have to release it into the public domain, which means you give away all of your rights to it.

However, some people want to share their work with others without having to give it away completely. This is where Creative Commons comes in.

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that helps the authors of creative works to share their works with others while still keeping some rights to themselves. Through Creative Commons licenses, these authors can specify the way they allow others to use their work.

Since the license accompanies the work wherever it may go, other people can tell at a glance what they can and can't do with the creative work. Where copyright means "all rights reserved", Creative Commons means "some rights reserved.”

Personally, I think Creative Commons makes things so much easier. The other day, I was surfíng the Internet when I found an image that I really wanted to use in my blog. Usually I have to go through the trouble of emailing the owner first and asking for permission before I can use it, otherwise I might fínd myself subpoenaed for copyright infringement (uh-oh). Of course, there's what we call "fair use" wherein you can use the image for non-commercial purposes, but that's always hard to justify.

Anyway, with this particular image I'm talking about, I found out that it had a Creative Commons license that said I could use it as long as I gave it proper attribution, so that's what I did. No hassle, no need to e-mail the owner for permission, no need to justify why I wanted to use it. As said in that video "Get Creative" which they showed us at the Creative Commons launch: "...all without asking permission because permission has already been granted. It can be that easy if you skip the intermediaries."

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Whew! How I do go on, when all I wanted to tell you was about the Creative Commons launch! Anyway, first, we attended a presentation about open-source software by Prof. Engels Antonio of Bluepoint Foundation, then a presentation about e-learning by Prof. Leandre Andrés Dacanay of the University of Sto. Tomas. Then, Atty. Michael Vernon Guerrero, the Deputy Project Lead of Creative Commons Philippines, talked about the Philippine Commons Project.

Before you ask, Creative Commons does not conflict with copyright law. Atty. Berne Guerrero and the people on the Philippine Commons project saw to it that the Creative Commons licenses to be used in the Philippines are in harmony with Philippine copyright laws. For those legal-minded people who would like to see for themselves, Atty. Guerrero's article on the Philippine Commons Project in the Arellano I.T. Law Journal explains it pretty well, I think.

Anyway, after the lectures, we proceeded to the Arellano Law School Review Room for the launch itself. We saw three video presentations about Creative Commons; if I remember correctly, the first was "Get Creative: the origin and adventures of the Creative Commons project". The second was "Wanna Work Together?" and the third had to do with "Commons and Commerce." The Arellano Law Singers also sang two songs from their album "Vox Legis", to be released under a Creative Commons license. I couldn't help but think that law students would really like that album as it would help make memorization easier; the songs include the Bill of Rights, the Lawyer's Oath and the Preamble of the Constitution set to music!

The attendees all got CDs containing some songs from the album as mementos. Creative Commons Asia also sent their congratulations through a video message.

By the way, representatives of Creative Commons Philippines will attend the Creative Commons Asian Summit in Taipei, Taiwan on Saturday, Jan. 20.

Atty. Jaime Soriano of Creative Commons Philippines led the launch by pressing a button that made a crystal ball and the lights around the Creative Commons poster light up, while on the background white screen a rocket was shown blasting off... and Philippine Creative Commons 3.0 was officially launched! I really liked the colored spotlights, the fog machine, and the sound effects, by the way (excuse the scatterbrained moment!), and the Creative Commons poster looked great, with its slogan: Share, Remix, Reuse – Legally (you can see the poster on Atty. Berne Guerrero's site. http://berneguerrero.com/).

By the way, did I mention that some Creative Commons licenses not only allows you to copy and share the creative work, but also to modify it or use it commercially? I know some people out there are glad to know that!

After the launch, there was a concert featuring different bands, including True Faith, that would release albums under the Creative Commons licenses. Hey, that means downloading and sharing the songs in those albums won't be considered piracy! Isn't it great?

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I was at the Creative Commons launch because, like Creative Commons, I am interested in the free exchange of knowledge and ideas.

Filipiniana.net, for one, is putting Creative Commons licenses on its content, so that the documents and images are free to be used by anyone who wants to use them, in keeping with the mission and vision of Filnet (our affectionate name for the site) to become the free digital online library of all things Filipino. That's because we believe that knowledge has to be freely shared to benefit the greater good. For people to reach their full potential, they have to know their past and be open to many possibilities in the present and the future. If people are denied knowledge and learning, their emotional, intellectual and moral growth will be repressed.