San Francisco, USA, Berlin, GERMANY – March 14, 2006

Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that provides a flexible copyright licenses for authors and artists, recently unveiled a localized version of its innovative licensing system in Bulgaria.

Creative Commons copyright licenses are available free of charge from the group’s website. The licenses allow authors and artists to mark their works as free to copy or transform under certain conditions—to declare “some rights reserved,” in contrast to the traditional “all rights reserved”—thereby enabling others to access a growing pool of raw materials without legal friction.

Staff at Creative Commons’ offices in San Francisco and Berlin worked with Project Leads Veni Markovski and Dessi Pefeva of the Internet Society Bulgaria, to adapt the standarized licenses to Bulgarian law. Creative Commons Bulgaria is hosted by the Internet Society Bulgaria (ISOC-Bulgaria) and supported by the Open Society Institute.
Says Veni Markowski, “We are proud of the achievements of the Creative Commons community in Bulgaria. This is a success for Bulgaria, and for all authors – an ever increasing number of them use Creative Commons’ licenses to publish their works.“

“There are new CC initiatives every day in Bulgaria – see open-culture.net
or the Bulgarian netlabels – stretching-spaces.net, ouim.net and mahorka.cult.bg. There’s even a whole audiolab, called VOXXLab, which gives young musicians opportunity to record their music free of charge, if they license their music under CC”, said Dessi Pefeva, CC project coordinator.

About ISOC-Bulgaria

Founded in 1995, among its main aims is to support free and open development of the Internet in Bulgaria and freedom of speech, access to information and basic human rights in the Information Society. ISOC-Bulgaria recently has been working on changes in the legal framework in Bulgaria. ISOC-Bulgaria has about 600 members, among them the President of the Republic of Bulgaria Georgi Parvanov, the Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev, the former President, and the former Prime Minister, many distinguisged IT-professionals, scientists, and experts. ISOC Bulgaria is working with the United Nations Development Program and under the European Union 6th Framework Program on promoting Free and Open Source Software in the administration. For more information about ISOC Bulgaria, visit their site.

About Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a not-for-profit organization, founded in 2001, that promotes the creative re-use of intellectual and artistic works—whether owned or in the public domain. Creative Commons licences provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists, and educators that build upon the “all rights reserved” concept of traditional copyright to offer a voluntary “some rights reserved” approach. It is sustained by the generous support of various foundations including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Omidyar Network Fund, the Hewlett Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation as well as members of the public. For general information, visit their website.

Contact

Christiane Henckel von Donnersmarck
Executive Director, Creative Commons International, Creative Commons
Email

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