In January 2009, Al Jazeera launched a pioneering initiative: the first news repository licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license. At the time, restrictions imposed by the Israeli military in Gaza prevented international news outlets from reaching the Strip and reporting from within. Al Jazeera, which had the advantage of being the only news outlet…

You may have already heard the great news—YouTube has added the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY) as a licensing option for users! Now when users upload video, they can choose to license it under CC BY or to remain with the default “Standard YouTube License.” Users may also change the license on existing videos…

Stay up to date with CC news by subscribing to our weblog and following us on Twitter. CC heads into February with exciting new developments in policy, science, and journalism. A new U.S. education fund makes available $2 billion to create open educational resources in community colleges The U.S. Department of Labor and the Department…

Two weeks ago the first CC Salon Beirut took place, convening a number of fantastic groups and speakers from the surrounding region. CC Arab World Media and Development Manager Donatella Della Ratta was on hand and recapped the event on her blog. While the Salon yielded numerous exciting announcements and presentations, two were particularly inspiring.…

Today, the Al Jazeera Documentary International Film Festival hosted Remix, the first ever Creative Commons workshop in the Arab world entirely dedicated to filmmakers. Basel Safadi kicked off the workshop, explaining in both English and Arabic the basics behind Creative Commons licenses. Safadi also presented case studies of select films and documentaries already released under…

Last year, Al Jazeera launched their Creative Commons Repository with 12 videos shot in Gaza under CC’s most open license, Attribution only. Since then, Al Jazeera’s collection has grown, and their most recent footage includes videos documenting everyday life and culture in Iraq. Check out this video of an Iraqi artist sculpting a Minaret and…

Al Jazeera has just launched the latest of its online project called Al Jazeera Blogs. The website features blog posts written by prominent journalists and correspondents from the global Al Jazeera television network. It also hosts several sub-blogs sections divided by geographical areas, such as the Africa, Asia, Americas, Europe, and the Middle East. In…

I’m happy to announce the launch of this year’s Commoner Letter series – a series of letters written by prominent members of the CC community in support of our annual fundraising campaign. We want to be very clear that this campaign is about much more than raising money for CC. At the heart of it…

The first Creative Commons regional meeting in the Arab World was held a few weeks ago during Al Jazeera’s annual Media Forum in Doha, Qatar (14-16 March, 2009). The Forum hosted the first ever face-to-face meeting of the Arab Project Leads (Ziad Maraqa and Rami Olwan from CC Jordan and Nafaa Laribi from CC Tunisia)…

More than a year ago, Free Culture advocate Anas Tawileh analyzed the state of Arabic content online. His portal Arab Commons has grown modestly but steadily since its launch in 2007, offering 11 full textbooks in Arabic, plus magazines, podcasts, poetry collections, and a number of art works — all within a few months. For…