CC Birthday Party in Manila

The globe lit up last week to celebrate the birthday of a community and organization now in its sixth year. Creative Commons, as demonstrated by these events, is about more than just free legal tools — it’s a powerful idea that has spread the world over.

In Chennai the CC Birthday Party merged with the launch of the Wikipedia Academy on Dec. 12, coinciding with a visit from Jimmy Wales and Sue Gardener from the Wikimedia Foundation. Chennai’s Free Culture House, a co-working space founded by party planner Kiruba Shankar, hosted the celebration. Seoul joined in with a Birthday Party on the same day, organized by CC Korea.

An award ceremony for the second CC photography contest impressed guests at the Beijing party on Dec. 14, featuring a live remix of the photos. The next day Belgrade conducted a panel on the legal framework of Free Culture with presentations by CC Serbia, Wikimedia Serbia, and Free Software groups.

Entry for 2nd CC Photography Contest in Mainland China

On Dec. 16, seven cities held CC Birthday Parties. In Guatemala writers released a special gift: 10 Christmas stories compiled in Aguinaldo Narrable, which will be illustrated by six award-winning photographs from CC Guatemala‘s Fiesta Callejera Contest.

Ann Arbor, Michigan organized a CC Birthday Happy Hour at a local bar, and guests at the party in Washington, D.C. contributed to a CC multimedia potluck coordinated by Public Knowledge.

The first anniversary of the ported 3.0 Licenses in the Philippines was commemorated in Manila, following a planning meeting for the upcoming CC Asia Pacific Conference. In Yuletide tradition and CC’s spirit of sharing, CC Philippines concluded the day by walking through Manila’s streets and sharing food and gifts to children.

CC Australia screened CC films and raised contributions for our annual fundraising campaign at the Brisbane CC Christmas Birthday Movie Night. New York City recounts that Happy Birthday may or may not have been sung at their Dec. 16 party in FYI, and Los Angeles teamed up LA’s Geek Dinner for an evening of free culture and internets in uWink.

Berlin‘s Content Sprint & Birthday Party invited guests to vie for a Goopymart T-shirt in a competition to document CC Case Studies in Germany.

California hosted the last CC Birthday Parties of the year, with co-housing and co-working community organizers initiating a round of discussions about Free Culture, free speech, and sustainable communities in Berkeley.

San Francisco wrapped up the global parties in 111 Minna Gallery with music by Ripley and Kid Kameleon and an improv performance from dublab as part of the Into Infinity installation.

With 14 host cities and a stellar range of events, the CC community is demonstrating tremendous support for Creative Commons. A heartfelt thank you to all the party planners and guests!

Please take a moment and help make another year of CC possible!

Images: (Ann Arbor) “Long table full of revellers” and “Garin, Ted, and CC swag” by mollyali under CC BY NC; (Chennai) “121220082360” and “121220082330” by Kiruba Shankar under CC NC SA; (Beijing) 舞在山乡 优秀奖 under 作者：秦启胜  CC BY ; (Manila) “CC-PH Technical/Documentation / AUSL-ITC“ and “Outreach / Sharing” by CC Philippines under CC BY NC; (DC) “CC 6th birthday party Washington DC” by tvol under CC BY; (Education Network Australia) “Sparklers and cake to celebrate“ by edna-photos under CC NC; (CC Cupcakes) “P1070155“ by creativecommoners under CC BY; (LA) “Happy 6th Birthday Creative Commons!“ posted by felicity redwell from netZoo/revolute under CC NC ND; (Guatemala) “MBosque” by Renata Avila under CC BY.

At the workshop, the Project Leads from the South Caucasus presented base-line assessments of their jurisdiction’s copyright legislation, a follow-up to the detailed reports they conducted in summer 2008. The results were evaluated to determine the steps required to port the core CC licenses to the legal framework in each respective jurisdiction.

Nena Antic shared her experience with the CCi license porting process in Serbia by highlighting the main obstacles, lessons learned, and CC Serbia’s tangible results so far. Nena provided in-depth explanations for the changes she introduced to adapt the CC licensing suite to Serbian law and led the workshop’s discussion on legal terminology, the NC & ND license elements, and Collective Rights Management.

Vazgen Karapetyan, EPF’s Senior Cross-Border Programs Officer and co-organizer of the workshop, remarked, “As a whole, the workshop proved highly instrumental in familiarizing the participating Affiliate Institutions with the successful experience of their Serbian counterpart. Learning about the necessary changes to port the CC licenses will definitely help the Legal Project Leads in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia develop their own first draft licenses.”

The first drafts from the three South Caucasus nations are expected to enter the public discussion on December 1, 2008.

The CC license porting commenced in the South Caucasus in May 2008 when the EPF announced a regional grant competition titled Support to the Adoption of Creative Commons Licensing Framework in the Countries of the South Caucasus. The Center for Information Law and Policy (Armenia) and the Young Lawyers Union (Azerbaijan) were identified as competition winners. On July 14, 2008, the two organizations were awarded individual grants to implement their 12-month projects in collaboration with Creative Commons International. In Georgia, a team of local legal experts representing Business Intelligence and Valuation GROUP – “BVG”, Ltd. was contracted by EPF/Georgia to oversee the CC Georgia project in partnership with the above Armenian and Azerbaijani organizations and CCi.

Image: “Tbilisi Old District” in the public domain.