This has been an exciting year from the CC Arab regional communities, with more and more countries joining our collaborative projects, meet-ups, and local and regional gatherings like the CC Iftar.

The fourth regional meeting will be an opportunity to gather CC Arab world communities and have people working together on collaborative projects, workshops, and peer-produced ideas.

Following a formula adopted last year in Tunis, we will be hosting a set of workshops that are designed and produced by the regional community itself. In order to have better teamwork, workshops can accommodate only a limited amount of participants.

If you speak Arabic and you are based in the Arab region, and if you have an interest in openness, sharing culture and cooperation, please have a look at the call for proposals.

We are looking forward to hearing from you!

2010 promises more exciting developments for the rapidly-growing CC community in the Arab world. Today the legal team from CC Egypt, headed by Hala Essalmawi, produced the first BY-NC-SA license draft adapted to Egyptian law (.pdf).

Thanks to the ongoing efforts of Hala and her team, supported by CC Jordan’s Rami Olwan and Ziad Maraqa, the Egyptian draft is now ready for public discussion.

The public discussion is an open forum where everyone –  from lawyers to active license users, from linguists to translators — is invited to contribute. If you have comments about different aspects of the licenses, whether in regards to legal, linguistic or usability issues, please feel welcome to join the CC Egypt mailing list and share your thoughts. Comments should be submitted as soon as possible to allow enough time for review, so we encourage you to post to the list before the end of March.

The Arabic and English versions of the Egyptian BY-NC-SA license are available, as is a summary of the substantial changes proposed by the legal team to port the licenses to Egyptian copyright law.

As efforts across the Arab world continue to expand and gather peer support, we hope that the Egyptian public discussion will foster more cross-border collaborations. This inter-jurisdictional support is a model that is particularly strong in the region, and hopefully it can become a viable approach for future projects.

Congratulations to CC Egypt, and we all look forward to comments from you, the public!

With the support of the reputable Abu-Ghazaleh Intellectual Property (AGIP), CC Jordan Project Leads Ziad Maraqa and Rami Olwan have committed much time and expertise in developing the Jordanian license draft. Hala Essalmawi (CC Egypt) and Anas Tawileh (initiator of Arab Commons) contribute to CC Jordan’s efforts as well as conduct local outreach to further Creative Commons’ mission. Individuals and organizations interested in beginning a local Creative Commons project in their jurisdiction or in helping raise awareness about Creative Commons in the Arab World, please contact Creative Commons International and CC Arab Media Consultant Donnatella della Ratta.

On behalf of CC Jordan, we warmly welcome you to join in the public discussion of the license draft. Congratulations to CC Jordan and the Arab Commons team, and we are looking forward to your feedback!

CCi Egypt List

Project Lead: Hala Essalmawi

• License draft (PDF).
• English re-translation (PDF).
• English explanation of substantive legal changes (PDF).
• Post a message.
• Subscribe to the discussion.
• Read the discussion archives.

More About the Bibliotheca Alexandrina

In fulfillment of its mission as a center of excellence for the dissemination of knowledge and for dialogue, learning and understanding between cultures and people, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) has developed a growing interest in issues relating to access to knowledge, promotion of innovation and creativity and intellectual property.

BA has initiated several activities to spread the philosophy of access to knowledge (A2K) and build local capacity of researchers, librarians and practitioners to effectively implement new and emerging A2K tools and practices. It is within this context that BA has organized the first seminar on new tools for the dissemination of knowledge and the promotion of innovation and creativity in the Arab world and the region.