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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administrator January 14th, 2008

CC-PH set to Participate in the ACIA: International Workshop on Asia and Commons in the Information Age

This article combines the contents of Welcome (http://meeting.creativecommons.org.tw/), Original Proposal (http://meeting.creativecommons.org.tw/ac:original-proposal), and Open Legal Content And Creative Commons (http://meeting.creativecommons.org.tw/program:open-legal-content-and-creative-commons) shared under CC-BY-SA 3.0 http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

During the Birds of a Feather (BoF) meeting held at Revelin, Grad, Dubrovnik, Croatia, during the iCommons Summit in June 2007, the idea to have an “Asia Commons” meeting by December 2007 was brought to the forefront. Since it was agreed that Taipei would be a convenient location to hold the meeting, Creative Commons Taiwan was asked to plan for the said meeting. Creative Commons Taiwan subsequently proposed that the meeting be set on 19-20 June 2008. A Pre-meeting of Creative Commons jurisdiction project teams, and reception for all workshop participants is set on the afternoon of 18 June 2008. The venue would be the Academia Sinica located at 128 Academia Road, Section 2, Nankang, Taipei 115, Taiwan.

In the BoF meeting during the iCommons Summit, the following objectives were proposed — which have since been adopted by the ACIA workshop — (1) Strengthening the “Asia Commons” by bringing in more members and improving links to related organizations within the Asia Pacific region; (2) Promoting the commons in the region, and providing a forum to develop practical strategies for this promotion; (3) Providing a forum for industry engagement, and in particular identifying and presenting successful commercial uses of open content licensing within the region; and (4) Providing a forum for discussion of topics of importance to the Asia Commons (e.g., the meaning of ‘open’ in our age, and the history and role of the commons in Asia). The workshop aims to be an open venue for people to formulate Asia Pacific perspectives on the issues of commons in our age. The language of the meeting is English.

The two day seminar hosts a battery of speakers, whether in a panel or speaking individually. The full program of the international workshop can be found at http://meeting.creativecommons.org.tw/ac:program

Creative Commons Philippines will speak on Open Legal Content in the morning of January 20 within the panel tackling “Case studies and project showcases.” The abstract of the piece provides:

Laws and jurisprudence, as they intimately affect the public, should remain public and not locked as proprietary content by way of the creation of the derivative work of “collection.” It is suggested that proponents of the commons, in their jurisdictions, find ways of gathering public domain materials to equate the collections being pursued by proprietary entities, especially in the absence of government effort to provide the same, in the same direction that FLOSS has been made an alternative to the previously predominant proprietary software in the market. Although it may be contended that this line of project(s) is predominantly in the realm of law practitioners and law students, the direction, however, assures the availability of materials that would aid ordinary citizens to be informed of their rights, obligations, and potential liabilities as provided by public documents. The availability of the said resources also provides for the raw data that could be useful in the development of other value-added law-related documents, which if released similarly, could benefit the commons and/or society in general.

It is with this background that emphasis is being made to the region-wide cooperation being cultivated to gather multi-jurisdictional legal content. The Philippines, for example, has multiple public resources available to satisfy aspects of legal research. One of these is the LawPhil Project developed by the Creative Commons Philippine jurisdiction lead public institution, Arellano University School of Law. In turn, the LawPhil Project, among other entities in the region, has contributed to the content available in the Asian Legal Information Institute resource. Further efforts remain to be important to support this direction.

Following the pattern of development of this class of legal content, fresh efforts are being exerted to create another class of content, i.e. value-added law-related documents, that are to be released to the commons, preferably through Creative Commons licensing. This is to provide alternative to proprietary law books, which are usually limited by printing considerations (such as content volume-to-price ratio, update requirements viz existing inventory, etc.) The availability of licensed legal content can provide substantial impact in law education, the delivery of legal services, etc., that could inure to the benefit of society as well.

Active participation by legally-interested individuals in the development of a single comprehensive resource is also being contemplated.

ACIA is organized by people at Creative Commons Taiwan, and National Digital Archives Program, Taiwan (Cultural Academic Socio-Economic Educational Promotion Program, and The Academic Applications and the Dissemination of the Cultural Heritage Project) in collaboration with Creative Commons jurisdiction project teams in the Asia Pacific region, Creative Commons San Francisco and Berlin offices, and with the assistance of colleagues at Arellano University School of Law, Harvard Law School, Mississippi College School of Law, Law School of Renmin University of China, The University of Hong Kong, Queensland University of Technology.

The host research institutes at Academia Sinica are Institite of Information Science, Institutum Iurisprudentiae, Research Center for Information Technology Innovation.

To know more, see http://meeting.creativecommons.org.tw/

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administrator January 14th, 2008

Philippine Commons: Developing a Philippine Commons
by Michael Vernon Guerrero


Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Philippines License.

Image: “Collaboration for the commons: Spokes of iCommons” © 2008. Berne Guerrero. Some Rights Reserved. The derivative work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 PH http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ph/All source images from Mark Surman. “iSummit 2007″ (http://www.flickr.com/photos/marksurman/566358017/; http://www.flickr.com/photos/marksurman/565994442/; http://www.flickr.com/photos/marksurman/566371067/; http://www.flickr.com/photos/marksurman/566380099/; http://www.flickr.com/photos/marksurman/565990318/; and http://www.flickr.com/photos/marksurman/566381631/)

Attending the iSummit in June 2007 was eye-widening, not merely eye-opening. This was more so when there was an opportunity to join the open education track,¹ one of four tracks available at the three-day conference. Although one could easily expect certain innovations, as one has affiliated himself to a commons-related organization, no adequate preparation could be had in that instance inasmuch as the dynamics of the sessions therein, such as the use of “spectograms” in the first session “Towards an Open Future for Education,”² were in contrast to the normal systems of delivery of one may be accustomed to relatively traditional institutions, else society.

Speed geeking in the open education track³ provided ample time, although abbreviated, to be familiarized with various initiatives and projects in different jurisdictions, such as the OERcommons, Free High School Science Textbook (FHSST), CC Netherlands, NEALS, WikiEducator, Acawiki, Educalibre, One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), Meadan, and LeMill. The idea and the means utilized in the FHSST project proved very interesting since the project highlighted solutions relating to the Philippine public textbook bidding issue then popular in the local news.⁴

Searching the Internet for similar projects in the Philippines during the breaks in the iSummit, and in the months thereafter, manifested the reality of dispersed initiatives, albeit some with subdued footprints, that benefit or could benefit society within the context of the commons, from local players. Still, a bigger stage may be available if various stakeholders find ways to collaborate to achieve their goals. Besides the LawPhil Project of the Arellano University School of Law, which incidentally is now Creative Commons licensed, some noteworthy efforts are those by the Philippine e-Learning Society,⁵ filipiniana.net, wikipilipinas.org, Bluepoint Foundation,⁶ Bayanihan Books,⁷ among others.

Truly, what seems necessary at this point in time are opportunities for collaboration, especially if they favor the commons. Following the footsteps of Creative Commons International in the formation of the iCommons, Creative Commons Philippines is currently spearheading the paving of an avenue for collaboration through the Philippine Commons.⁸ The Philippine Commons is envisioned to be a movement-organization which aims to develop a national front through the collaboration of communities involved in free software, open education, access to knowledge, open access publishing, free culture, legal commons, and similar pursuits. The public launching of the Creative Commons Philippine jurisdictional licenses, on 14 January 2008, serves as a preliminary means to gather some of the stakeholders in the commons, and communicate with each other what can be done, whether bilaterally or multilaterally. Nevertheless, the direction of the Philippine Commons lies with the Filipino community. Its future depends upon the eagerness of stakeholders to contribute into the commons pool.

Lastly, the Philippine Commons website⁹ aims to provide articles and updates to events relating to the commons in the Philippines, and also link to developments in the commons occurring in the international stage. The domain was acquired in December 2007, in time for the soft-launching of the Creative Commons Philippine jurisdictional licenses and Creative Commons 5th Birthday Party.

