[Solar-educacion] Developing Nations Copyright License

Lun Oct 4 16:01:48 CEST 2004

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
Program Director, EDC Center for Media & Community
acarvin at edc.org 