3

ENCOURAGING THE
ECOLOGY OF CREATIVITY

8
CHALLENGES IN CULTIVATING A
SHARING CULTURE

9
CREATIVE COMMONS VERSION 3.0
LICENSES - A BRIEF EXPLANATION

15
THE PORTING PROCESS

16
PORTED LICENSE MODIFICATIONS

20
CREATIVE COMMONS PHILIPPINE
JURISDICTIONAL LICENSE SAMPLE
(CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 PH)

23
PROMOTING THE COMMONS
LOCALLY

THE PHILIPPINE IT LAW JOURNAL

24
ISUMMIT 2007

26
DEVELOPING A
PHILIPPINE COMMONS

27
CC-PH SET TO PARTICIPATE
IN THE ACIA:
INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP
ON ASIA AND COMMONS
IN THE INFORMATION AGE

28
CC PHILIPPINE LICENSE SOFT
LAUNCHING AND
THE CC 5TH BIRTHDAY PARTY
1
2 EDITORIAL
THE PHILIPPINE IT LAW JOURNAL

When I joined the Creative Commons
Philippine team, Atty. Jaime N. Soriano,
the project lead of Creative Commons
Philippines, broached upon the idea of
coming up with a Creative Commons (CC)
issue for the IT Law Journal in the near
future. This is the one, and it is now CC
licensed.
For the months prior and subsequent to
the iSummit 2007 conference in Croatia,
I wrote draft articles tackling the
Commons, some entitled as “OpenEd,”
“Keeping public domain content public,”
“The debate on the meaning of
NonCommercial,” among others, in the
usual manner papers are traditionally
written, i.e. within the parameters of fair
use.
An inquiry, as to the distinction between
fair use attribution and CC license
attribution, was focal in the determination
of the current issue’s contents. The
question provided a fork, a choice
between two approaches: One which
would contain articles written in the
traditional manner, utilizing fair use,
quoting largely CC licensed materials --
which would not be different if one would
be utilizing “All rights reserved” materials,
and which would then conveniently
incorporate draft articles already written
-- or the one which would contain articles
that would emphasize the remixing culture
that is made possible by alternative
licensing. The latter approach was
adopted, since it could provide an
illustration of results emanating from the
mantra “Share, remix and reuse --
legally.” On a minor note, since the issue
reverted to square one, even the layout,
circa 2004, was overhauled.
This issue was timed to be released when
the Philippines has already launched its
jurisdictional licenses. The Philippine
jurisdictional licenses were soft launched
during the 5th Birthday Party of Creative
Commons (15 December 2007). The
public launch was scheduled 14 January
2008. Perhaps, you are receiving this
issue because you are currently
participating in said event. Considering,
however, if such is not the case, we hope
that we have the opportunity to meet in a
Philippine Commons-organized event,
else in an event organized by any
institution which supports the commons. Image: "Coffee to Cocktails" © 2008. Berne Guerrero. Some
--Michael Vernon Guerrero Rights Reserved. The work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
PH http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ph/.

ABOUT THE COVER THE PUBLICATION

“Suppressed Creativity?” © 2008. Berne Guerrero. Some Rights Reserved. The work is licensed The Philippine IT Law Journal is the official
under CC BY 3.0 PH http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ph/. Although liberality, publication of the e-Law Center and the IT Law
through alternative licensing, has been extended to remix the image elements into a single design Society of the Arellano University School of Law.
for the cover in time for the formal launching of the Philippine suite of Creative Commons Contributions to the Journal express the views of
licenses, the artist had, for a moment but later dispelled, certain apprehension on running afoul their respective authors and may not necessarily
with a conservative law in the “proper” expression of his patriotism. This work was built upon
reflect those of the University.
the works of ([A] for the eight sun rays, or the spokes of a windmill, if one looks at it
differently): [1] Akira Komiya (http://www.loftwork.com/user/3256/portfolio), iCommons
Lab Report April-May 2007 cover, CC BY 2.5; [2] Youko Nakamura (http://
EDITORIAL BOARD
www.loftwork.com/user/7862/), iCommons Lab Report September-October 2007 cover, CC
BY 3.0; [3] RujiRushi (http://www.loftwork.com/portfolio.aspx?cid=4574), iCommons CHAIRMAN
Lab Report March-April 2007 cover, CC BY 2.5; [4] Masakuzu Yamazaki (http:// Atty. Jaime N. Soriano, CPA, MNSA
www.loftwork.com/user/6666/portfolio/), iCommons Lab Report August-September 2007,
CC BY 3.0; [5] Go Kato (http://www.loftwork.com/portfolio.aspx?cid=6388), iCommons LAYOUT
Lab Report February-March 2007 cover, CC BY 2.5; [6] Kiyomi Saitou (http:// Atty. Michael Vernon M. Guerrero
www.loftwork.com/user/3075/portfolio/), iCommons Lab Report November-December 2007
cover, CC BY 3.0; [7] Shohei Honma, iCommons Lab Report May-June 2007, CC BY 3.0; and [8] Sioux (http://www.loftwork.com/ The IT Law Journal Editorial Board may be
user/1346/portfolio/), iCommons Lab Re[prt July-August 2007 cover, CC BY 3.0); all courtesy of Loftwork (http://www.loftwork.com); reached at the e-Law Center, 2/F Heilbronn Hall,
([B] for background watermark mosaic): [1] Joi Ito. "Fred Benenson". http://flickr.com/photos/joi/551780005/ CC BY 2.0; [2] Arellano University School of Law, Taft Avenue
Nathaniel Stern. "untitled 8" http://flickr.com/photos/nathanielstern/543692306/ CC BY 2.0; [3] Carlos Correa Loyola. corner Menlo Street, Pasay City 1300 Metro
"Lessing after his keynote (I)". http://flickr.com/photos/calu777/556034204/ CC BY 2.0; [4] Franz Patzig. "CC Birthday Party Manila Philippines.
Berlin". http://flickr.com/photos/franzlife/2115710741/ CC BY 2.0; [5] Joi Ito. "Ovation." http://flickr.com/photos/joi/554971968/
CC BY 2.0; [6] Franz Patzig. "CC Birthday Party Berlin". http://flickr.com/photos/franzlife/2116594556/ CC BY 2.0; [7]
Unless otherwise provided, this publication is
Carlos Correa Loyola. "Latinamerican iCommoners (II)". http://flickr.com/photos/calu777/557770195/ CC BY 2.0; [8]
CreativeCommoners/Creative Commons - SF HQ. “DSC03543.” http://www.flickr.com/photos/creativecommons/559583784/
licensed under Creative Commons Attribution
CC BY 2.0; [9] Joi Ito. "Cory Doctorow". http://www.flickr.com/photos/joi/549393610/ CC BY 2.0; [10] Franz Patzig. "CC 3.0 Philippines license. http://
Birthday Party Berlin". http://flickr.com/photos/franzlife/2116460846/ CC BY 2.0; and [11] CreativeCommoners/ Creative creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ph
Commons - SF HQ. "Eva's new friend". http://www.flickr.com/photos/creativecommons/644971829/ CC BY 2.0; and ([C] for text
box watermark): [1] Scott Beale / Laughing Squid. http://laughingsquid.com/ "Creative Commons Salon". http://flickr.com/photos/
laughingsquid/398474123/ CC BY 2.0; [2] Karl Jonsson. "C-shirt presentation" http://www.flickr.com/photos/karljonsson/
552880076/ CC BY 2.0; [3] Irina Slutsky. "happy birthday creative commons " http://www.flickr.com/photos/irinaslutsky/
326625311/ CC BY 2.0; and [4] Tvol / Timothy Vollmer. "Creative Commons 5th Birthday Party, San Francisco". http://
www.flickr.com/photos/sixteenmilesofstring/2117170451/ CC BY 2.0. PDF modified to resolve license incompatibilities in the
original.