1. http://wiki.icommons.org/index.php/ISummit_2007/Open_Education_Track [↩]
2. http://wiki.icommons.org/index.php/Towards_an_Open_Future_for_Education [↩]
3. http://wiki.icommons.org/index.php/Open_Educational_Project_Showcase [↩]
4. http://berneguerrero.com/node/38 [↩]
5. http://www.elearning.ph [↩]
6. http://www.bluepoint.com.ph [↩]
7. http://blog.bayanihanbooks.org/ [↩]
8. http://www.philippinecommons.org [↩]
9. http://www.philippinecommons.org [↩]

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administrator January 14th, 2008

iCommons: iSummit 2007

This article combines the iCommons documents found at the iCommons website: “iSummit07.” http://www.icommons.org/isummit07, “Our Hosts.” http://www.icommons.org/isummit07/hosts/, and “About.” http://www.icommons.org/about/

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Image: “iCommons.” © 2008. Berne Guerrero. Some Rights Reserved. The derivative work is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 PH http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ph/. All source images from Mecredis / Fred Benenson. “iCommons 2007.” (http://www.flickr.com/photos/fcb/565027189/); (http://www.flickr.com/photos/fcb/551480041/); “@ Lazareti.” (http://www.flickr.com/photos/fcb/551490055/); “Lawrence Lessig, Jonathan Zittrain.” (http://www.flickr.com/photos/fcb/555983182/); “Kevin Driscoll.” (http://www.flickr.com/photos/fcb/573125672/); “Star Wreck.” (http://www.flickr.com/photos/fcb/551865834/); (http://www.flickr.com/photos/fcb/551868702/); “img_2151.jpg.” (http://www.flickr.com/photos/fcb/557891015/); (http://www.flickr.com/photos/fcb/551260858/); “Yochai Benkler.” (http://www.flickr.com/photos/fcb/556026542/). CC BY-SA 2.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en

Background

“We are in the midst of a technological, economic, and organizational transformation that allows us to renegotiate the terms of freedom, justice and productivity in the information society. How we shall live in this new environment will in some significant measure depend on the policy choices that we make over the next decade or so. To be able to understand these choices, to be able to make them well, we must recognize that they are part of what is fundamentally a social and political choice ‘ a choice about how to be free, equal, productive human beings under a new set of technological and economic conditions.” (Yochai Benkler: “The Wealth of Networks”)¹

From students protesting against DRM in the streets of Zurich, Seattle, Paris and New York,² to Viacom’s recent $1 billion lawsuit³ against YouTube⁴ (Google)⁵ for copyright infringement, we are living through what Benkler calls a ‘period of perturbation’ where the ways in which society organizes itself are ‘up for grabs’.

In this state of flux, the free Internet finds itself at a crossroads. Recent threads suggest that what started as an open, neutral network which enabled widespread innovation and creativity by individuals and communities throughout the globe, has developed to a point where in the next 10 years or so, decisions need to be made about whether the Internet retains its network neutrality or whether the industrial giants force us back into consuming a culture that is ‘ready-made’ rather than being able to produce our own information environment (Benkler).

The iSummit 2007

The iCommons Summit in Dubrovnik, Croatia brought together pioneers of the free Internet to make sure that, at its crossroads, we guide the world along a path that will enable the kind of free culture and decentralized innovation that has characterised the early years of the Internet.

With a focus on both ‘big ideas’ and practical examples of how open sharing on the Internet is driving business development, increased innovation, quality education and advances in science, the iCommons Summit was a must-attend for the pioneers with a stake in how the Internet must evolve in the future.

With an impressive lineup of iconic free Internet philosophers, we heard from people like Creative Commons⁶ CEO, Larry Lessig,⁷ CC Chairman and Digital Entrepreneur, Joi Ito,⁸ Wikipedia⁹ Founder, Jimmy Wales¹⁰ and CTO of Linden Labs,¹¹ Cory Ondrejka.¹² We also added some new voices to the debate in 2007, including India’s Lawrence Liang¹³ who has become renowned for his considered commentary on the positive impact of piracy in developing countries, Jonathan Zittrain¹⁴ discussed themes from his new book ‘The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It’, Benjamin Mako Hill¹⁵ from MIT¹⁶ spoke about competing visions of ‘free culture’ from the free software perspective, and Becky Hogge¹⁷ from the Open Rights Group,¹⁸ who discussed successful campaigns to rid the world of restrictive IP laws.

Apart from the insight of the great ‘philosophers of the commons’, the Summit also brought together practitioners, activists and technologists working on concrete projects that continue to inspire us about the possibilities of a free culture on the Internet. In these workshops, leaders of the open education movement seeded new ideas for global cooperation, and participants shared insights on how open content is planned, strategised and built from the ground up. We shared ideas on how to curate open content using tools like del.icio.us and concepts like ‘crowd sourcing’ and ‘peer production’. And we shared experiences on how to increase government use of open access licensing for publicly-funded materials, and looked at new opportunities to fund open content using alternative business models.

And when the sun set in Dubrovnik, the Summit hosted a series of concerts by local musicians, screenings of open movies from around the world and an exhibition by six of the world’s most innovative artists exploring concepts of shared ownership and distributed creativity.

Lessons Learned

Everyone who builds the commons has something important to contribute. The education track, facilitated by Allen Gunn and Mark Surman, took this idea to its obvious conclusion, facilitating an enormously successful stream and emerging with a new community of individuals committed to establishing a working partnership and with a plan of action to follow over the coming months.

Humility of leadership paves the way for global ownership of the commons. When Larry Lessig invited the emerging leadership of the commons community to take the reigns and diversify intellectual leadership around free culture, he showed a rare humility that he will be remembered for in the stories about this movement.

Games are great way to build new alliances among the global commoners. A new issue entered the commons arena this year – that of poker and the opportunities for the playing of poker to encourage critical thinking, strategic thinking and encourage cross-cultural understanding – all important skills in understanding how to facilitate the revolution in commons-based peer production around the world.

Respect and understanding of the vast economic divides that affect the commons is vital to our global strategy. Lawrence Liang invited members of the “legal commons” to begin to understand how the problems of infrastructure are being solved by piracy where the “third world city meets the world of new media.” Liang invited those who believe that the battle to free culture can only be solved using legal means to recognise and respect those who have developed a free culture outside the law, and how this fight will have different parameters in different parts of the globe.

We need to get creative about inclusion. USC’s Center on Public Diplomacy and Linden Lab showed us how to include an extra 500 people in the conference by streaming keynotes and accepting questions from an audience in Second Life. A mentorship programme by Creative Commons International affiliates initiated at the Summit will hopefully add support to country affiliates, but we need to do much more to enhance inclusion by people from Africa and other developing countries.

The iSummit is 95% community and 5% technology. As the community gets involved in building new programmes and developing the format of the event, we are starting to see something that is truly revolutionary.

The iSummit was co-hosted by the Multimedia Institute (MI2) in Croatia. The MI2’s activities range from informal education and training in technology and digital media, free software development, archiving and publishing of digital and print media, cultural management and content curation, and policy and advocacy work.

About iCommons

Incubated by Creative Commons, iCommons is an organisation with a broad vision to develop a united global commons front by collaborating with open education, access to knowledge, free software, open access publishing and free culture communities around the world.

Using the annual iCommons Summit as the main driver of this vision, iCommons will feature projects that encourage collaboration across borders and communities, and promote the tools, models and practice that facilitate universal participation in the cultural and knowledge domains. The Summit will collaborate with organisations and communities from around the world to demonstrate and share best practice and discuss strategies for continuing the positive impact that ’sharing’ practices are having on participation in the cultural and knowledge domains.

During the year iCommons will incubate projects that cross borders and unite commons communities, acting as a platform for international collaboration towards the growth and enlivening of a global digital commons.

Thanks to scholarships provided by the commons community, through Creative Commons International, Atty. Jaime N. Soriano and Atty. Michael Vernon M. Guerrero were able to attend the iSummit conference in Croatia.

1. http://www.benkler.org/wealth_of_networks/index.php/Main_Page [↩]
2. http://wiki.freeculturenyu.org/wiki/index.php?title=DRM_Protest [↩]
3. http://lessig.org/blog/archives/003734.shtml [↩]
4. http://www.youtube.com/ [↩]
5. http://www.google.com/ [↩]
6. http://creativecommons.org/ [↩]
7. http://lessig.org/blog [↩]
8. http://joi.ito.com/ [↩]
9. http://wikipedia.org/ [↩]
10. http://blog.jimmywales.com/ [↩]
11. http://lindenlab.com/ [↩]
12. http://lindenlab.com/management [↩]
13. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Liang [↩]
14. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Zittrain [↩]
15. http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/ [↩]
16. http://web.mit.edu/ [↩]
17. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becky_Hogge [↩]
18. http://www.openrightsgroup.org/ [↩]

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administrator January 14th, 2008

Creative Commons Philippines: Promoting Creative Commons

How can one promote Creative Commons? Depending on one’s area of expertise, one can get involved in Creative Commons in a variety of ways. Creators can CC license their works. Creative Commons licenses would not be of much use if there would be little enthusiasm from authors that create works. Developers can provide ideas on tools that could help users license their work more easily. Lawyers can consider giving some pro bono counseling to potential license users by educating them about the current state of copyright, the Creative Commons mission and all the legalities of using the licenses. Further, Creative Commons can be supported pecuniarily, since donations keeps the organization and its projects alive.¹

On the part of Creative Commons Philippines, Atty. Jaime N. Soriano and Atty. Michael Vernon Guerrero have taken every opportunity to promote Creative Commons licensing.

