Creative Commons to Offer Spanish and Catalan Copyright Licenses with University of Barcelona

Matt Haughey, February 26th, 2004

University of Barcelona is spearheading the effort to translate Creative Commons licenses into Spanish and Catalan.

Palo Alto, USA and Barcelona, Spain - Creative Commons, a nonprofit dedicated to building a body of creative works free for copying and re-use, announced today that formal work has begun for expanding its International Commons (iCommons) project to the Iberian peninsula, with both Spanish and Catalan translations in the works.

The University of Barcelona will lead the effort.

“We are thrilled to be working with the University of Barcelona,” said Lawrence Lessig, Chairman of Creative Commons and professor of law at Stanford. “With its rich heritage and linguistic reach, Spain can serve as a model for many countries in expanding the global cultural commons. And we’re excited to begin work on Catalan versions of the licenses in parallel.”

“We think that Creative Commons’ project is very interesting and therefore we have decided to promote it from a public institution as the University of Barcelona,” said Ignasi Labastida i Juan, project lead of the iCommons efforts in Spain and Catalonia. Ignasi Labastida i Juan added, “Since the project of the licenses appeared, we thought that we needed adaptations for our own laws and in our languages. The idea to create iCommons Catalonia was very important to us since we are not well known but we speak the seventh language in the EU in terms of number of speakers - more than ten million.”

First announced in March 2003, iCommons is Creative Commons’ project to make its machine-readable copyright licenses useful worldwide. As the lead institution, University of Barcelona will coordinate a public effort literally and legally to translate the Creative Commons licenses. University of Barcelona will field comments on an archived email discussion at the Creative Commons website:

http://www.creativecommons.org/discuss#spain
http://www.creativecommons.org/discuss#catalonia.

Spain and Catalonia join Brazil, Croatia, Italy, Ireland, Finland, Japan, China, Taiwan, France, and the UK in the iCommons effort. Several other iCommons jurisdictions and languages will soon follow.

More about Creative Commons

A nonprofit corporation, Creative Commons promotes the creative re-use of intellectual works, whether owned or in the public domain. It is sustained by the generous support of The Center for the Public Domain, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Hewlett Foundation. Creative Commons is based at Stanford Law School, where it shares staff, space, and inspiration with the school’s Center for Internet and Society.

For general information, visit http://creativecommons.org/.

For more information about iCommons, see http://creativecommons.org/projects/international/.

More about University of Barcelona

The University of Barcelona, founded in 1450, is the oldest and largest of the six universities in Barcelona, and of the ten in Catalonia. It has 76,000 students - more than half of the total student population of Catalonia - and is the second largest in terms of students number in Spain. The University of Barcelona has four campuses, in different parts of the city. The University is the main Spanish university research centre, and one of the leaders in Europe, in terms of projects and the quality achieved in this field. One of the aims of the University is to create, transmit and expand the cultural, scientific, and technical knowledge and to contribute to society’s development.

The university is particularly interested in fostering international relations, and for many years has been the leader among European universities in numbers of student exchanges organized as part of the Erasmus program. Since 1995, the UB has implemented a quality program aiming fundamentally to design mid and long term strategies in order to evaluate and improve teaching and research in public higher education.

For more information about University of Barcelona, visit http://www.ub.edu/.

Contact

Christiane Asschenfeldt (Berlin)
iCommons Coordinator, Creative Commons
christiane@creativecommons.org

Ignasi Labastida i Juan (Barcelona)
Project Lead, iCommons Spain
University of Barcelona
ilabastida@ub.edu

Glenn Otis Brown
Executive Director (Palo Alto)
1.650.723.7572 (tel)
1.415.336.1433 (cell)
glenn@creativecommons.org

http://creativecommons.org

Creative Commons expands to Croatia with Multimedia Institute (mi2)

Matt Haughey, February 26th, 2004

Multimedia Institute (mi2) will lead the license translation and work to expand global access to Croatia’s culture

Palo Alto, USA, and Zagreb, CROATIA - Creative Commons, a nonprofit dedicated to building a body of creative works free for copying and re-use, announced today that it would expand its International Commons (iCommons) project to Croatia. Multimedia Institute (mi2), in Zagreb, will lead the effort.

“Croatia has already demonstrated an extraordinary range of creative
use of new technology,” said Lawrence Lessig, Chairman of Creative Commons and professor of law at Stanford. “We’re eager to work with iCommons
Croatia to support that work.”

“It’s liberating for Croatia to participate in this global effort to create a common space for creativity, especially at a time when legislative regimes often overlook this public good,” said Diana Kovacevic, project lead.

First announced in March 2003, iCommons is Creative Commons’ project to make its machine-readable copyright licenses useful worldwide. As the lead institution, (mi2) will coordinate a public effort literally and legally to translate the Creative Commons licenses for use in Croatia. (mi2) will field comments on an archived email discussion at the Creative Commons website, http://www.creativecommons.org/discuss#croatia.

Croatia joins Brazil, China, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Taiwan and the United Kingdom in the iCommons effort.

More About Creative Commons

A nonprofit corporation, Creative Commons promotes the creative re-use of intellectual works, whether owned or in the public domain. It is sustained by the generous support of The Center for the Public Domain, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Hewlett Foundation. Creative Commons is based at Stanford Law School, where it shares staff, space, and inspiration with the school’s Center for Internet and Society.

For general information, visit http://creativecommons.org/.

For more information about iCommons, see http://creativecommons.org/projects/international/.

More About Multimedia Institute (mi2)

(mi2) sprang up in 1999 as a spin-off of the Internet program of Open Society Institute Croatia. Entering locally uncharted territory between social and cultural action and new technological developments, (mi2) brought together an emerging generation of civil activists, media practitioners, urban culture actors and social and media theorists who set out to pursue two principle tasks:

1) To promote and educate in media and technological practices relevant for the functioning and development of a social and cultural sector, and

2) To promote and develop socially inflected approaches to new technologies, especially as investments in the local emerging market gradually increased the penetration of new media and introduced the domination of commercial standards.

Over the past two years, (mi2) has become increasingly involved in cooperative activities at the local, regional and international levels to strengthen the cultural scene and advocate on behalf of the public domain. It is working towards initiating structural changes in a wide range of areas, including: non-institutional culture, informal education, technology, intellectual property rights, and access to public resources.

For more information about (mi2), visit http://www.mi2.hr/.

Contact

Christiane Asschenfeldt (Berlin)
iCommons Coordinator, Creative Commons
christiane@creativecommons.org

Diana Kovacevic, (Zagreb)
Co-Project Lead, iCommons Croatia
diana@mi2.hr

Tomislav Medak, (Zagreb)
Co-Project Lead iCommons Croatia
to-me@mi2.hr

Glenn Otis Brown
Executive Director (Palo Alto)
glenn@creativecommons.org

http://creativecommons.org