CREATIVE COMMONS
ENCOURAGING THE
ECOLOGY OF CREATIVITY
Creative Commons’ Mission
Creative Commons' mission is to enable
the legal sharing and reuse of cultural,
educational, and scientific works. To this
end, it offers free and easy-to-use tools
to creators and the public to assist them
in harnessing the creativity that new
technologies make possible - a read/write
culture in which we can engage with the
content that surrounds us, as distinct from
a read-only culture in which we can only
passively receive content.
The Problem Creative Commons
Seeks to Address
Creative Commons was founded in 2001
to address the problem: on the internet
there's no way to "use" a work without
simultaneously making a "copy." This
implicates copyright law -- the law that
grants creators exclusive rights to control
certain activities in relation to their work.
Due to the nature of modern
technologies, people are connected in
ways never before possible. Now the
public can distribute works in a variety of
formats of a high, and often, professional
quality, and can work collaboratively
across boundaries of time and space. In
addition, digital technologies offer new
ways to create, share and remix new,
derivative, and collective works. All of
these activities prejudice the exclusive
rights of the copyright owner.
As a result (and, of course, subject to fair
use), any digital or online use of a work
could be said to first require permission.
And it is this feature (or bug, depending
upon your perspective) that Creative
Commons was formed to address.
Image: "Remix." © 2008. Berne Guerrero. Some Rights Reserved. The work is licensed under CC BY 3.0 PH http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ph/. Built upon the works of [1] Beth Kanter
(cambodia4kidsorg). "What A Second Grader Knows About Creative Commons." http://www.flickr.com/photos/cambodia4kidsorg/2042494952/ BY 2.0 Generic. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
2.0/deed.en [2] Peter Shanks (BotheredByBees). "CC swag XI". http://www.flickr.com/photos/botheredbybees/2101568605/ BY 2.0 Generic. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en [3]
Emil Alviola. "scratch-this". http://www.flickr.com/photos/21328364@N06/2070594652/ BY 2.0 Generic. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en and [4] Creative Commons
"About" text. http://creativecommons.org/about/ CC BY 3.0 Unported http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Creative Commons provides creators with
a simple way to say what freedoms they
want their creative works to carry- to say
that they welcome people making some
of the uses of their work that new
technologies make. This makes it easy for
others to share or build upon creative
work. Creative Commons makes it
possible for creators to reserve some
rights while licensing others to the public,
hence its mantra “some rights reserved”;
as opposed to the default “all rights
reserved” level of copyright protection that
requires you to ask permission first. In
this way, Creative Commons offers private
voluntary tools for creators to adopt to
create a public good - a pool of cultural,
educational, and scientific content that can
be legally and freely accessed, used, and
repurposed.
The Creative Commons Project
"Culture Commons"
As mentioned above, Creative Commons
was incorporated in 2001 as a non-profit
This abbreviated article was part of a 13-page document,
entitled “Creative Commons: Encouraging the ecology of
creativity (2007)” acquired from the Creative Commons
International office in Berlin on 23 July 2007. Certain
footnotes were included to provide additional information about
certain recent events.
http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
organization. It first offered its tools to the
public in December 2002.
Since its inception, it has worked on its
"Culture Commons" project, which is
designed to expand the pool of creative
and educational content that is free for
anyone to use, reuse and repurpose.
However, soon after the public release
of its tools, it became apparent that
Creative Commons needed to work to make
these tools relevant to people in different
jurisdictions and from different cultures.
To this end, it established in 2003 an
international license porting project-
THE PHILIPPINE IT LAW JOURNAL
Creative Commons International (CCi).
Creative Commons International
CCi works to "port" the core Creative
Commons licenses to different
jurisdictions around the world. The
"porting" work involves both linguistically
translating the licenses and legally
adapting it for the particular jurisdiction
in question. This work is lead by volunteer
teams in each jurisdiction who are
3
 committed to introducing CC to their part of the recent iCommons Summit held both verbatim and derivative use for both
4 country, and who consult extensively with in Rio de Janeiro in June 2006. At the commercial and noncommercial
members of the public and key Summit, new plans for projects and purposes and places no requirements on
THE PHILIPPINE IT LAW JOURNAL

stakeholders as part of the porting collaboration were forged. the licensing of derivatives, provided
process. attribution is given. The most restrictive is
Science Commons the Attribution-NonCommercial-
Once the main porting work has been NoDerivatives license which permits only
completed, CCi continues to collaborate Launched in early 2005, Science verbatim reproduction and distribution for
with the international affiliates to maintain Commons is designed to extend the noncommercial purposes, provided that
the licenses and adapt later versions of approach of enabling sharing and attribution is given -- essentially,
the licenses, to disseminate information collaboration into academia and the noncommercial file sharing.
about the licenses, and to share sciences.
responsibility for the conduct of legal Once a person selects the license that
research. In this way, CCi works to The Science Commons project is based matches their preferences, they receive
maintain an international license on the belief that science and education the license expressed in three different
architecture and an international network depend on the ability to observe, learn formats: (i) the human-readable
of legal experts. from, and test the work of others. Science Commons Deed which sets out the key
Commons works to apply the Creative license elements and contains human
As CC licenses were "ported" to different Commons model of standardized legal readable license buttons; (ii) the lawyer-
jurisdictions around the world, Creative agreements and simple technical tools to readable Legal Code that contains the
Commons became acquainted with build a "science commons." actual license; and, (iii) the machine-
many“different communities that were readable Resource Description
committed to the ideas and the practice The Creative Commons Tools Framework metadata that describes the
of a commons. As it got to know these key license terms and is then searchable
communities better, it realized that many Creative Commons offers a by the customized "find" technologies.
fell outside of the strict boundaries of suite of legal and tech tools
Creative Commons licenses and tools. To free to the public for them Nothing in this design is intended to
support and connect this community, it to use. modify, or qualify, in any way the law of
realized that a new project was necessary "fair use" or fair dealing." Creative
[1]
-- iCommons. Creative Commons licenses Commons licenses add either freedoms
or security beyond those provided by "fair
iCommons Creative Commons licenses provide a use" and "fair dealing." They are not
simple way for owners of copyright to intended to clarify or enumerate the
The mission of iCommons is to build a mark their work with the freedoms they contours of "fair use" or "fair dealing."
global movement that would embrace and intend it to carry. These freedoms are of
extend the infrastructure of freedom. two types -- the freedom to share, and Internationalization of CC Licenses
Launched in 2005, iCommons works to the freedom to remix -- and of course,
support and promote the activities of the the two freedoms can be combined. Users As of September 2006, CC licenses have
global commons community, a can also limit these freedoms in three been ported to 33 jurisdictions around
community that can extend beyond just significant ways -- first, by restricting the world; including Argentina, Brazil,
Creative Commons project leads, to commercial uses, and second, by China, Croatia, Denmark, Israel, South
include CC activists and CC license users restricting any derivatives, or third, if Korea, Mexico, South Africa and Spain.
to include Wikipedians, A2K communities derivatives are allowed, by requiring that With the launch of the CC licenses in South
and free software and free culture they be licensed in the same way. Africa in June 2005, Creative Commons
activists, to name a few. licenses are now offered in every
These elements combine to produce six populated continent. CCi is continuing to
Already iCommons has brought together different licenses. The least restrictive is work with new jurisdictions to add to
representatives from this community as the Attribution license which authorizes Creative Commons global legal network.[2]
[2]
[1]
The version 3.0 generic licenses are: As of early January 2008, forty three (43) jurisdictions (Argentina,
• Attribution 3.0 Unported: Available at http:// Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China
www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Mainland, Colombia, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany,
• Attribution-NonCommerical 3.0 Unported: Available at http:// Greece, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Macedonia,
www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, Philippines,
• Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported: Available at http:// Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain,
www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, UK: England and Wales, UK: Scotland,
• Attribution-NoDerivatives 3.0 Unported: Available at http:// and the United States) have released their jurisdictional licenses. On
www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/ the other hand, eight (8) jurisdictions (Hong Kong, Ireland, Jordan,
• Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported: Available Nigeria, Puerto Rico, Romania, Thailand, and Ukraine) are currently
at http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ in the process of license porting. Finally, there are also eleven (11)
• Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 Unported: upcoming jurisdictions listed (Bangladesh, Ecuador, Egypt, Guatemala,
Available at http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc- Norway, Singapore, Tanzania, Tunisia, Turkey, Venezuela, and
nd/3.0/ Vietnam).
In March 2006, the enforceability of
Creative Commons licenses was tested
before a court in Amsterdam. The
commercial publisher of a magazine
used photos of Adam Curry, a well-known
podcaster and former MTV VJ, from his
Flickr account that were CC-licensed. The
court held that the publisher had violated
both the "Attribution" and
"NonCommercial" license restrictions and
failed to properly identify that a Creative
Commons license applied to the images.
This decision is an important first step in
demonstrating the efficacy of CC licenses
in different jurisdictions around the
world.[3]
The "Find" tools
Tapping into the machine-readable
expression of the Creative Commons
licenses, Creative Commons worked with
key technology companies to develop
search engines that read CC-metadata.
In 2005, both Yahoo! and Google
developed search engines that filter
searches to find only Creative Commons-
licensed works according to their license
terms. These search filters are now
included in the "Advanced Search" page
of both search engines and also Creative
Commons' own " CC Search." These
search tools make it easy for members
of the public to find content that is
available under a Creative Commons
license, by license type, and to enjoy the
benefit of greater access to and greater
freedom of use of CC-flexibly licensed
content. [4]
In addition to Yahoo! and Google's
customized search, the popular online
also enabled search of its CC-licensed
videos. We have added these searches
to the "CC Search" page to encourage
the development of more content-specific
CC-customized searching.
The "Publish" tool
Creative Commons developed a desktop
client -- ccPublisher -- that enables easy
publishing of content to the Internet. This
tool was developed in response to the
realization that many people who wanted
to publish online, lacked the resources
and knowledge to do so.
ccPublisher is an easy-to-use "drag and
drop" tool that facilitates marking content
with a Creative Commons license and
uploading of that content to the location
of the uploader's choosing; the default
upload location is the Internet Archive,
which offers free hosting. ccPublisher is
cross-platform compatible and its code is
licensed under the CC-GNU General
Public License so that anyone can adapt
the tool for their own content uploading
systems. ccPublisher has also been
internationalized so that the user interface
appears in languages other than English.
In a groundswell of community support,
five language translations were included
in the initial release, all translated by
community members in a period of two
weeks. Currently, ccPublisher is available
in English, Chinese (Taiwan), Croatian,
Dutch, Polish and Spanish.
The Collaboration Tool
To facilitate collaboration and allow
people to see the interrelationship
between creativity and re-creativity,
licenses that allow derivative works and
sampling. The site enables artists to see
who has remixed their work and to display
those tracks that they themselves have
remixed in creating their own music. In
this way, people can track the genealogy
of creativity because ccMixter tracks the
relationship between sampled tracks,
allowing people to trace the history and
referencing between music and
encouraging further remixing and reuse.
Currently, ccMixter hosts around 5,000
tracks of which about half are remixes.
To extend the collaborative potential of
ccMixter beyond the site, Creative
Commons released the engine of the
software that powers the site as "ccHost."
ccHost has been developed and extended
from its initial use as ccMixter so that it
applies to all media types, whilst retaining
the key strengths of ccMixter - namely
allowing for content to be hosted,
commented on, and remixed in such a
way as to show the interrelationship
between it. Creative Commons have
engaged in this development work in
order to make it easier for others to share
and remix all content types.
In 2007, thanks to its extension, ccHost
has grown from the engine that powers
ccMixter.org into a community-powered,
self-sustainable, and award winning
Open Source project that is used by Open
Clip Art Library (www.opencli-part.org),
Open Source Cinema
(www.opensourcecinema org), ccMixter
South Africa, the Netherlands-based
Simuze.nl and others. In addition, several
educational projects are installing ccHost
to support and enable the sharing of
teaching material.