For the year 2007, Atty. Soriano has given lectures on “Digital Copyright” on 21 January 2007 and 3 March 2007, in accredited Mandatory Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) seminars sponsored by the Center for Legal Education and Research, Arellano University School of Law. He also provided a lecture on “New Publishing Models in the Digital Environment” during the ‘Sub-Regional Roundtable on Copyright-Based Business: Authorship, Publishing and Access to Knowledge’ of the Philippine Intellectual Property Office in partnership with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the Japan Copyright Office (JCO) at the Batanes Function Room, Lower Level, Edsa Shangri-La Manila Hotel in Pasig City on 29 March 2007. He also provided a lecture on “Blogging and Copyright Law,” 3rd Philippine Blogging Summit (i-Blog 3) sponsored by the UP College of Law - Internet Society Program at the School of Economics Auditorium, UP Campus, Diliman, Quezon City on 13 April 2007; and a lecture on “Use of Creative Commons Licenses in Publishing”, in a seminar sponsored by the Interinstitutional Communication Workshop 2007, International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), Harrar Hall Seminar Room, IRRI, College, Laguna on 16 May 2007. All these lectures tackled Creative Commons licenses.² He also teaches Technology and the Law, which includes topics on digital copyright, at the Arellano University School of Law.

Atty. Guerrero, on the other hand, promoted the use of Creative Commons among his peers during two seminars, sponsored by the Freidrich Naumann Stiftung, that he attended, i.e. the “Strategic Planning” seminar in Gummersbach, Germany on 8-21 July 2007; and the “Education: Liberal Perspective” seminar in Negros Oriental, Philippines on 26-29 September 2007. He also provided a lecture on “Creative Commons” during the Kapihan sa PeLS Program organized by the Philippine e-Learning Society at College of St. Benilde in Taft Avenue, Manila on 24 September 2007; and on “Copyright: Issues and Concerns,” at the 6th National Conference on eLearning: “Learning about Technology, eLearning with Technology for the Academe and Industry”, organized by the Philippine e-Learning Society held at St. Martin de Porres Auditorium (Medicine Auditorium) of University of Santo Tomas on 26 October 2007.³ He teaches Overview of Commercial Law, which includes topics on copyright, at the paralegal institute, Institute of Continuing Legal Education.

1. http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Main_Page [↩]
2. http://soriano-ph.com/about-the-publisher/lectures/ [↩]
3. http://www.berneguerrero.com/node/3 [↩]

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administrator January 14th, 2008

Creative Commons Philippine Jurisdictional License Sample: Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Philippines (Legal Code)

This contains the legal code for the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical-ShareAlike 3.0 Philippines available at http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ph

CREATIVE COMMONS CORPORATION IS NOT A LAW FIRM AND DOES NOT PROVIDE LEGAL SERVICES. DISTRIBUTION OF THIS LICENSE DOES NOT CREATE AN ATTORNEY-CLIENT RELATIONSHIP. CREATIVE COMMONS PROVIDES THIS INFORMATION ON AN “AS-IS” BASIS. CREATIVE COMMONS MAKES NO WARRANTIES REGARDING THE INFORMATION PROVIDED. CREATIVE COMMONS ALSO DISCLAIMS LIABILITY FOR DAMAGES AND ASSUMES NO LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY RESULTING FROM ITS USE.

License

THE WORK (AS DEFINED BELOW) IS PROVIDED UNDER THE TERMS OF THIS CREATIVE COMMONS PUBLIC LICENSE (”CCPL” OR “LICENSE”). THE WORK IS PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT AND/OR OTHER APPLICABLE LAW. ANY USE OF THE WORK OTHER THAN AS AUTHORIZED UNDER THIS LICENSE OR COPYRIGHT LAW IS PROHIBITED.

BY EXERCISING ANY RIGHTS TO THE WORK PROVIDED HERE, YOU ACCEPT AND AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE. THE LICENSOR GRANTS YOU THE RIGHTS CONTAINED HERE IN CONSIDERATION OF YOUR ACCEPTANCE OF SUCH TERMS AND CONDITIONS.

1. Definitions

1. “Adaptation” means a work based upon the work, or upon the work and other pre-existing works, such as a dramatization, translation, adaptation, abridgment, arrangement, and other alterations of a literary or artistic work, or sound recording, audiovisual work, or fixation or performance and includes cinematographic adaptations or any other form in which the work may be recast, transformed, or adapted including in any form recognizably derived from the original, except that a work that constitutes a collection will not be considered an adaptation for the purpose of this license. For the avoidance of doubt, where the work is a musical work, performance or sound recording, audiovisual work, or fixation, the synchronization of the work in timed-relation with a moving image (”synching”) will be considered an adaptation for the purpose of this license.
2. “Collection” means a collection of literary, scholarly or artistic works, and a compilation of data and other materials, such as encyclopedias and anthologies, or performances, sound recordings, audiovisual works, or fixations or broadcasts, or other works or subject matter other than works listed in Section 1(g) below, which by reason of the selection or coordination or arrangement of their contents, constitute intellectual creations, in which the work is included in its entirety in unmodified form along with one or more other contributions, each constituting separate and independent works in themselves, which together are assembled into a collective whole. A work that constitutes a collection will not be considered an adaptation (as defined above) for the purposes of this license.
3. “Distribute” means to make available to the public the original and copies of the work or adaptation, as appropriate, through sale or other transfer of ownership. Such distribution of the original and copies of the work or adaptation, which is the material object that is subject of copyright, does not imply a transfer or assignment of the copyright of such works or adaptation.
4. “License Elements” means the following high-level license attributes as selected by licensor and indicated in the title of this license: Attribution, Noncommercial, ShareAlike.
5. “Licensor” means the person, whether natural or juridical, who or which owns the copyright of the work, that offers the work under the terms of this license.
6. “Original Author” means, in the case of a literary or artistic work, the natural person or persons who created the work; if no natural person can be identified, especially for anonymous and pseudonymous works, the natural person or persons represented by the publisher. In addition, to the extent applicable, “original author” may also include: (i) in the case of a performance, the actors, singers, musicians, dancers, and other persons who act, sing, deliver, declaim, play in, interpret or otherwise perform literary or artistic works; (ii) in the case of a sound recording, audiovisual work, or fixation, the producer who is the person who takes the initiative and has the responsibility for the first fixation of the sounds of a performance or other sounds, or the representation of sounds; and, (iii) in the case of broadcasts, the person, duly authorized to engage in broadcasting, that transmits the broadcast.
7. “Work” means the literary and/or artistic work offered under the terms of this license including without limitation any production in the literary, scientific and artistic domain protected from the moment of its creation, and by the sole fact of its creation, whatever may be the mode or form of its expression including digital form, as well as of its content, quality and purpose, such as a book, pamphlet, article and other writings; a periodical and a newspaper; a letter; a lecture, sermon, address, dissertation prepared for oral delivery, whether or not reduced in writing or in any other material form, or other work of the same nature; a dramatic or dramatico-musical composition or work; a choreographic work or entertainment in dumb show; a musical composition with or without words; an audiovisual work and a cinematographic work, and a work produced by a process analogous to cinematography or any process for making audio-visual recordings; a work of drawing, painting, architecture, sculpture, engraving, lithography, or other works of art; a drawing or plastic work of a scientific or technical character; a photographic work including work produced by a process analogous to photography; a lantern slide; a pictorial illustration and advertisement; a model or design for works of art; an original ornamental design or model for articles of manufacture, whether or not registrable as an industrial design, and other works of applied art; an illustration, map, plan, sketch, chart or three-dimensional work relative to geography, topography, architecture or science; a performance; a broadcast; a sound recording, audiovisual work, or fixation; and other literary, scholarly, scientific and artistic works.
8. “You” means a person, whether natural or juridical, exercising rights under this license who has not previously violated the terms of this license with respect to the work, or who has received express permission from the licensor to exercise rights under this license despite a previous violation.
9. “Publicly Perform” means to perform public recitations, plays, dances, or otherwise to perform the work and to communicate to the public those public recitations, either directly or by means of any device or process, including by wire or wireless means or public digital performances; to publicly show of images in sequence and to make the sounds accompanying it audible; to make the recorded sounds audible at a place or at places where persons outside the normal circle of a family and that family’s closest social acquaintances are or can be present, irrespective of whether they are or can be present at the same place and at the same time, or at different places and/or at different times, and where the performance can be perceived without the need for communication; to make available to the public works in such a way that members of the public may access these works from a place and at a place individually chosen by them; to broadcast and rebroadcast the work by any means including signs, sounds or images.
10. “Reproduce” means to make a copy or copies of the work by any manner or form including without limitation by sound or visual recordings and the right of fixation and reproducing fixations of the work, including storage of a protected performance or sound recording, audiovisual work, or fixation in digital form or other electronic medium.

