IT Law Journal

administrator January 14th, 2008

Creative Commons Philippines: CC Philippine License Soft Launching and the CC 5th Birthday Party

This article remixes the articles “Philippines introduces locally ported Creative Commons licenses” (http://creativecommons.org/press-releases/entry/7909), “Global CC Birthday Parties: Catch the Live Stream!” (http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7913), both written by Michelle Thorne; “One Big Thank You.” (http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7925) written by Michelle Reeder; and “On what exactly happened Saturday night.” (http://lessig.org/blog/2007/12/on_what_exactly_happened_satur.html) written by Lawrence Lessig.

Image: “Five years” © 2008. Berne Guerrero. Some Rights Reserved. CC BY 3.0 PH http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ph/. Source images from Arellano University School of Law, the public lead institution for Creative Commons in the Philippines.

Philippine festivities

On 15 December 2007, in Pasay City, the 42nd locally ported Creative Commons licensing suite was launched for the Philippines. The Creative Commons licenses, now legally adapted to Philippine law, enable authors, artists, scientists, and educators the choice of a flexible range of protections and freedoms in efforts to promote a voluntary “some rights reserved” approach to copyright. This served as a prelude to a larger celebration in January 2008, CC Philippines unveiled the licenses on said 15th of December at the event held in Arellano University’s School of Law.

Dr. Catharina Maracke, Director of Creative Commons International, thanked the CC Philippines Team for all their efforts, and she remarks, “The licensing project in the Philippines is a strong step towards strengthening and cultivating the global commons. The Philippines joins neighboring Malaysia, launched two years ago, in offering completed localized CC licenses. With upcoming jurisdictions in Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia, this region within Asia will continue to thrive and enjoy its vibrant remix-reuse community.”

The Creative Commons team members in the Philippines, lead by Atty. Jaime N. Soriano, have worked under the auspices of the e-Law Center at the Arellano University School of Law and in collaboration with Creative Commons to port the licenses.

Atty. Jaime N. Soriano, jurisdiction project lead of CC Philippines, reintroduced Creative Commons and alternative licenses to the participants. Atty. Michael Vernon M. Guerrero, jurisdiction deputy project lead of CC Philippines, subsequently introduced the licenses by providing a brief summary to the modifications introduced to jurisdictional version of the code. The concept of the Philippine Commons — a collaboration fostering alternative licensing, free and open source software, open education, and free culture in the region — was also introduced.

The soft launch event continued in the mid-afternoon as a birthday party for Creative Commons, as part of a series of synchronized celebrations worldwide to commemorate Creative Commons’ fifth year. Atty. Soriano serenaded the crowd, who shared in the food and beverages.

This was the first time, the Philippines joined other jurisdictions in celebrating Creative Commons birthday.

Creative Commons 5th Birthday

There were ten (10) announced CC Birthday Parties held on 15 December 2007: Bangalore (India), Beijing (China), Belgrade (Serbia), Berlin (German), Brisbane (Australia), Los Angeles (United States), Manila (Pasay, Philippines), New York City (United States), San Francisco (United States), and Seoul (South Korea). Over 1000 people around the world celebrated CC’s 5th birthday. Since the “CC@5” parties span six timezones, the generous team at n3tv.it, alongside Berlin’s seasoned Erik Stripparo, helped stream the CC Birthday Parties around the globe, starting in Berlin December 14th at 2000 UTC (2100 Central European Time). One of the most notable parties was that held in San Francisco, where Lawrence Lessig announced the upcoming CC license integration by Current TV, the upcoming release of a beta protocol to support the new tool “CC0,” the developing venture with public.resource.org to collect and make available machine readable copies of government documents and law to create Legal Commons (beta), the CC+ protocol which is also being baked “into the system” of Yahoo, the success of the Annual Campaign which exceeded its target by more than $40,000, and [5×5] Challenge which ensures core funding for Creative Commons for 5 more years.

If you partook in the celebrations - please tag your photos or videos with CC5Bday so that everyone may enjoy all the celebrations that happened on 15 December 2007.

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