THE PHILIPPINE IT LAW JOURNAL

photo community Flickr introduced the Creative Commons developed ccMixter.
ability to search through some of the 18 ccMixter is a site that invites creators to In keeping with our dedication to building
million CC-licensed images hosted on exercise their rights to rip, mix and a global digital commons, version 3.0 of
Flickr; and, BIipTV, an online video site, mashup under those Creative Commons ccHost adds full localization support for
[3]
In late September 2007, a lawsuit was filed by parents of a Texas laws of Texas and the United States give the plaintiffs no cause to sue
minor whose photograph was used by Virgin Australia in an advertising Creative Commons. For more details, see Linksvayer, Mike. "Creative
campaign. The photograph was taken by an adult, and which was Commons Voluntarily Dismissed from Lawsuit (http://
posted to Flickr under a CC-Attribution license. The parents of the creativecommons.org/press-releases/entry/7865); Lessig, Lawrence.
minor complained that Virgin violated their daughter's right to privacy "From the Why-a-GC-from-Cravath-is-great Department: The lawsuit
(by using a photograph of her for commercial purposes without her or is over." (http://lessig.org/blog/2007/11/
her parents permission). The photographer was also a plaintiff, and from_the_whyagcfromcravathisgr.html); and Linksvayer, Mike. "Lawsuit
was complaining that Creative Commons failed "to adequately educate Against Virgin Mobile and Creative Commons – FAQ" (http://
and warn him ... of the meaning of commercial use and the creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7680)
[4]
ramifications and effects of entering into a license allowing such use." In December 2007, Mahalo (http://mahalo.com/), the "human powered
Individuals from the commons argue that the inclusion of Creative search engine," announced that they will be integrating CC BY-NC
Commons in the lawsuit was improper as the CC licenses don't purport licensing into their search index, making the content reusable for
to deal with rights of privacy. Nevertheless, in late November 2007, noncommercial purposes. See Parkins, Cameron. "Mahalo Integrates
the plaintiffs in the case voluntarily dismissed Creative Commons from CC Licensing." (http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7905) 5
that lawsuit. This was a recognition by the plaintiffs' counsel that the
 languages around the world including important cultural contributions that music industry) as a result of using an
6 Portuguese, Chinese (traditional and flexibly licensed content can enable. We open, CC-based approach to distribution.
simplified) German, French, and Dutch. offer examples from music, film and
THE PHILIPPINE IT LAW JOURNAL