2. Limitations on Copyright. Nothing in this license is intended to reduce, limit, or restrict any uses free from copyright or rights arising from limitations or exceptions that are provided for in connection with the copyright protection under copyright law or other applicable laws.

3. License Grant. Subject to the terms and conditions of this license, the licensor hereby grants you a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual (for the duration of the applicable copyright) license to exercise the rights in the work as stated below:

1. To reproduce the work, to incorporate the work into one or more collections, and to reproduce the work as incorporated in the collections;
2. To create and reproduce adaptations provided that any such adaptation, including any translation in any medium, takes reasonable steps to clearly label, demarcate or otherwise identify that changes were made to the original work. For example, a translation could be marked “The original work was translated from English to Filipino,” or a modification could indicate “The original work has been modified.”;
3. To distribute and publicly perform the work including as incorporated in collections; and,
4. To distribute and publicly perform adaptations.

The above rights may be exercised in all media and formats whether now known or hereafter devised. The above rights include the right to make such modifications as are technically necessary to exercise the rights in other media and formats. All rights not expressly granted by the licensor are hereby reserved, including but not limited to the rights described in Section 4(e).

4. Restrictions. The license granted in Section 3 above is expressly made subject to and limited by the following restrictions:

1. You may distribute or publicly perform the work only under the terms of this license. You must include a copy of, or the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) for, this license with every copy of the work you distribute or publicly perform. You may not offer or impose any terms on the work that restrict the terms of this license or the ability of the recipient of the work to exercise the rights granted to that recipient under the terms of the license. You may not sublicense the work. You must keep intact all notices that refer to this license and to the disclaimer of warranties with every copy of the work you distribute or publicly perform. When you distribute or publicly perform the work, you may not impose any effective technological measures on the work that restrict the ability of a recipient of the work from you to exercise the rights granted to that recipient under the terms of the license. This Section 4(a) applies to the work as incorporated in a collection, but this does not require the collection apart from the work itself to be made subject to the terms of this license. If you create a collection, upon notice from any licensor you must, to the extent practicable, remove from the collection any credit as required by Section 4(d), as requested. If you create an adaptation, upon notice from any licensor you must, to the extent practicable, remove from the adaptation any credit as required by Section 4(d), as requested.
2. You may distribute or publicly perform an adaptation only under: (i) the terms of this license; (ii) a later version of this license with the same license elements as this license; or (iii) either the unported Creative Commons license or a Creative Commons license for another jurisdiction (either this or a later license version) that contains the same license elements as this license (e.g. Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 (Unported)) (”Applicable License”). You must include a copy of, or the URI, for the applicable license with every copy of each adaptation you distribute or publicly perform. You may not offer or impose any terms on the adaptation that restrict the terms of the applicable license or the ability of the recipient of the adaptation to exercise the rights granted to that recipient under the terms of the applicable license. You must keep intact all notices that refer to the applicable license and to the disclaimer of warranties with every copy of the work as included in the adaptation you distribute or publicly perform. When you distribute or publicly perform the adaptation, you may not impose any effective technological measures on the adaptation that restrict the ability of a recipient of the adaptation from you to exercise the rights granted to that recipient under the terms of the applicable license. This Section 4(b) applies to the adaptation as incorporated in a collection, but this does not require the collection apart from the adaptation itself to be made subject to the terms of the applicable license.
3. You may not exercise any of the rights granted to you in Section 3 above in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation. The exchange of the work for other copyrighted works by means of digital file-sharing or otherwise shall not be considered to be intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation, provided there is no payment of any monetary compensation in connection with the exchange of copyrighted works.
4. If you distribute, or publicly perform the work or any adaptations or collections, you must, unless a request has been made pursuant to Section 4(a), keep intact all copyright notices for the work and provide, reasonable to the medium or means you are utilizing: (i) the name of the original author (or pseudonym, if applicable) if supplied, and/or if the original author and/or licensor designate another party or parties (e.g., a sponsor institute, publishing entity, journal) for attribution (”Attribution Parties”) in the licensor’s copyright notice, terms of service or by other reasonable means, the name of such party or parties; (ii) the title of the work if supplied; (iii) to the extent reasonably practicable, the URI, if any, that the licensor specifies to be associated with the work, unless such URI does not refer to the copyright notice or licensing information for the work; and, (iv) consistent with Section 3(b), in the case of an adaptation, a credit identifying the use of the work in the adaptation (e.g., “Filipino translation of the work by original author,” or “Screenplay based on original work by original author”). The credit required by this Section 4(d) may be implemented in any reasonable manner; provided, however, that in the case of an adaptation or collection, at a minimum such credit will appear, if a credit for all contributing authors of the adaptation or collection appears, then as part of these credits and in a manner at least as prominent as the credits for the other contributing authors. For the avoidance of doubt, you may only use the credit required by this Section for the purpose of attribution in the manner set out above and, by exercising your rights under this license, you may not implicitly or explicitly assert or imply any connection with, sponsorship or endorsement by the original author, licensor and/or attribution parties, as appropriate, of you or your use of the work, without the separate, express prior written permission of the original author, licensor and/or attribution parties.
5. For the avoidance of doubt: The licensor reserves the right to collect royalties, whether individually or, in the event that the licensor is a member of a collecting society that administers voluntary licensing schemes, via that society, from any exercise by you of the rights granted under this license that is for a purpose or use which is otherwise than noncommercial as permitted under Section 4(c).
6. Moral rights remain unaffected to the extent they are recognized and not waivable by applicable law.

5. Representations, Warranties and Disclaimer

UNLESS OTHERWISE MUTUALLY AGREED TO BY THE PARTIES IN WRITING AND TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, LICENSOR OFFERS THE WORK AS-IS AND MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND CONCERNING THE WORK, EXPRESS, IMPLIED, STATUTORY OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, WARRANTIES OF TITLE, MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NONINFRINGEMENT, OR THE ABSENCE OF LATENT OR OTHER DEFECTS, ACCURACY, OR THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE OF ERRORS, WHETHER OR NOT DISCOVERABLE. SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OF IMPLIED WARRANTIES, SO THIS EXCLUSION MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.

6. Limitation on Liability. EXCEPT TO THE EXTENT REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW, IN NO EVENT WILL LICENSOR BE LIABLE TO YOU ON ANY LEGAL THEORY FOR ANY ACTUAL OR COMPENSATORY, INCIDENTAL, MORAL, NOMINAL, TEMPERATE OR MODERATE, LIQUIDATED, EXEMPLARY OR CORRECTIVE DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THIS LICENSE OR THE USE OF THE WORK, EVEN IF LICENSOR HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.

7. Termination

This license and the rights granted hereunder will terminate automatically upon any breach by you of the terms of this license. Persons, whether natural or juridical, who have received adaptations or collections from you under this license, however, will not have their licenses terminated provided such persons remain in full compliance with those licenses. Sections 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, and 8 will survive any termination of this license.

Subject to the above terms and conditions, the license granted here is perpetual (for the duration of the applicable copyright in the work). Notwithstanding the above, the licensor reserves the right to release the work under different license terms or to stop distributing the work at any time; provided, however that any such election will not serve to withdraw this license (or any other license that has been, or is required to be, granted under the terms of this license), and this license will continue in full force and effect unless terminated as stated above.

8. Miscellaneous

1. Each time you distribute or publicly perform the work or a collection, the licensor offers to the recipient a license to the work on the same terms and conditions as the license granted to you under this license.
2. Each time you distribute or publicly perform an adaptation, the licensor offers to the recipient a license to the original work on the same terms and conditions as the license granted to you under this license.
3. If any provision of this license is invalid or unenforceable under applicable law, it shall not affect the validity or enforceability of the remainder of the terms of this license, and without further action by the parties to this agreement, such provision shall be reformed to the minimum extent necessary to make such provision valid and enforceable.
4. No term or provision of this license shall be deemed waived and no breach consented to unless such waiver or consent shall be in writing and signed by the party to be charged with such waiver or consent.
5. This license constitutes the entire agreement between the parties with respect to the work licensed here. There are no understandings, agreements or representations with respect to the work not specified here. The licensor shall not be bound by any additional provisions that may appear in any communication from you. This license may not be modified without the mutual written agreement of the licensor and you.

