Press Release: SINGAPORE ANNOUNCES PORTED CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSES

It's official.

Excerpt from the press release, slated for 27 July release:

Press Release - SINGAPORE ANNOUNCES PORTED CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSES

San Francisco, CA, USA and Singapore City, Singapore — July 27, 2008

Today Creative Commons Singapore announces the completion of the locally ported Creative Commons licensing suite. In close collaboration with Centre for Asia Pacific Technology Law & Policy (CAPTEL), the Creative Commons team in Singapore, led by Associate Professor Samtani Anil and Assistant Professor Giorgos Cheliotis, adapted the licenses both linguistically and legally to Singaporean national law.

The Creative Commons licenses, now ported to 47 jurisdictions, 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.

The Singaporean Creative Commons licenses, available soon online, will be celebrated today in Singapore City at the International Symposium on Electronic Art.

The event will also feature a panel, organized by CAPTEL and Creative Commons Singapore, to introduce the audience to key copyright issues in the digital age and also share tips for creators and users to avoid common pitfalls in the field of copyright law.

The panel will, in addition, explain the aims and philosophy of the Creative Commons initiative and the specific nature and uses of the Creative Commons licensing suite in Singapore.

Stanford law professor and Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig will address the audience to commemorate the completion of the licenses.

Following the event, the CC Singapore team hopes to initiate a series of educational talks to explain the philosophy of Creative Commons and the practical ways in which users can implement the licenses.

Project Lead Samtani Anil adds, “We also believe the launch of the Singapore CC licenses will lead to a better appreciation of the ambit, contours, and limits of the existing copyright regime in Singapore in relation to the sharing and dissemination of culture and the advancement of innovation.

This, we believe, will sensitize various stakeholders to the avenues that are open to them to share their works in accordance with their wishes and needs.”

The CC Singapore team is supported by team members Assistant Professor Warren Chik, Vinod Sabnani, Tham Kok Leong, Lam Chung Nian, Harish Pillay and Ankit Guglani.

The full announcement is at the Creative Commons press release page. Thanks to Associate Professor Anil Samtani for the heads-up.

(BTW, Molly Kleinman, Copyright Specialist and Special Projects Librarian at University of Michigan, was also nice enough to email me about the press release. We've been in touch, 'cos she'll be giving a talk on Creative Commons. Sort of her personal-working visit).

I'm interested in the part where it says after the conference, "... the CC Singapore team hopes to initiate a series of educational talks to explain the philosophy of Creative Commons and the practical ways in which users can implement the licenses."

I'd be happy to link up the CC Singapore team with the NLB for the talks (if they've not done so already). I'll check with Prof Anil.

And I'll certainly organise the next GarageBand Meetup Singapore with Creative Commons in mind. This was something the five of us discussed at our very first meetup.

Apart from trading tips on how to do stuff with GarageBand, we intend to create works from the meetups and license it under Creative Commons (e.g. you create a loop, I create a loop, and we try to make a song out of it).

Kinda like CCmixter meets Songcraft. Heh.

Hmm... maybe organise this at the library venue even.

[see also: What does it mean by "porting Creative Commons to Singapore"?]

June 2008 issue of SCL News

Latest issue of the Libraries for Children and Young Adults Section is out. The PDF file (1.9MB) can be downloaded, here.

I feel there are a few articles worth reading.

Two articles from Denmark, on the library service's future, and new competencies and staff roles.

An article about an English Children's library in Xiamen, People's Republic of China (the first-ever article featuring a library from the PRC, if I'm not mistaken).

Oh yeah, do read the one about the Teen Chat event between teens in Singapore and Germany.

Countries featured in this issue:

• DENMARK (p.3 - The library service’s future in Denmark)
• PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA (p.4 - "... first English Children’s library in Mainland China").
• SINGAPORE (p.6 - Teen Online Chat: Singapore & Germany)
• NETHERLANDS (p.9 - "The Library of 100 Talents")
• UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (p.11 - Summer Reading Programme & Mascot)

Other content:

• The Chair Speaks
• Editor's Note
• New Competencies, Roles, and Staff for Children’s Libraries: Denmark
• Reading aloud in VMBO: Netherlands
• Website Reviews
  
• Highlights of Minutes: Mid-year meeting

What does it mean by "porting Creative Commons to Singapore"?

As a follow-up from this post, I asked via the CC-sg list: What does it mean when CC is ported over?

Associate Professor Anil Samtani (Deputy Director of CAPTEL and Associate Professor of Law at NTU) answered my question and gave permission to publish his response in full:

Here's my take on your query. The porting process involves both linguistically translating the licenses (where applicable) and legally adapting them to particular jurisdictions.

So whilst CC does not and is unable to warrant that the localized licences will be enforceable, the idea is that the adaptation process will make it more likely that a local court will enforce the ported licence given the fact that the licence has been adapted to take into account the nuances of the local laws in the country concerned.

Having said that, though, the unported licences have also been couched using terms consistent with international intellectual property conventions and treaties so they are also crafted with a view to ensuring that courts are likely to enforce those licences.

Nevertheless, because of the differences in place in various copyright legislations the world over, it is hoped that the porting process will bring about greater certainty to creators and users in understanding their rights and obligations as the ported licences will take into account these legislative differences.

It is also probably worthwhile to note that the CC licences contain "severability" clauses -- meaning that, if a certain provision is found to be unenforeceable in a certain place, that provision and only that provision drops out of the license, leaving the rest of the agreement intact.

Thanks, Prof Anil.

NTDTV report: South Korean bloggers spur US beef import protest

This YouTube video by New Tang Dynasty TV (NTDTV) talks about the influence of South Korean bloggers on public opinion against the resumption of beef imports from the US:


Citizen journalism isn't a new phenomenon in South Korea.

Dan Gillmor's book, "We The Media", mentions how South Korean bloggers, particularly the citizen journalism site Ohmynews (see this Wikipedia entry) played a significatn role in South Korean politics.

We the Media: Grassroots journalism by the people, for the people

NLB Call No.: 302.23 GIL