ccHost is available under the CC- GNU education in the items below. Film - Teach: In 1999, director Davis
General Public License. In August 2006, Guggenheim (who recently also directed
we were thrilled to learn that ccHost was Music - Nimrod Lev and Rhythm Beating An Inconvenient Truth) and producer Julia
awarded the Linux World Product Silence: Nimrod Lev is a well-known and Schachter created a film chronicling the
Excellence Award for "Best Open Source award-winning Israeli singer/song-writer. experiences of teachers in the Los Angeles
Solution". He is one of the rare musicians who Unified School District.
"made it" - he was signed to Israeli media
The Creative Commons giant Hed Artzi, was featured prominently The filmmakers created two powerful
Acheivements to Date on Israeli radio and MTV, and had a huge documentaries: the Peabody Award-
commercial hit with the song "That's All winning The First Year and Teach -- which
Over the past 5 years, Creative Commons the Magic." But Lev felt exploited by his is a short film created to attract talented
has witnessed a phenomenal growth in label who controlled his music and didn't and passionate people to the teaching
license adoption, an array of high-profile fairly share its financial rewards. As a profession.
license adopters and important result, Lev chose to leave the conventional
relationships with prominent technology music industry and use the Web to freely But after a few years, Guggenheim and
companies. Together these developments and independently distribute his music. Schachter realized that while a fair
have established Creative Commons In an interview with the popular Israeli number of people had seen their film,
licensing as part of the dialogue about news Web site Nana, Lev stated: there was still an enormous audience who
online rights regulation and integrated our hadn't. They also realized that there was
tech tools into key parts of the digital "Do you know an Israeli artist who a free and easy solution: the Web. So, in
infrastructure. turned rich from selling their CDs? I February 2006, Guggenheim and
don't. These record companies and Schacter made Teach available under a
License Adoption various federations represent Creative Commons Attribution-
themselves and not us, and as a NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license
One year after Creative Commons result we see almost no money. If and offered the film online to the public
licenses were released to the public, in they are going to fight the file for free. At a live screening in San
December 2003, Creative Commons sharers, they should not do it on our Francisco hosted by Creative Commons,
counted 1 million linkbacks to licenses. backs, and definitely, not in our the filmmakers explained that the CC
By December 2004 there were 16 names..." I believe that the license was the perfect tool for artists
million linkbacks to licenses. By December accessibility to music is the basic right looking to have their work be more freely
2005, this number climbed to 45 million of each person, and we must fight available to the world. After all,
linkbacks. In June 2006, this number has for its preservation." Guggenheim noted, the whole point of
grown even more exponentially with 140 making documentaries-which there is
million Iinkbacks recorded. [5] These days, Lev and his band, Rhythm generally a limited market for- is to have
Beating Silence, use Creative Commons them be seen by as many people as
Stories of License Adopters licenses for their music, videos, and art. possible. This is especially true with Teach,
The trio capitalizes financially on the he continued, as it was essentially
In addition to a phenomenal growth in online viral success of their creativity by designed to be a recruitment film for
the quantity of license adoption, we have playing shows and working on teachers.
also learned of incredible stories of how commissioned projects.
Creative Commons licensing has assisted Education - MIT Open CourseWare: [6]
authors and has enabled more flexible The band, which is highly concerned with MIT's OCW project is designed to provide
use of copyrighted material. High-profile making works of art and artists from free access to the prestigious university's
license adopters include David Byrne and culturally isolated countries more course materials for people around the
Brian Eno, who CC-licensed their album accessible to the international public, says world. It is a Web-based electronic
"Bush of Ghosts" and Pearl Jam who CC- that it has been able to attract more fans publishing initiative with the goal of putting
licensed a music video. In addition to these than ever (including many in countries materials from virtually all of MIT's
well-known adopters, we have also seen that would not have been open to them undergraduate and graduate courses
experiences that demonstrate the as members of the conventional Israeli online and under the CC Attribution-
[5] [6]
Creative Commons statistics were shared by Giorgio Cheliotis during MIT’s OpenCourseWare (OCW) initiative, first announced in 2001,
the iSummit presentation during "Legal Day" in Dubrovnik, Croatia. has grown from a 50-course pilot to a site that includes virtually the
His main findings are summarized in his website (http:// entire MIT undergraduate and graduate curriculum. It recently passed
hoikoinoi.wordpress.com/2007/07/02/cc-stats/) For similar the 1,800-course mark. See Vollmer, Timothy. "MIT OpenCourseWare
information, see Linksvayer, Mike. "“creative commons” percentage Publishes 1,800th Course." 8 December 2007. (http://
by top level domain." 15 October 2007. (http://creativecommons.org/ creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7889). Subsequently, Yale College
weblog/entry/7741); "Taking Stock of the Creative Commons announced Open Yale Courses (http://open.yale.edu/courses/),
Experiment." 2 October 2007 (http://creativecommons.org/weblog/ thereby making a collection of Yale courses freely available online.
entry/7701); and "Creative Commons statistics@iSummit 2007." 28 See Vollmer, Timothy. "“Open Yale Courses” Debuts Online." 11
June 2007. (http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7551) December 2007. (http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7895)
NonCommercial-ShareAlike license by
2008. Since its launch in 2002, MIT
OpenCourseWare has posted 1,285 sets
of course material from 33 disciplines
online. Visitors to the site come from over
200 countries. Significantly, the Creative
Commons license used by MIT offers a
free and easy way for MIT course
materials to be translated into other
languages and customized“for local
context. Says one OCW user in
Azerbaijan:
"This is a wonderful initiative,
something I've been dreaming about!
It gives great opportunities for
studying new things and improving
my current education. Commercial
distance education is too expensive
for people in the country where I live,
but what you did make: quality
education really available."
Technical Implementation
Embedding the option of choosing a
Creative Commons license into the
technical infrastructure of the architecture
and applications of the Internet is a key
part of realizing our mission. Adding to
the success of the search tools developed
by Yahoo! and Google, we have also
witnessed recently another important
implementation.
Microsoft released the Creative Commons
Add-in for Microsoft Office in June 2006.
This software tool enables the easy
addition of CC licenses to works created
in Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft
Office Excel, and Microsoft Office
PowerPoint. The tool is available free of
charge at Microsoft Office Online and
will enable the 400 million users of
Microsoft Office around the world to easily
select Creative Commons licenses when
they are directly working in an Office
program. [7]
Once the Creative Commons Add-in is
installed, the option to choose a Creative
Commons license is available from the
"File" drop-down menu. Upon selecting
the CC option, the user is presented with
the standard Creative Commons license
generator and can select the license of
[7]
A similar add-in was made available for OpenOffice. See Yergler,
Nathan. "Integrated Licensing in OpenOffice.org." 14 November 2007.
(http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7819).
their choosing. Once the license has been
chosen, the tool adds the Creative
Commons logo, the name of the selected
license, and a link to the license's terms
to documents created with Microsoft
Office.
The first document to be CC-licensed
using this tool was the text of Brazilian
Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil's
iCommons Summit keynote speech. The
speech was made available in both English
and Portuguese.
The Important Work Still To Do
The work that Creative Commons has
done over the past five years has been
an enormous success. But there is much
more to do. It has gone from the basement
at Stanford Law School to the cover of
Wired magazine, collaborated with key
industry players and featured as part of
government delegate submissions before
the World Intellectual Property
Organization. Now that Creative
Commons is established as part of the
debate and the practice surrounding the
regulation (both private and public) of
creative, educational and scientific
materials, it faces perhaps its biggest
challenge of consolidating on that initial
success and demonstrating the benefit of
"free culture." Its work over the coming
years will focus on the following areas:
• Building a stable "free culture"
infrastructure: Creative Commons, of
course, is not the only entity crafting
licenses designed to dedicate certain
copyrights to the public. In addition to its
work, the Free Software Foundation's
"Free Documentation License" has
become an important free culture license,
as it is the framework for Wikipedia. In
addition, the BBC's Creative Archive
License, and the French Art Libre license
have become important elements in the
"free culture" ecology. Unfortunately, these
different licenses have not been designed
to interoperate: content licensed under
one can't be reused under another. And
this incompatibility will increasingly
threaten the potential that these different
projects all seek to realize. To help resolve
[8]
ccLearn is a division of Creative Commons which is dedicated to
realizing the full potential of the Internet to support open learning and
open educational resources. See http://learn.creativecommons.org/
this problem, Creative Commons will lead
a project to establish an infrastructure for
interoperable licenses. The aim will be to
enable creative work licensed under
sufficiently similar licenses to move
between those licenses. That process will
be directed by a board independent of,
but started by, Creative Commons.
• Extending the base we've already
built: In addition to these new projects,
Creative Commons will of course continue
what it has been best at: increasing the
breadth of high-profile projects that it can
use to showcase the benefit of CC legal
and technical tools. It has proven that when
it sets the example for how content can
be effectively and, on occasion,
lucratively shared and reused, people
follow suit. It needs to develop and
publicize new success stories around
video, educational content, images and
music. It needs to continue to work with
more software companies to get CC
options built into the Web and desktop tools
that people use everyday. It has seen,
through the example of Flickr and soon,
no doubt through the example of
Microsoft, that people are more than
eager to use our licenses when the option
to do so is easy and intuitive.
• Expanding work in education: A
key part of our future activities includes
engaging with educators and education
groups/projects to ensure that much more
educational and instructional content is
available to people at all levels of
education and across the geographic and
economic spectrum. Creative Commons
licenses provide a simple way for this to
happen; now Creative Commons has to
make sure that the people building tools
THE PHILIPPINE IT LAW JOURNAL
and resources know how to properly
integrate CC into their projects. [8]
Through these important projects,
Creative Commons can continue to revive
the principles of balance, compromise,
and moderation both online and offline
and, in doing so, promote and enable
participatory culture. Its ongoing work will
allow Creative Commons to consolidate
on its previous successes and demonstate
the importance of "free culture."
7
8 ALTERNATIVE LICENSING
CHALLENGES IN CULTIVATING
THE PHILIPPINE IT LAW JOURNAL

A SHARING CULTURE
BY MICHAEL VERNON GUERRERO

The About page of the Creative Commons
website [1] sums up the direction towards
creative public collaboration well:
Too often the debate over creative
control tends to the extremes. At one
pole is a vision of total control — a
world in which every last use of a work
is regulated and in which “all rights
reserved” (and then some) is the
norm. At the other end is a vision of
anarchy — a world in which creators
enjoy a wide range of freedom but
are left vulnerable to exploitation.
Balance, compromise, and
moderation — once the driving forces
of a copyright system that valued
innovation and protection equally —
have become endangered species.
Creative Commons is working to
revive them. We use private rights to
create public goods: creative works
set free for certain uses. Like the free
software and open-source
movements, our ends are cooperative
and community-minded, but our
means are voluntary and libertarian.
We work to offer creators a best-of-
both-worlds way to protect their works
while encouraging certain uses of
them — to declare “some rights
reserved.”
Creative Commons aspires to cultivate a
commons in which people can feel free
to reuse not only ideas, but also words,
images, and music without asking explicit
permission — because permission,
through alternative licensing and within
the terms clearly provided, has already
been granted to everyone.[2]
Nevertheless, there may exist some
aversion in certain individuals against the
utilization of complex concepts in the fine
details of the permission granted,
allegedly fit only for a lawyer to read. Be
as it may, oversimplification of the
permission granted has its own evil to
defeat. A pre-provided permission of
“You may use and distribute,” without
further details in the articulation of the
licensor’s intent, for example, does not
provide a clear parameter in the exercise
by the licensee or user of the permission
actually granted. Neither the inadvertent
allowance for misconstrued intention nor
a creeping culture of infringement
tolerance seem to be viable alternatives
to encourage sharing, creativity and free
culture.
Yet still, it is also not avoidable that there
could be certain criticism from individuals
or sectors on the apparent development
of a burdensome “licensing culture” that
stifles creativity and free culture.[3] The
resulting perception about such apparent
development is understandable inasmuch
as Creative Commons licenses [4] are not
the only licenses utilized to determine the
terms of use of shared works, and that
frustration could come in when the issue
on the interoperability of Creative
Commons licenses with other licensing
options like Design Science License,[5]
Free Art License,[6] Free Music Public
License,[7] Open Content License,[8] Open
Music License, [9] Open Publication
License, [10] and GNU Free
Documentation License, [11] come into
focus, especially when components
towards a blended result come from
sources shared under different licensing
regimes. It is thus a major development
when, for example, last December 2007,
Wikimedia Foundation announced -- in
seeking to respond responsibly to
longstanding community concerns about
issues of compatibility between the GNU
Free Documentation License and the
Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license, as
well as to continue longstanding traditions
of strong community input and control
over major decisions affecting the projects
--its resolution requesting the modification
of the GNU Free Documentation License
in the fashion proposed by the Free
Software Foundation to allow a possible
migration by mass collaborative projects
to the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA
license, if so desired by the community.[12]
Although it is unclear whether the
Wikipedia community, for example, would
eventually support a shift to CC-BY-SA
from GFDL in the future, what is truly
significant in this development is the
agreement to make licenses compatible
to encourage the growth of the commons,
or “toward a world in which the free
content world is not fractured by license
incompatibility.”[13]
In the end, notwithstanding differences in
opinions as to the proper direction or
appropriate solution towards a freer flow
of creativity, if not of information, and
notwithstanding licensor’s preference or
loyalties as to which is the better license
to use, there remains a common
orientation towards alternative means to
empower individuals and to benefit
society. A long road is provided ahead of
us to tackle the challenges relating to legal
sharing, and to take the opportunities to
contribute to each other’s lives.