Creative Commons Notice

Creative Commons, or its affiliates in the Philippines (”CC-PH”), is not a party to this license, and makes no warranty whatsoever in connection with the work. Creative Commons will not be liable to you or any party on any legal theory for any damages whatsoever, including without limitation any actual or compensatory, incidental, moral, nominal, temperate or moderate, liquidated, exemplary or corrective damages arising in connection to this license. Notwithstanding the foregoing two (2) sentences, if Creative Commons has expressly identified itself as the licensor hereunder, it shall have all rights and obligations of the licensor.

Except for the limited purpose of indicating to the public that the work is licensed under the CCPL, Creative Commons does not authorize the use by either party of the trademark “Creative Commons” or any related trademark or logo of Creative Commons without the prior written consent of Creative Commons. Any permitted use will be in compliance with Creative Commons’ then-current trademark usage guidelines, as may be published on its website or otherwise made available upon request from time to time. For the avoidance of doubt, this trademark restriction does not form part of this license.

Creative Commons may be contacted at http://creativecommons.org/.

The other Philippine jurisdictional licenses are:

• Attribution 3.0 Philippines: Available at http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ph
• Attribution-NonCommerical 3.0 Philippines: Available at http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ph
• Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Philippines: Available at http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ph
• Attribution-NoDerivatives 3.0 Philippines: Available at http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/ph
• Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 Philippines: Available at http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ph

• ITLJ 4-1
• Comments(1)

administrator January 14th, 2008

Ported License Modifications
by Michael Vernon Guerrero

This article documents the changes made to generate the Philippine set of Creative Commons licenses:

1. The modification in the general header disclaimer, “CREATIVE COMMONS MAKES NO WARRANTIES REGARDING THE INFORMATION PROVIDED. CREATIVE COMMONS ALSO DISCLAIMS LIABILITY FOR DAMAGES AND ASSUMES NO LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY RESULTING FROM ITS USE” is merely for style.
2. In the second paragraph of the license header, the phrase “TO THE EXTENT THIS LICENSE MAY BE CONSIDERED TO BE A CONTRACT,” was removed. The phrase was removed to avoid any doubt that the license can be considered as part of an entirely different class of documents besides those of contracts. The following points are made to support this position:
1. From where obligations arise: Article 1157 of the Philippine New Civil Code (Republic Act 386, approved 18 June 1949) provides that “Obligations arise from: (1) Law;(2) Contracts; (3) Quasi-contracts; (4) Acts or omissions punished by law (delicts); and (5) Quasi-delicts.” In light of the stipulations detailing the obligations of the licensee in the Creative Commons license, such obligations emanate under Article 1157 (2), RA 386, as provided above.
2. Requisites of a valid contract; Effect of absence of cause: Article 1318 of the Philippine New Civil Code enumerates the requisites of a valid contract, namely: (1) consent of the contracting parties; (2) object certain which is the subject matter of the contract; and (3) Cause of the obligation which is established. One of the focal point in determining whether the Creative Commons license, hence, is a valid contract lies in the existence of the third element “cause”. Article 1352 [of the New Civil Code] declares that contracts without cause, or with unlawful cause produce no effect whatsoever. Those contracts lack an essential element and they are not only voidable but void or inexistent pursuant to Article 1409, paragraph (2). (JLT Agro v. Balansag; GR 141882, 11 March 2005; citing PADILLA, CIVIL LAW, Vol. IV-A, 247-248 (1988). Ocejo, Perez and Co. v. Flores and Bas, 40 Phil. 921, Escutin v. Escutin, 60 Phil. 922.)
3. “Cause” or “consideration”: In [Philippine] jurisdiction, cause and consideration are used interchangeably (Footnote 28, Saguid v. Security Finance, GR 159467, 9 December 2005). As expressed in Gonzales v. Trinidad, 67 Phil. 682, consideration is “the why of the contracts, the essential reason which moves the contracting parties to enter into the contract.” (Villamor v. Court of Appeals, GR 97332, 10 October 1991)
4. Presumption of existence of cause/consideration: Under Article 1354 of the Philippine Civil Code, it is presumed that consideration exists and is lawful unless the debtor proves the contrary. (Saguid v. Security Finance, GR 159467, 9 December 2005; citing Nuguid v. Court of Appeals, GR 77423, 13 March 1989, 171 SCRA 213, 218) Moreover, under Section 3(r) of Rule 131 of the Rules of Court, it is presumed that there is a sufficient consideration for a contract. The presumption that a contract has sufficient consideration cannot be overthrown by a mere assertion that it has no consideration. (Saguid v. Security Finance, GR 159467, 9 December 2005; citing Fernandez v. Fernandez, G.R. No. 143256, 28 August 2001, 363 SCRA 811, 828.) To overcome the presumption of consideration, the alleged lack of consideration must be shown by preponderance of evidence. (Saguid v. Security Finance, GR 159467, 9 December 2005; citing Ong v. Ong, G.R. No. L-67888, 8 October 1985, 139 SCRA 133, 136.)
5. Cause/consideration not necessarily pecuniary in nature: The consideration need not be monetary but could consist of other things or undertakings. (Navotas Industrial Corp. v. Cruz, GR 159212, 12 September 2005; citing Bible Baptist Church v. Court of Appeals, G.R. No. 126454, 26 November 2004, 444 SCRA 399.)

Under Philippine jurisdiction, the CC license should be considered as a valid contract when the other two elements are also present, especially in light of the obligations being imposed against the licensee(s) in exchange for the permission to use the materials licensed by the licensor therein. This is a major change since the principle beyond its enforceability is distinct from other jurisdictions, where the license’s enforceability may emanate from the law itself.

