Creative Commons » public discussion

Costa Rican license draft enters public discussion, pilots new comment tools

Michelle Thorne — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 07:22:35 +0000

We are happy to announce an experiment in the public discussion process of our licenses, piloted by CC Costa Rica. Customarily, we post a static text document of the licenses, including a re-translation and summary of changes in English, to our website. The community can download these files and submit comments on the jurisdiction’s mailing list. In an effort to improve usability and the level of interaction, we’ve wikified the Costa Rican BY-NC-SA 3.0 license draft , so you can read and discuss the text directly.

To contribute a review or question regarding the license draft adapted to Costa Rican law, please visit the BY-NC-SA 3.0 license draft page and click on the wiki’s discussion page to share your thoughts. You are also welcome to join and write to the CC Costa Rican mailing list, which will run in parallel to the wiki.

The public discussion is an open forum where everyone – from lawyers to active license users, from linguists to translators — is invited to contribute and improve the license texts. 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 August 2010, when the discussion is scheduled to close.

Thanks to the ongoing efforts of Project Leads Rolando Coto, Carlos E. Saborío Romero, and Denis Campos with the support of the University of Costa Rica, and to Andrés Guadamuz for producing the draft and soliciting feedback from the Costa Rican public. We look forward to the discussion and to testing this new process!

Estonian License Draft Open for Public Discussion

Michelle Thorne — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 11:27:23 +0000

A license draft adapted to Estonian law is ready for public discussion, the first CC license available for review in the Baltic.

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 Estonia 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 June, when the discussion is scheduled to close.

Thanks to the ongoing efforts of Project Lead Ene Koitla at the Estonian Information Technology Foundation, and her legal team Priit Lätt, Hele Karja, and Heiki Pisuke of Glimstedt Straus & Partners and independent legal expert Mario Rosentau from the University of Tartu for producing the draft and soliciting feedback from the Estonian public.

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

Efforts in the Baltic are mounting, as CC Estonia is joined by the neighboring Lithuanian team in localizing and promoting Creative Commons. CC Lithuania, currently working on a first draft themselves, recently held a workshop in Vilnius and baked some delicious CC cookies.

As activities in the Baltic continue to expand and gather peer support, we hope that the Estonian public discussion will foster more cross-border collaborations, as part of larger efforts across Europe and the globe.

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

Egyptian License Draft Open for Public Discussion

Michelle Thorne — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:02:05 +0000

The past year witnessed some major achievements for Creative Commons in the Arab world. Highlights included Al Jazeera’s adoption of CC BY for the world’s first broadcast-quality online repository and CC Jordan’s substantial efforts on the first Arabic license port.

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!