[1]
http://creativecommons.org/about/ [8]
http://opencontent.org/opl.shtml
[2]
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Legal_Concepts [9]
http://openmusic.linuxtag.org/showitem.php?item=209
[3]
Dizon, Bong. "The Burdens of License Culture: Why Even Copyleft and [10]
http://opencontent.org/openpub/
Creative Commons Licenses Do Not Ensure Free Culture." 14 May [11]
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.html
2006. (http://lawnormscode.sync.ph/?p=18) [12]
Resolution: License Update. WikiMedia Foundation. 1 December 2007.
[4]
http://creativecommons.org/about/license/ (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:License_update)
[5]
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/dsl.html [13]
Linksvayer, Mike. “Progress on license interoperability with Wikipedia.”
[6]
http://artlibre.org/licence/lalgb.html 1 December 2007. (http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7876)
[7]
http://www.fmpl.org/
 Mia Garlick was the General Counsel of Creative Commons.
CREATIVE COMMONS INTERNATIONAL Mia received her Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws from
CREATIVE COMMONS VERSION 3.0 LICENSES - the University of New South Wales in 1998, and her Masters
of Law from Stanford Law School in 2003. She is admitted
A BRIEF EXPLANATION to practice in New South Wales, Australia, and in California,
USA. The article is found online at http://
BY MIA GARLICK wiki.creativecommons.org/Version_3.

http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Since April 2005, Creative Commons has
been working on versioning up its core
licensing suite. The Creative Commons
licenses [1] 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,
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 2.0 [3] and then made a minor tweak
to the attribution clause in June 2005 [4]
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 Debian [6] 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
vision [8] of establishing a compatibility
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-legal [12] — 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”

THE PHILIPPINE IT LAW JOURNAL

all things can be improved with the benefit structure to allow interoperability between according to the DSFG. Although these
of hindsight and experience; also, the different flexible content copyright summaries are not binding, they do
environment within which CC licenses are licenses. provide some basis for the Debian project
used is always changing. When CC first to make decisions about individual
released its licenses, for example, the use Debian packages. Although debian-legal work
of video and video-sharing sites had not primarily in reviewing software programs
yet been deployed, let alone used to the Debian describes itself as “an association and Creative Commons licenses are not
extent they are today. of individuals who have made common
[1] [5]
For an overview of the licenses, see http://creativecommons.org/ See Mia Garlick, ‘Getting to Version 3.0,’ May 17, 2006, http://
about/licenses/meet-the-licenses lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/cc-licenses/2006-May/003557.html
[2] [6]
See CC Weblog, Creative Commons Launches, December 15, 2002, http://www.debian.org/
[7]
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/3484 http://mit.edu/
[3] [8]
See CC Weblog, Announcing (and explaining) our new 2.0 licenses, http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5709
[9]
May 25, 2004, http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/4216 http://www.us.debian.org/intro/about
[4] [10]
See CC Weblog, Comments Period Drawing to a Close for Draft http://www.us.debian.org/social_contract
[11]
License Version 2.5, May 29, 2006, http://creativecommons.org/ http://www.us.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
weblog/entry/5457 [12]
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/ 9
[13]
http://people.debian.org/~evan/ccsummary.html
 designed for software, debian-legal notes
10 that the:
THE PHILIPPINE IT LAW JOURNAL
“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.” [13-A]
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.” [13-B]
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. [14]
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
[13-A]
Id.
[13-B]
Id.
[14]
For an outline of these concerns, see http://people.debian.org/
~evan/ccsummary
[15]
See e.g., clause 4(a) “You may not distribute, publicly display, publicly
perform, or publicly digitally perform the Work with any technological
measures that control access or use of the Work in a manner inconsistent
with the terms of this License Agreement.” of the CC Attribution
license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/legalcode
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. [15] 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
license [16] but was then also made
available on iTunes [17].
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
[16]
http://creativecommons.org/wired
[17]
h t t p : / / p h o b o s . a p p l e . c o m / We b O b j e c t s / M Z S t o r e . w o a / w a /
viewAlbum?playlistId=15146499&selectedItemId=15146497&s=143441
[18]
http://creativecommons.org/worldwide/
[19]
See Mia Garlick, Version 3.0 – Public Discussion, August 9, 2006,
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/cc-licenses/2006-August/
003855.html
for this initial acceptance was that it could
accommodate the objectives of the anti-
TPM clause (being free culture) whilst also
addressing Debian’s concerns that people
be free to create works for distribution
on TPM-ed platforms.
The parallel distribution proposal did not,
however, survive discussions with the
Creative Commons International
affiliates[18]. The affiliates are responsible
for “porting” the CC licenses to their local
jurisdiction (discussed in greater detail
below) and for fielding a wide range of
questions about CC licenses and their
implementation in various projects
throughout the world. Based on their
experience with the diverse communities
that use and rely on CC licenses and
explaining the licenses to different
constituencies, the CCi affiliates were
strongly opposed to the introduction of a
parallel distribution scenario for various
reasons, including: (1) the lack of
demonstrated use cases showing a strong
need among CC licensees for this kind of
an exception to the existing “anti-TPM”
language; (2) risks of unduly complicating
the licenses which defeats alot of the
purpose of CC licenses, namely to be
simple and easy to use and to understand;
and, (3) the strong opposition to
technological protection measures in
general by many in the CC community.
CC did, however, include the parallel
distribution proposal as part of the public
license discussions when those were
launched in August 2006 [19] so that the
community on those lists could debate the
merits of the proposal.
The discussions about the parallel
distribution proposal on the cc-licenses
email list were very intense. Various
participants argued in favor of the parallel
distribution amendment on the grounds
that the “anti-TPM” clause violated DSFG
#1 and achieved little, if anything. Taking
the advantage of a Sony Playstation again,
if CC-licensed content cannot be included
in games for the PS2 platform, the CC
licensee is restricted in what they can do
with the content, the PS2 gamer cannot
play a game with CC-licensed content and
Sony are unlikely to notice the absence
of this content and will continue along as
business as usual with a TPM-ed platform,
irrespective of any anti-TPM ban in the
CC licenses.
When asked about the extent to which
there was a demonstrated need by
developers (as licensees) to be able to
utilize CC-licensed content in TPM-ed
environments, advocates of the parallel
distribution amendment argued that it was
better to address the problem before a
need arose.
However, the overall tenor of the cc-
licenses list discussions tended not to favor
adoption of the parallel distribution
proposal. There was concern that if
parallel distribution were permitted in the
CC licenses this would reinforce, if not
expand, a platform monopoly enjoyed by
a TPM-ed platform that only allows the
playing of TPM-ed content [20] [21]. Other
concerns were voiced that the non-TPMed
copy may not be able to played as well
as the TPM-ed copy and, generally, that
the community was not in favor of
supporting a TPM option at this stage [22]
[23] [24]
. shared model.
Whether Debian now declare the CC
Attribution and Attribution-ShareAlike
licenses to be free according to the DSFG
or not — given all negotiated amendments
are included in version 3.0 with the
exception of the parallel distribution
provision — remains an open question.
Certainly, Debian voted [25] earlier in
2006 to allow works licensed under the
ShareAlike license to also be held to be
compatible with the DSFG.
MIT
With MIT, their OpenCourseWare (OCW)
project [26] was initially launched in
September 2002 prior to the formal
release of the Creative Commons core
licensing suite in December 2002 and
thus, used an early version of the
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
license. “OpenCourseWare” is the free
and open digital publication of high quality
educational materials, organized as
courses. Flexible licenses such as Creative
Commons licenses are key to enabling
the openness of these materials.
MIT’s OpenCourseWare project has
initiated a global opencourseware
movement. Most recently, the
OpenCourseWare Consortium [27] has
been formed which involves the
collaboration of more than 100 higher
education institutions and associated
organizations from around the world —
including China, France, Japan, the UK,
the USA and Vietnam — who are
committed to creating a broad and deep
body of open educational content using a
Given CC licenses have improved over
time, both CC and MIT wanted to work
together to address any issues MIT had
about the CC licenses so that MIT could
switch over to a more recent version of
the CC BY-NC-SA license. However, a key
concern for MIT, given its illustrious
reputation, is to ensure that when people
translate and locally adapt MIT content
under the terms of the BY-NC-SA license,
software, CC felt that it would be easy
issue to make this express in the CC
licenses. In CC’s view, a licensee should
not interpret the attribution requirement
of the CC licenses as a basis (whether
intentionally or not) to misrepresent the
nature of the relationship with the licensor.
Certainly, in most jurisdictions laws other
than copyright law will proscribe this
misconduct by a licensee. But CC agreed
with MIT that it was useful to make this
express in the license — both to give the
licensor comfort and to ensure that the
licensee was under no misapprehensions.
This feedback from both Debian and MIT
was the impetus for CC commencing the
version 3.0 process. However, as many
projects do — versioning to 3.0 rapidly
developed to encompass new and
additional issues. These issues can
effectively be described as further
internationalization and international
harmonization of the CC licenses
Further Internationalization
When CC’s core licensing suite was first
released in December 2002, the licenses
were drafted based on US copyright law
and referred to as the “generic” license
because the license did not identify a
specific jurisdiction or governing law to
apply to the interpretation of the license.
Towards the end of 2003, Creative
Commons launched its license
internationalization project [28], which
involves the “porting” of the generic
licenses to different jurisdictions around
the world.
Since this project started, the CC core
licenses have been “ported” to over 30