3. The phrase “dramatization, translation, adaptation, abridgment, arrangement, and other alterations of a literary or artistic work,” replaced “translation, adaptation, derivative work, arrangement of music or other alterations of a literary or artistic work,” in the definition of “Adaptation.” This change was made to reconcile the definition with Section 173.1(1), Republic Act 8293.
4. The phrase “sound recording, audiovisual work, or fixation.” replaced “phonogram.” Sound recordings, audiovisual works, and fixations are defined under Sections 202.2 to 202.4 of Republic Act 8293.
5. The phrases “collection of literary, scholarly or artistic works, and a compilation of data and other materials,” and “which by reason of the selection or coordination or arrangement of their contents,” replaced “collection of literary or artistic works,” and “which, by reason of the selection and arrangement of their contents,” in the definition of “Collection.” This was made to reconcile the definition with Section 173.1(2), Republic Act 8293. This is a major change since “a compilation of data and other materials” is adjusted towards the purview of “Collection,” which is a derivative work, as provided by law and not under “Work,” which contemplates original work, under the unported licenses. It is also noteworthy that Version 3.0 uses the word “Collection” and no longer “Collective work,” as used in Versions 2.0 and 2.5. This removed the necessity to explain the distinction between a collection contemplated in Section 173.1(2) with collective works as defined in Section 171.2, Republic Act 8293. It appears that the term “collective work” in the Philippine jurisdiction is synonymous with “joint work” in other jurisdictions.
6. The sentence “Such distribution of the original and copies of the work or adaptation, which is the material object that is subject of copyright, does not imply a transfer or assignment of the copyright of such works or adaptation.” was added to the definition of “Distribute.” This change was made to emphasize Section 182, Republic Act 8293, which distinguishes the material object that is subject to copyright, and copyright itself.
7. The phrases “person, whether natural or juridical,” replaced “individual, individuals, entity or entities” in the definition of “Licensor.” This change was made so as to provide a legal context as to the parties involved in the agreement. The provisions on Persons are provided in Republic Act 386 (Philippine New Civil Code), Book I: Natural Person (Articles 40-43), Juridical Persons (Articles 44 to 47). This change was similarly replicated in the definition of “Original Author” where “natural person or persons” and “natural person” replaced “individual, individuals, entity or entities” and “individual or entity”, respectively; in the definition of “You” where “a person, whether natural or juridical,” replaced “an individual or entity”; in the first paragraph on the title on “Termination,” where “Persons, whether natural or juridical,” and “persons” replaced “Individuals or entities” and “individuals or entities” respectively.
8. The phrase “who or which owns the copyright of the work,” was added in the definition of “Licensor” to emphasize the requirement that the one who grants the license should have the right to do so. Ownership of copyright is elaborated under Section 178, Republic Act 8293.
9. The change in the word “offer(s)” to “offers” in the definition of “Licensor” is merely for style.
10. The phrase “especially for anonymous and pseudonymous works, the natural person or persons represented by the publisher” replaced “the publisher;” in the unported license, in light of Section 179, Republic Act 8293. This major change clarifies that publishers cannot be deemed to be the original authors for pseudonymous works but that publishers can represent them.
11. The phrase “to the extent applicable, “original author” may also include:” was added in the definition of “Original Author.” This change was made to reflect the distinction of the status of “authors” under the general provisions of the Philippine Intellectual Property Code (Sections 171-201, 213-220), and “performers, producers, and broadcasters” under the specific provisions on the rights of performers, producers of sound recordings and broadcasting organizations (Sections 202-212). Authorship and ownership are clearly distinguished in the general provisions to provide a clear relation between natural and juridical persons as to the exercise of the rights.
12. The phrase “(i) in the case of a performance, the actors, singers, musicians, dancers, and other persons who act, sing, deliver, declaim, play in, interpret or otherwise perform literary or artistic works;” replaced “(i) in the case of a performance the actors, singers, musicians, dancers, and other persons who act, sing, deliver, declaim, play in, interpret or otherwise perform literary or artistic works or expressions of folklore;” in the definition of “Original Author.” This change was made to align the stipulation with the definition of “Performers” as provided by Section 202.1, Republic Act 8293.
13. The phrase “(ii) in the case of a sound recording, audiovisual work, or fixation, the producer who is the person who takes the initiative and has the responsibility for the first fixation of the sounds of a performance or other sounds, or the representation of sounds;” replaced “(ii) in the case of a phonogram the producer being the person or legal entity who first fixes the sounds of a performance or other sounds;” in the definition of “Original Author.” This change was made to align he stipulation with the definition of “Producer of sound recording” as provided by Section 202.5, Republic Act 8293.
14. The phrase “(iii) in the case of broadcasts, the person, duly authorized to engage in broadcasting, that transmits the broadcast” replaced “(iii) in the case of broadcasts, the organization that transmits the broadcast” in the definition of “Original Author.” This change was made to align he stipulation with the definition of “Broadcasting organization” as provided by Section 202.8, Republic Act 8293.
15. The phrases “protected from the moment of its creation, and by the sole fact of its creation,” and “as well as of its content, quality and purpose,” were added in the definition of “Work.” This change reflected the wordings of Section 172.2, Republic Act 8293.
16. The enumeration “such as a book, pamphlet, article and other writings; a periodical and a newspaper; a letter; a lecture, sermon, address, dissertation prepared for oral delivery, whether or not reduced in writing or in any other material form, or other work of the same nature; a dramatic or dramatico-musical composition or work; a choreographic work or entertainment in dumb show; a musical composition with or without words; an audiovisual work and a cinematographic work, and a work produced by a process analogous to cinematography or any process for making audio-visual recordings; a work of drawing, painting, architecture, sculpture, engraving, lithography, or other works of art; a drawing or plastic work of a scientific or technical character; a photographic work including work produced by a process analogous to photography; a lantern slide; a pictorial illustration and advertisement; a model or design for works of art; an original ornamental design or model for articles of manufacture, whether or not registrable as an industrial design, and other works of applied art; an illustration, map, plan, sketch, chart or three-dimensional work relative to geography, topography, architecture or science; a performance; a broadcast; a sound recording, audiovisual work, or fixation; and other literary, scholarly, scientific and artistic works” replaced that which were enumerated in the definition of “Work” in the unported license. This change was made to reflect the definition of “Works” in Section 172.1, Republic Act 8293, although the items in the law are in their plural form and not in the singular form. as adopted.
17. The phrases “public recitations, plays, dances, or otherwise to perform the work” and “either directly or by means of any device or process,” replaced “public recitations of the Work” and “by any means or process,” respectively; while “to publicly show of images in sequence and to make the sounds accompanying it audible; to make the recorded sounds audible at a place or at places where persons outside the normal circle of a family and that family’s closest social acquaintances are or can be present, irrespective of whether they are or can be present at the same place and at the same time, or at different places and/or at different times, and where the performance can be perceived without the need for communication;” was added, and “to perform the Work to the public by any means or process and the communication to the public of the performances of the Work, including by public digital performance;” was removed in the definition of “Publicly Perform.” This change was made to reconcile the stipulation with the definition of “Public Performance” in Section 171.6, the definition of “Communication to the public” in Section 171.3, and “Communication to the public of a performance or a sound recording” in Section 202.9, Republic Act 8293. Broadcasting, defined by Section 202.7, Republic Act 8293, was not modified.
18. The phrase “a copy or” was added, while the phrase “manner or form” replaced “means.” This change was made to indicate that even a single instance of making a copy constitutes “Reproduction” under Section 171.9, Republic Act 8293.
19. “Limitations on Copyright” replaced “Fair Dealing Rights” in Section 2. This change was made to reflect the applicability of the whole chapter on Limitations on Copyright (Sections 184-190 [with exception to Section 189 which covers computer programs]) and Section 212 (which relates to the Limitations on Protection on the rights of performers, producers of sound recordings, and broadcasters) of Republic Act 8293, and avoid the implication that only Section 185 or “Fair Use” applies.
20. The modification in the first words of all enumerations under “License Grants,” in Section 3, from “to” to “To” was made only for style.
21. The modification of “The original work was translated from English to Filipino,” from in “The original work was translated from English to Spanish,” one of the enumerations of the license grant was made only for style.
22. Reference to last section in the title “Miscellaneous” was removed in the last paragraph of the title on “License grants” as it no longer applies as a result of the porting process. The last paragraph of the title on “Miscellaneous,” which provided “The rights granted under, and the subject matter referenced, in this License were drafted utilizing the terminology of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (as amended on September 28, 1979), the Rome Convention of 1961, the WIPO Copyright Treaty of 1996, the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty of 1996 and the Universal Copyright Convention (as revised on July 24, 1971). These rights and subject matter take effect in the relevant jurisdiction in which the License terms are sought to be enforced according to the corresponding provisions of the implementation of those treaty provisions in the applicable national law. If the standard suite of rights granted under applicable copyright law includes additional rights not granted under this License, such additional rights are deemed to be included in the License; this License is not intended to restrict the license of any rights under applicable law.” was deleted inasmuch as the Philippine license is now more attuned to the terminology of Philippine Intellectual Property Code, Republic Act 8293.
23. The phrase “or (iii) either the unported Creative Commons license or a Creative Commons license for another jurisdiction (either this or a later license version) that contains the same License Elements as this License (e.g. Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 (Unported))” replaced “a Creative Commons jurisdiction license (either this or a later license version) that contains the same License Elements as this License (e.g., Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 US)” as suggested by Creative Commons International.
24. The example “Filipino translation of the Work by Original Author,” replaced “French translation of the Work by Original Author.” This change was made only for style.
25. Only the Voluntary Licensing Scheme was adopted since there is no compulsory licensing scheme (whether waivable or unwaivable) for copyright, unlike patents, available under Philippine law. The primary relevant provision as to the instance of collecting societies may be found under Section 183 (Designation of Society), Republic Act 8293, which provides that “The copyright owners or their heirs may designate a society of artists, writers or composers to enforce their economic rights and moral rights on their behalf.” The right of collecting societies to collect the royalties for and in behalf of the copyright owner in the Philippines is derived from the Deed of Assignment (usually for Public Performance Rights) made between the copyright owners and the collecting society, and not directly from a specific provision of law. Related to the exercise of rights on copyright, incidental to the assignment, is Section 180.1 (Rights of Assignee), which provides that “The copyright may be assigned in whole or in part. Within the scope of the assignment, the assignee is entitled to all the rights and remedies which the assignor had with respect to the copyright.” Considering thus that the designation of the collecting society is not in the nature of a power of attorney, but an assignment of rights; the copyright owner could not exercise the rights necessary to license his work outside the agreement made with the collecting society, without being contrary to the Deed of Assignment made with the Collecting Society. Under this scenario, if the copyright owner would license his work with CC license when in fact the rights necessary are already assigned to the Collecting Society, the “in case of doubt clause” would not operate within the sphere of ambiguities of the license terms but within the sphere of the ambiguity of the licensor’s capacity itself. Such ambiguity cannot be made to benefit the licensor who would initiate the ambiguity. The licensees’ interests remain to be material here since the license is to be taken as a contract in Philippine jurisdiction, in fact a contract of adhesion. Hence, ambiguity, under Philippine jurisprudence, is taken against the one formulating (here, adopting) the terms of the agreement. It cannot be made to prejudice the licensees who have taken the work, according to the terms provided, in good faith.
26. It is noteworthy that Section 4(f) includes an express moral rights acknowledgment, which was omitted by the previous versions 2.0 and 2.5 unported/generic licenses, which were based on US realities. Noting however that (1) the right to make Adaptations per se, in the Philippines, is not deemed a derogatory action prejudicial to the author’s honor and reputation; and (2) Section 4(f) could be read as if the licensee has the obligation “….to not distort, mutilate, modify or take any other derogatory action in relation to the Work which would be prejudicial to the Original Author’s honor or reputation” in every jurisdiction even if moral rights do not exist, as pointed out by CCI, there was more wisdom in adopting the more encompassing and neutral statement “Moral rights remain unaffected to the extent they are recognized and not waivable by applicable law,” as suggested by the CCI Director, as it considers fully Sections 193 and 195, Republic Act 8293.
27. The phrases “ACTUAL OR COMPENSATORY, INCIDENTAL, MORAL, NOMINAL, TEMPERATE OR MODERATE, LIQUIDATED, EXEMPLARY OR CORRECTIVE” replaced “SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR EXEMPLARY” in the title on “Limitation on Liability” in Section 6; while “actual or compensatory, incidental, moral, nominal, temperate or moderate, liquidated, exemplary or corrective damages” replaced “general, special, incidental or consequential damages” in the Creative Commons Notice. This change was made in light of the fact that Special, Incidental, Consequential, Punitive and Exemplary Damages, are terms not found in Philippine law. Damages under Philippine Law, specifically under Article 2197, Title XVIII, of the Civil Code of the Philippines (1950) are enumerated as “(1) actual or compensatory; (2) moral; (3) nominal; (4) temperate or moderate; (5) liquidated; or (6) exemplary or corrective.” Based on the definitions or examples being made over the Internet as to the meaning of the original wordings of the damages, “Special damages” somehow relates to Actual or Compensatory damages, “incidental damages” relates to Liquidated damages, “Consequential damages” somehow relates to Moderate or Temperate damages, and “Punitive damages” relates to Exemplary damages.
28. The phrase “or its affiliates in the Philippines (”CC-PH”)” was added since a limitation of liability is equally important to affiliates, authorized representatives, etc. of the Creative Commons in the Philippines, relating to the license.
29. The words “Work,” “Adaptation,” “Collection,” Licensor”, “License”, “License Elements,” “Original Author,” “You,” “Distribute,” “Publicly Perform,” and “Reproduce” were converted to lower case words, unless they are the first word in a sentence, or are the words being defined in the license. This change was made for style.
30. The words “Applicable License”, and “Attribution Parties” were converted to lower case words, unless they are in quotation marks.
31. The word “the” was added before the word “licensor” for consistency, unless if “licensor” is preceded by the word “any” or is related to “original author” in an enumeration or option.
32. Specific section references in Section 4(d), Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Philippines now referred to Section 4(b), rectifying the minor error in the unported suite, which refererred to Section 4(c); while Section 1 (b) of Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 Philipines now referred to Section 1(h), rectifying the minor error in the unported suite, which referred to Section 1(f).