THE PHILIPPINE IT LAW JOURNAL

Free Documentation License to be used they make it clear that they are doing so jurisdictions around the world to countries
in Debian projects. The vote specifically under the terms of the license and not as as diverse as Argentina, Australia, Brazil,
says that the anti-TPM clause in the FDL a result of a special relationship between Croatia, China, France, Italy, Japan,
does not render the FDL incompatible with MIT and that person — essentially, a “No Malaysia, Mexico, South Africa and South
the DSFG. However, it is not clear whether Endorsement” clause. Korea. [28-A]
this treatment is an exception or will also
enable the CC Attribution and Attribution- Given “No Endorsement” clauses are a While the internationalization has taken
standard feature of free and open source off far beyond Creative Commons’
[24]
[20]
See Greg London, Re:Subject: Version 3.0 – List Discussion Responses, See the discussion archives for October. http://lists.ibiblio.org/
September 28, 2006, http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/cc-licenses/ pipermail/cc-licenses/2006-October/thread.html
[25]
2006-September/004130.html See ‘General Resolution: Why the GNU Free Documentation License
[21]
See also, Terry Hancock, Debian and Creative Commons, October is not suitable for Debian main, http://www.debian.org/vote/2006/
18, 2006, http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/blogs/ vote_001
[26]
debian_and_the_creative_commons http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html
[27]
[22]
See the discussion archives for August. http://lists.ibiblio.org/ http://ocwconsortium.org/
[28]
pipermail/cc-licenses/2006-August/thread.html http://creativecommons.org/worldwide/
[23]
See the discussion archives for September. http://lists.ibiblio.org/ [28-A]
Id. 11
pipermail/cc-licenses/2006-September/thread.html
 expectations and has demonstrated the
12 amazing energy around the globe for a
more flexible and permissive copyright
THE PHILIPPINE IT LAW JOURNAL
licensing approach, two issues arose.
The first is that as Creative Commons’
license internationalization project
continued to grow, the “generic” license
and the US license were one and the
same. For the casual visitor to the CC
worldwide page [28-B], it seemed that the
licenses had not been “ported” to the US,
when in fact they had started out there.
The challenge becomes though — if CC
recognizes a specific US license, on what
law should the “generic” license be
based?
The approach Creative Commons
adopted to respond this issue required
further internationalization of our licenses.
We decided to spin off the “generic”
license to be a US license and recraft the
“generic” license to have it utilize the
language of the international intellectual
property treaties, in place of the language
of US copyright law.
The new license relies on the language
of the Berne Convention for the Protection
of Literary and Artistic Works [29], the
Rome Convention of 1961 [30], the WIPO
Copyright Treaty of 1996 [31], the WIPO
Performances and Phonograms Treaty of
1996 [32] and the Universal Copyright
Convention [33]. Because treaties are
matters of international agreement
between countries and, as a general rule,
require adoption into national law to be
effective in a particular country, simply
basing the license wording on these
treaties is not, of itself, sufficient.
Consequently, clause 8(f) of the new
generic specifically provides that the
license takes effect according to the
corresponding provisions of the
implementation of those treaty provisions
in the applicable national law.
To reflect the nature of the new “generic”
license we also decided to change its
name to “unported.” This description is
intended to highlight the different nature
of the new generic license and to utilize
[28-B]
Id.
[29]
http://wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/
[30]
http://wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/rome/
[31]
http://wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/wct/
[32]
http://wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/wppt/
the “porting” terminology that Creative
Commons has been using in its license
internationalization project since its launch
in 2003 to more clearly illustrate the
nature of the license that has not been
adapted for a local jurisdiction.
The result of this further
internationalization is that CC will now
offer both an “unported” license and a
US license, in addition to the 30-plus
ported licenses; the unported license can
be selected by those creators to whose
jurisdiction CC has not yet ported a
license.
International Harmonization – was based on US copyright law and US
Moral Rights
The second more major issue that arose
through the porting process was that
different jurisdictions had different
approaches to issues relating to moral
rights and collecting societies.
Moral rights, to described them briefly,
are author’s right that are distinct from
the economic copyright that can be
bought and sold [34] . Moral rights
recognize an author ’s personal
attachment to their creativity and seek to
protect that connection.
While there can be many different moral
rights depending on the jurisdiction, the
two main ones that are consistently present
in most countries around the globe are
the moral right of attribution and the moral
right of integrity [35]. Obviously, since
attribution became a default CC license
characteristic with version 2.0 there is less
of an issue regarding the moral right of
attribution.
However, the moral right of integrity
presents a more complex issue for
Creative Commons licenses. CC licenses
are intended to enable and promote
reuse of creative content, particularly the
making of derivative works. And those
copyright owners who use CC licenses
have acknowledged this with over two-
thirds of CC licensors consistently
choosing to allow derivative works.
[33]
http://www.unesco.org/culture/laws/copyright/html_eng/page1.shtml
[34]
See generally, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights
[35]
See Article 6bis of the Berne Convention (as amended September
1979),
trtdocs_wo001.html#P123_20726
But the moral right of integrity, as a
general rule, gives the author of a creative
work the right to object to alterations or
mutilations of the work that are prejudicial
to their reputation or honor. Obviously,
this has potential to impact the freedom
to exercise the right to make derivatives
— a derivative will likely always qualify
as an alteration of the original work and
there may be some instances where it is
arguable that it is prejudicial to the original
author’s reputation or honor.
Obviously, the first generic version 1.0
license suite released in December 2002
did not mention moral rights because it
copyright law only grants very limited
moral rights to works of fine art. However,
as the CC licenses began the porting
process to other countries, it became
necessary for CC licenses to address the
moral right of integrity.
To do so, the Creative Commons licenses,
with one exception, have taken the
approach of not interfering with the
author’s moral right of integrity in those
jurisdictions that recognize this right.
The one exception is in Canada where
the moral right of integrity is waivable.
Because Canada was one of the first ten
countries to port the CC licenses and one
of the first (if not the only one) to have a
waivable moral right of integrity, on advice
of our local affiliate, the CC Canada
licenses choose to waive the right of
integrity in order to ensure that the
licensor’s intention in choosing to permit
derivative works was not compromised.
However, in all other CC licenses for
jurisdictions that recognize the moral right
of integrity, the right was retained albeit
in different forms; again, on advice from
local affiliates.
For example, in most European
jurisdictions, the right was expressly
retained in the Legal Code because of
the strong level of protection for the right
in these jurisdictions, as evidenced by the
fact that courts would take a dim view of
a license that did not expressly include it.
http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/
In most Latin American jurisdictions, the
license was not expressly retained in the
Legal Code on the rationale that courts
would read it in the license. In Japan, the
moral right of integrity was retained in
those licenses that prohibited derivative
works but not fully retained in those
licenses that permit derivative works. The
local CC Japan team recommended this
approach because the moral right of
integrity can be interpreted so broadly as
to render any change or alteration to the
original work a violation of the right.
Although there is overall consistency in
the treatment of the moral right of integrity
at the Legal Code level (with the exception
of Canada) among the CC licenses, now
that the licenses have been ported to over
30 jurisdictions, we felt that it was time to
harmonize the approach to this issue at
both the Legal Code level and the
Commons Deed level. The different
approaches towards recognizing the right
of integrity in the CC licenses arose
because, as CC engaged in the novel
process of license porting, we became
familiar with the different treatment of this
right in different jurisdictions. With the
benefit of experience with more than 30
different treatments, CC now felt
comfortable to adopt a unified approach.
As a consequence, as part of version 3.0
all CC licenses for jurisdictions that
recognize the moral right of integrity will
expressly retain that right in the Legal
Code to the extent that this is feasible given
the status of derivative works under the
license. In those jurisdictions in which
retention of the moral right of integrity
may be completely block exercise of the
derivative works right (ie. in Japan) the
right will be tempered to the extent
necessary to enable the exercise of the
derivative works right in a manner
intended by the licensor.
In addition, because of the importance of
the moral right of integrity in protecting
both the author’s rights and for its impact
on the derivative works right, from version
3.0 the CC Commons Deeds will clearly
state that the author retains their moral
rights.
[36] See generally, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collecting_society
International Harmonization —
Collecting Societies
Collecting societies are organizations that
are established either by private
agreements between copyright owners or
by copyright law [36]. Societies license
works and process royalty payments from
various individuals and groups who use
copyrighted works either as part of a
statutory scheme (compulsory schemes)
or by entering into an agreement with
the copyright owner to represent the
owners interests when dealing with
licensees and potential licensees (voluntary
schemes). The rationale underlying
societies is that it is more efficient and
effective for copyright holders to be
represented collectively in negotiating and
levying license fees.
CC licenses also contained different
treatments of whether and how a licensor
can collect royalties via collecting societies
because of the differences in the status
of collecting societies amongst different
jurisdictions.
In the United States, where the CC
licenses originated, an artist can be a
member of a collecting society and use
CC licenses for those of their works that
suit them. This is because of the rigorous
enforcement of antitrust laws in the US
during the early 20th century that requires
that US collecting societies take a non-
exclusive license from artists. This allows
artists to then engage in direct licensing,
including via CC licenses, to their fans
and others who wish to share and remix
their music.
Consequently, in the original CC licenses
language was introduced into the licenses
as part of version 2.0 to clarify what was
considered to be the obvious interaction
between CC licenses and collecting
society membership. This initial approach
stated that under those licenses that
permitted commercial use (Attribution,
Attribution-NoDerivatives and Attribution-
ShareAlike) the licensor waived the right
to collect both compulsory and voluntary
royalties. Under those licenses that
permitted noncommercial use only, the
licensor reserved the right to collect
royalties for any uses that were
commercial in nature but otherwise
authorized royalty-free noncommercial
use of the work under the CC license.
This approach reflected the fact that by
choosing to apply a CC license to their
work, a CC licensor clearly intends to
permit “free” (as in both price and
freedom) uses under the terms of the
applicable CC license.
However, the situation regarding
collecting society membership in many
other jurisdictions around the world is
remarkably different to the US position.
Elsewhere, collecting societies take either
an assignment of copyright ownership or
an exclusive license to a work of the rights
that they represent (which tends to include
all of the works an artist creates). This
means, for the most part, that an artist
cannot directly license their works online,
including via CC licenses. The
consequence of this is that artists who use
CC licenses cannot receive voluntary
royalties collected by a society because
they are not able to become a member
of the society.
Thus, the treatment of collecting society
royalties in the CC licenses differed
according to the jurisdiction — in many
jurisdictions the collection of voluntary
royalties was not mentioned so as not to
give any misleading impression that
membership of a collecting society was
possible for a CC licensor. In addition,
many CC licenses retained the right to
collect compulsory royalties in all licenses,
both those that permitted commercial use
and those that permit noncommercial use
only, because of the advice of local
affiliates that local law would not permit
the waiver of such a right.
THE PHILIPPINE IT LAW JOURNAL
In version 3.0, after the benefit of seeing
the different permutations of collecting
society membership in over 30 countries
and having had a dedicated team working
on the issue of the interaction of CC
licenses and collecting society
membership for more than a year, CC
has decided to harmonize the treatment
of collecting societies in the CC licenses.
The harmonized approach still allows
different jurisdictions to adopt an
approach towards collective royalty
collection that suits their jurisdiction but
ensures that this is consistently applied
13
 across jurisdictions. Specifically, as
14 regards compulsory royalty collection, the
licensor will reserve the right to collect
THE PHILIPPINE IT LAW JOURNAL
these royalties in those jurisdictions in
which this cannot be waived. In those
jurisdictions in compulsory royalty
collection can be waived, it will be waived
completely for those licenses that permit
commercial use and reserved only for
commercial uses in those licenses that
permit noncommercial use only.
For voluntary royalties, the licensor will
reserve the right to collect this “in the
event that they are a member of a
collecting society” that collects such
royalties. This then allows for those
jurisdictions in which an artist can be a
member of a collecting society and use
CC licenses. It also allows for flexibility
for those artists who are members of
collecting societies and use CC licenses
anyway or if in future collecting society
membership structures do allow some use
of CC licenses, to also enjoy the benefits
of their membership if their collecting
society moves towards being able to
collect for commercial uses of CC-
licensed works.
BY-SA — Compatibility Structure
Introduced
A final change incorporated into Version
3.0 is that the CC BY-SA 3.0 licenses now
include a compatibility structure that will
enable CC to certify particular licenses,
stewarded by other organizations similarly
committed to promoting a freer culture,
as being compatible with the CC BY-SA.
Once certified as compatible [37], licensees
of both the BY-SA 3.0 and the certified
CC compatible license will be able to
relicense derivatives under either license
(eg., under either the BY-SA or the
certified CC compatible license).
Creative Commons CEO Lawrence Lessig
first outlined the vision of allowing an
ecology of flexible content licenses to
flourish in November 2005 [38]. As Lessig
explained:
[37]
http://creativecommons.org/compatiblelicenses
[38]
See CC in Review: Lawrence Lessig on Compatibility, http://
creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5709
[39]
See Evan Prodromou, Derivatives of dual-licensed Creative
Commons Attribution-ShareAlike and GFDL works, May 3, 2005,
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/cc-licenses/2005-May/
002265.html
[40]
http://wikipedia.org/
"Even if all the creative work you license to another, as creativity
want to remix is licensed under a is remixed. And this ability for
copyleft license, because those creative work to move to
licenses are different licenses, compatible free licenses will
you can’t take creative work from provide a market signal about
one, and remix it in another. which licenses are deemed more
Wikipedia, for example, is stable, or reliable, by the free
licensed under the FDL. It requires licensing community. Free
derivatives be licensed under the culture will no longer be
FDL only. And the same is true of “ghettoized” within a particular
the Creative Commons free license. It will instead be able
Attribution-ShareAlike license that to move among all relevantly
governs Opsound content, as compatible licenses. And the
well as much of the creativity world of “autistic freedom” that
within Flickr. All of these licenses governs much of the free
were written without regard to the software world will be avoided
fundamental value of every in the free culture world."
significant advance in the digital
age — interoperability." There are several obvious candidates for
compatibility with the CC BY-SA. The Free
This incompatibility also serves as a Art License [42] and the Free Software
barrier to dual licensing works under the Foundation's Free Documentation License
FDL and CC BY-SA [39]. (FDL) [43].
Simply put, the problem is that any license Creative Commons' initial work has
with a "ShareAlike" or similar copyleft focused on achieving compatibility with
provision requires that any derivatives be the FDL. As part of this work, CC explored
licensed under exactly the same license the possibility of introducing one-way
(or family of licenses) as the original. This compatibility with the FDL. [44], which
means that an article about Rio de Janeiro generated some discussion. CC then
on Wikipedia [40] (which is currently responded to some of the concerns raised
licensed under the FDL) cannot be mixed by this discussion [45] but ultimately
with an article about Rio on Wikitravel [41] concluded that one-way comaptibility with
(which is currently licensed under the CC the FDL was not possible because CC
BY-SA 1.0). Even if a project were dual licensors could not be guaranteed the
licensed, none of the derivatives of the same protections under the FDL that they
project could be returned back to the dual- enjoyed under the CC BY-SA.
licensed project (because they must be
licensed under one or the other license), Despite the inability to implement one-
thus causing "project bleed." The result way compatibility with the FDL, Creative
of the ShareAlike or "copyleft" license Commons is still hopeful of being able to
terms is seemingly antithetical to the very announce licenses that effect the same
purpose of the licenses that contain them. freedoms as the CC BY-SA to be
Content, rather than being "free" to remix, compatible with the CC BY-SA at some
is instead locked within particular licensing date in the future. To allow the
systems. compatibility negotiations to occur
separate and apart from the timing of the
Consequently, CC has been working to license versioning process, we have
ensure that, to again quote Lessig: included a structure for certifying licenses
as compatible with CC BY-SA as part of
"[C]reative work[s] will more Version 3.0 [46]. TO PAGE 19
easily be able to move from one
[41]
http://wikitravel.org/en/Main_Page
[42]
http://artlibre.org/licence/lal/en/
[43]
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html
[44]
See Discussion Draft — Proposed License Amendment to Avoid
Content Ghettos in the Commons, http://creativecommons.org/
weblog/entry/5701
[45]
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5731
[46]
See Version 3.0 — It's Happening & With BY-SA Compatibility
Language Too, http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7234
 This article adopts the document “Worldwide Overview,” and
CREATIVE COMMONS INTERNATIONAL its subpages, available at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/
THE PORTING PROCESS Worldwide_Overview, with footnotes outlining the Philippine
experience.