• ITLJ 4-1
• Comments(3)

administrator January 14th, 2008

Creative Commons International: The Porting Process

This article adopts the document “Worldwide Overview,” and its subpages, available at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Worldwide_Overview, with footnotes outlining the Philippine experience.

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

The Creative Commons generic, or “unported,” licenses are jurisdiction-agnostic. They do not mention any particular jurisdiction’s laws or statutes or contain any sort of choice-of-law provision. In light of this, although the licenses could function in legal systems across the world, some aspects of the “unported” licenses may not jibe with a particular jurisdiction’s laws. Hence, the International Commons project allows the porting of the Legal Code to accommodate a specific jurisdiction’s legal background rules.¹

The Process of porting

1. Project Lead and Institution or Law Firm Identified

The Project Lead is the central figure for the porting of the licenses into national law. He/she is an expert in copyright law, more often than not a lawyer, and more often than not associated with the Institution or Law Firm. In some jurisdictions Creative Commons International (CCI) identifies the Project Lead first and asks him/her for help in finding a renowned copyright Institution or renowned Law Firm. In other jurisdictions, the CCI is in contact with the Institution/Firm first and tries to find a Project Lead from within.²

Whether for the application for the project lead and public institution, or for the porting of the generic licenses towards a jurisdiction-specific licenses, the Director³ of the CCI had to be contacted.

The project lead had to read all the relevant documents, including the porting checklist, required in license porting from the iTeamSpace repository of the CCI, in preparation of the necessary processes in the production of the license drafts.

The project lead had to check the jurisdiction’s current licenses.⁴

Considerations as to the prevailing circumstances involving Collective Rights Management, within the jurisdiction, also had to be made.

2. Production of First Draft

To preserve the global spirit of Creative Commons, CCI strives for utmost similarity between the licenses worldwide. It is thus important for CCI that the porting be very close to the original and go into the specifics of national law only when absolutely necessary. Once the first draft of the licenses is produced, it is re-translated into English. This is also important for CCI, so that it can learn what differences the legal systems of the respective jurisdictions have brought into the Creative Commons licenses.⁵

3. Online Public Discussion

Creative Commons makes the first draft of the licenses accessible on the CCI website, via a mailing list and archive, for public discussion.⁶ Both the Project Lead and CCI make concentrated efforts to drive expert traffic toward the project e-mail list.⁷

4. Production of Second Draft

In a new draft, the Project Lead incorporates relevant ideas that were put forward in the public discussion. This second draft, however, is optional since the Project Lead may decide to keep the original published, if none of the ideas brought forward seem usable. The Project Lead generally provides an English translation for the second draft, but which was not necessary for the Philippine porting process since the drafts have always been in English. There was no second draft created as there were no additional details or suggestions acquired from the public discussions.

5. Creative Commons Reviews Second Draft

In some cases, the”review” is done on a public email list, while in others, it is done offline. Either way, the Project Lead and Creative Commons work on producing a result everyone will be happy with.⁸

If and when the draft has been cleared to be adopted by CCI, the public lead had to port the other five (5) unported Creative Commons licenses, i.e. the CC-BY 3.0, the CC-BY-SA 3.0., the CC-BY-NC 3.0., the CC-BY-ND 3.0., and the CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 licenses.⁹¹⁰

6. Production of Human-Readable Translation

Ease-of-use by non-lawyers has been Creative Common’s priority since its birth. Therefore, it is important that, in addition to the ported licenses, the Project Lead produce a translation or adaptation of the human-readable layer in the national language, the Commons Deed, which gives a brief graphic explanation of what the licenses stand for.¹¹

7. Ported Licenses posted on creativecommons.org

Up to this point, creativecommons.org would have listed links pointing to the Lead’s website, and to important places of national discussion and/or press coverage (as provided by the Project Lead). At this moment, however, CCI place the full final licenses, plus the Commons Deed, on the CCI website, in the national language.¹²

8. The Launch

Whether the launch be in form of a party, a convention, a television program, a press conference or all of the above will be up to the Project Lead. What is important to CCI is that the event attract the kind of publicity we need to make sure that people will know where to turn to for “creative work available for others to create upon and share.”¹³

1. http://creativecommons.org/international/ [↩]
2. In the Philippines, CCI is working with the e-Law Center of the Arellano University School of Law to create Philippine jurisdiction-specific licenses from the generic Creative Commons licenses.The Arellano University School of Law is the Public Lead Institution, while Atty. Jaime N. Soriano, the Executive Director of the e-Law Center therein, is the Philippine project lead for the Creative Commons affiliate in the Philippines. http://creativecommons.org/worldwide/ph/ [↩]
3. Catharina Maracke. See http://creativecommons.org/about/people#67 [↩]
4. No Philippine-specific license was officially released prior to the porting procedure for the Version 3.0 licenses. The process of porting the generic license of Creative Commons 2.0 licenses — which has been undertaken by the Creative Commons project lead after he has been identified to be so up to the interim stage between public discussions and the production of the second draft — was overtaken by the release of Creative Commons versions 2.5 and 3.0. Hence, the whole process of porting, towards the Creative Commons 3.0 licenses, had to be re-initiated. [↩]
5. The first draft of the Version 3.0 Philippine license, using the CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0 as a template, was submitted to CCI late March 2008 for their initial comments. Suggestions from the representatives from the University of the Philippines – Internet Society Program, which were made during the public discussions of the previously proposed 2.0 Philippine licenses were incorporated into the Version 3.0 Philippine-ported license, when and if they remain to be applicable. Correspondence with CCI ensued for certain clarifications on the proposed ported 3.0 license’s wordings. The draft was submitted in English, a recognized alternative national language to the Filipino language. English was adopted so that the license would not experience any entanglement with political undercurrents relating to the Tagalog-based Filipino language, and more importantly, for convenience, inasmuch as English is the recognized language in Philippine courts. [↩]
6. http://creativecommons.org/worldwide/ph/ [↩]
7. The final copy of the first draft was submitted late May 2007, and was posted for public discussion immediately thereafter. The public discussion was completed, without new comments, at the end of June 2007. By early July, the set of 6 licenses were submitted to CCI. [↩]
8. CC Philippines was informed of certain developments in the CCI approach on the moral rights stipulation during Atty. Guerrero’s personal visit to the CCI office in Berlin on late July. As it is a major modification, the item was taken back to public discussion. Absent any opposition to the new wordings, the second draft was submitted to CCI by late August 2007. [↩]
9. The six license drafts were submitted to CCI on 10 September 2007. [↩]
10. Additional clarifications were made by CCI on the wordings of the second draft, and the draft licenses were subsequently modified. The major modifications were made early November 2007, while styling modifications and proofreading were made through mid- to late November. The final draft was submitted to CCI on 28 November 2007. [↩]
11. There was no need to create a translated Deed since the Philippine jurisdictional licenses remained in English. [↩]
12. The XHTML files were submitted by 3 December 2007, and an error in the BY-SA file was rectified on 12 December 2007. The files were made available in the staging portion of the Creative Commons website to allow further checks before making them live. The HTML files were made live by noon, Philippine time, on 15 December 2007, in time for the Creative Commons 5th Birthday Party and the CC Philippine jurisdictional license soft launch. [↩]
13. The Philippine jurisdictional licenses were soft launched on 15 December 2007. The formal launch was set on 14 January 2007, to invite more people to join in the festivities marking the milestone. [↩]

• ITLJ 4-1
• Comments(2)

administrator January 14th, 2008

Creative Commons International: Creative Commons Version 3.0 Licenses - A Brief Explanation
by Mia Garlick

Mia Garlick was the General Counsel of Creative Commons. Mia received her Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws from the University of New South Wales in 1998, and her Masters of Law from Stanford Law School in 2003. She is admitted to practice in New South Wales, Australia, and in California, USA. The article is found online at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Version_3.

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Since April 2005, Creative Commons has been working on versioning up its core licensing suite. The Creative Commons licenses¹ serve as an important vehicle by which many millions of creators clearly signal to the world that they are happy for members of the public to engage in some of the exciting new uses of content that are made possible by digital technologies. Using a CC license, an artist can, for example, invite the public to share their work or mash it up (on certain conditions).

A distinctive feature of CC’s licensing infrastructure is ensuring that it is comprehensible to both humans (the Commons Deed) and machines (the metadata) as well as enforceable in a court of law (the Legal Code, which is the actual license). But another important aspect of the CC licensing system is to ensure that it respected by the community of people who apply our licenses to their content, who use CC-licensed content and who are committed to enabling free culture.

Creative Commons regularly invites and receives feedback about its licenses and how they may be able to be improved to better serve the people who use them and who use CC-licensed content. Obviously, all things can be improved with the benefit of hindsight and experience; also, the environment within which CC licenses are used is always changing. When CC first released its licenses, for example, the use of video and video-sharing sites had not yet been deployed, let alone used to the extent they are today.

We released version 1.0 of our licenses in December 2002.² Like software releases, we track the different licenses by version. In May 2004, we versioned to 2.0³ and then made a minor tweak to the attribution clause in June 2005⁴ and versioned to 2.5. Now, CC is versioning to 3.0. We announced a timetable for versioning to 3.0 back in May 2006;⁵ and we have followed the consultation process in the timetable even though the schedule itself has been considerably delayed while we take account of all of the different interest groups that are relevant to CC licenses.

Background to Version 3.0

The process of versioning to 3.0 began back around April 2005 as part of discussions with Debian⁶ and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)⁷ about ways to improve the clarity of our licenses. Although discussions with Debian and MIT initiated consideration of a new license version, ultimately, version 3.0 grew to be about much more than these two projects — it focused on internationalizing the “generic” license and international harmonization of the CC licenses. Additionally, it expanded to encompass Creative Commons’ long-held vision⁸ of establishing a compatibility structure to allow interoperability between different flexible content copyright licenses.

Debian

Debian describes itself as “an association of individuals who have made common cause to create a free operating system”⁹ and the volunteer group has worked together to create an operating system called Debian GNU/Linux. The project and all developers working on the project adhere to the Debian Social Contract.¹⁰ The Debian Free Software Guidelines (DSFG)¹¹ form part of the Debian Social Contract and define the criteria for “free software” and so what software is permissible in the distribution.

One part of the Debian community is debian-legal¹² — a mailing list whose members provide “guidance for the Debian project on, among other things, the acceptability of software and other content for inclusion in the Debian operating system.”¹³ They work primarily involves reviewing software against the DFSG to determine if the packages constitute “free software” per the DFSG. Contributors to the Debian project can then take these determination into account when making decisions about what to include in individual packages.

From time to time the debian-legal list provides a review of a well-known software license to express a rough consensus opinion on whether software released solely under the license would satisfy the definition of “free software” according to the DSFG. Although these summaries are not binding, they do provide some basis for the Debian project to make decisions about individual packages. Although debian-legal work primarily in reviewing software programs and Creative Commons licenses are not designed for software, debian-legal notes that the:

“Creative Commons licenses are still of interest to the Debian project. Debian includes documentation for programs, and many programs included in Debian use digital data such as images, sounds, video, or text that are included with the programs in Debian.”¹⁴

Consequently, debian-legal reviewed the CC licenses and concluded that none of the Creative Commons core licensees were free according to the DFSG and recommended that works released under these license “should not be included in Debian.”¹⁵

It is clear that the licenses that contain a NonCommercial or a NoDerivatives restriction (e.g. Attribution-NonCommercial, Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike, Attribution-NoDerivatives, Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives ) will never be able to comply with the DFSG because these violate basic principles articulate in the DSFG — specifically, DSFG 1 which requires that a licensee be able to sell copies of the work, DSFG 3 which requires a license to permit the making of derivative works and DSFG 6 which proscribes discrimination against any field of endeavor.

But this should still leave the CC Attribution and Attribution-ShareAlike licenses as DSFG-compliant. On reviewing debian-legal’s issues with these licenses, it seemed clear to Creative Commons that, for the most part, minor amendments and clarifications to the licenses should be able to address debian-legal’s concerns. ¹⁶ One topic, however, that was not minor and proved to be much debated as part of the version 3.0 license discussions was the anti-TPM clause in the CC licenses; TPM being technological protection measures such as encryption which have received legal protection in many jurisdictions around the world, which make it a civil (and sometimes) a criminal offence to circumvent these measures.

The Creative Commons licenses prohibit a licensee applying a TPM to a licensed work that restricts the rights granted under the license.¹⁷ In essence, this clause is intended to ensure that a person cannot exercise the freedoms granted by a CC license to apply technologies that restrict those freedoms for others.

In Debian’s view, this prohibition violates DSFG #1 because it prevents a licensee from being able to distribute works in the format of their choice. The consequence of this is that CC-licensed content cannot, for example, be included by a licensee in a Sony Playstation game or other platforms that exist on TPM.

An important thing to note, however, is that this limitation only applied to CC licensees. CC licensors are of course free to license their works on a Sony or other TPM-ed platform whilst also CC licensing it. One example of this is the Beastie Boys track ‘Now Get Busy’ that appeared on the WIRED CD under a CC Sampling license¹⁸ but was then also made available on iTunes.¹⁹

To avoid interfering with the freedom of the licensed content and allowing a licensee to lock up the content on a TPM-ed platform, Debian proposed that CC’s so-called “anti-TPM” provision to allow a licensee to distribute the CC-licensed work in any format, including a TPM-ed format, provided that the license distributed the work in at least one format that did not restrict another person’s exercise of rights under the license. This proposal became known as the “parallel distribution” proposal.

Creative Commons initially agreed to include the parallel distribution proposal as part of the discussion draft for the Version 3.0 amendments. The rationale for this initial acceptance was that it could accommodate the objectives of the anti-TPM clause (being free culture) whilst