http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

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
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 Director
[3]
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
TO PAGE 22

THE PHILIPPINE IT LAW JOURNAL

[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. 15
16 CREATIVE COMMONS PHILIPPINES
PORTED LICENSE MODIFICATIONS
THE PHILIPPINE IT LAW JOURNAL
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:
a. 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.
b. 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.)
c. "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)
d. 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.)
e. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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
7. 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.
8. The change in the word "offer(s)" to
"offers" in the definition of "Licensor"
is merely for style.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. 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.
12. 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.
13. 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.
14. The phrases "protected from the
THE PHILIPPINE IT LAW JOURNAL
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.
15. 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 17
work; a choreographic work or
 entertainment in dumb show; a
18 musical composition with or without
words; an audiovisual work and a
THE PHILIPPINE IT LAW JOURNAL
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.
16. 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.
17. 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.
18. "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.
19. The modification in the first words of
all enumerations under "License
Grants," in Section 3, from “to” to
“To” was made only for style.
20. 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.
21. 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.
22. 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.
23. 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.
24. 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.
25. It is noteworthy that Section 4(f)
includes an express moral rights
acknowledgment, which was omitted
CREATIVE COMMONS VERSION 3.0 LICENSES - A BRIEF EXPLANATION
Summary of Links
The following list provides the CC blog
posts that relate to Version 3.0:
Getting to Version 3.0 [47]
Version 3.0 — Public Discussion
Launched [48]
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.
26. 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;
FROM PAGE 14
Version 3.0 — Revised License Drafts [49]
Version 3.0 — It's Happening & With BY-
SA Compatibility Language Too [50]
Version 3.0 — Launched [51]
(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.
27. 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.
28. 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.
29. The words "Applicable License", and
"Attribution Parties" were converted
to lower case words, unless they are
in quotation marks.
30. 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.
31. 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
THE PHILIPPINE IT LAW JOURNAL
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).
[47]
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/
entry/5908
[48]
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/
entry/6017
[49]
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/
entry/6120
[50]
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/
entry/7234
[51]
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/
entry/7249
19

20 CREATIVE COMMONS PHILIPPINE JURISDICTIONAL LICENSE SAMPLE
ATTRIBUTION- NONCOMMERCIAL-
THE PHILIPPINE IT LAW JOURNAL
SHAREALIKE 3.0 PHILIPPINES (LEGAL CODE)
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
a. "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.
b. "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.
c. "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.
d. "License Elements" means the following
high-level license attributes as selected by
licensor and indicated in the title of this
license: Attribution, Noncommercial,
ShareAlike.
e. "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.
f. "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.
g. "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
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
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.
h. "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.
i. "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.
j. "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:
a. To reproduce the work, to incorporate the
work into one or more collections, and to
reproduce the work as incorporated in the
collections;
b. 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.";
c. To distribute and publicly perform the work
including as incorporated in collections;
and,
d. 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:
a. 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)
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21
 5. Representations, Warranties and
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THE PORTING PROCESS FROM PAGE 15
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
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
and this license will continue in full force and
effect unless terminated as stated above.
8. Miscellaneous
a. 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.
b. 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.
c. 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.
d. 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.
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. [9] [10]
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
e. 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/.
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]
 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
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]
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.
[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.
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
THE PHILIPPINE IT LAW JOURNAL
[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. 23
 This article combines the iCommons documents found at
ICOMMONS
24 the iCommons website: “iSummit07.” http://
ISUMMIT 2007 www.icommons.org/isummit07, “Our Hosts.” http://
www.icommons.org/isummit07/hosts/, and “About.”
THE PHILIPPINE IT LAW JOURNAL

http://www.icommons.org/about/

http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Background New York,[2] to Viacom’s recent $1 billion The iSummit 2007

lawsuit [3] against YouTube [4] (Google)[5]
“We are in the midst of a technological, for copyright infringement, we are living The iCommons Summit in Dubrovnik,
economic, and organizational through what Benkler calls a ‘period of Croatia brought together pioneers of the
transformation that allows us to perturbation’ where the ways in which free Internet to make sure that, at its
renegotiate the terms of freedom, justice society organizes itself are ‘up for grabs’. crossroads, we guide the world along a
and productivity in the information society. path that will enable the kind of free
How we shall live in this new environment In this state of flux, the free Internet finds culture and decentralized innovation that
will in some significant measure depend itself at a crossroads. Recent threads has characterised the early years of the
on the policy choices that we make over suggest that what started as an open, Internet.
the next decade or so. To be able to neutral network which enabled
understand these choices, to be able to widespread innovation and creativity by With a focus on both ‘big ideas’ and
make them well, we must recognize that individuals and communities throughout practical examples of how open sharing
they are part of what is fundamentally a the globe, has developed to a point where on the Internet is driving business
social and political choice ‘ a choice about in the next 10 years or so, decisions need development, increased innovation,
how to be free, equal, productive human to be made about whether the Internet quality education and advances in
beings under a new set of technological retains its network neutrality or whether science, the iCommons Summit was a
and economic conditions.” (Yochai the industrial giants force us back into must-attend for the pioneers with a stake
Benkler: "The Wealth of Networks") [1] consuming a culture that is ‘ready-made’ in how the Internet must evolve in the
rather than being able to produce our future.
From students protesting against DRM in own information environment (Benkler).
the streets of Zurich, Seattle, Paris and
“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

[1]
http://www.benkler.org/wealth_of_networks/index.php/Main_Page [7]
http://lessig.org/blog
[2]
http://wiki.freeculturenyu.org/wiki/index.php?title=DRM_Protest [8]
http://joi.ito.com/
[3]
http://lessig.org/blog/archives/003734.shtml [9]
http://wikipedia.org/
[4]
http://www.youtube.com/ [10]
http://blog.jimmywales.com/
[5]
http://www.google.com/ [11]
http://lindenlab.com/
[6]
http://creativecommons.org/ [12]
http://lindenlab.com/management
With an impressive lineup of iconic free
Internet philosophers, we heard from
people like Creative Commons [6] CEO,
Larry Lessig,[7] CC Chairman and Digital
Entrepreneur, Joi Ito, [8] Wikipedia [9]
Founder, Jimmy Wales[10] and CTO of
Linden Labs,[11] Cory Ondrejka.[12] We
also added some new voices to the debate
in 2007, including India’s Lawrence
Liang[13] who has become renowned for
his considered commentary on the positive
impact of piracy in developing countries,
Jonathan Zittrain[14] discussed themes
from his new book ‘The Future of the
Internet and How to Stop It’, Benjamin
Mako Hill[15] from MIT[16] spoke about
competing visions of ‘free culture’ from
the free software perspective, and Becky
Hogge[17] 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
[13]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Liang
[14]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Zittrain
[15]
http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/
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
[16]
http://web.mit.edu/
[17]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becky_Hogge
[18]
http://www.openrightsgroup.org/
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
THE PHILIPPINE IT LAW JOURNAL
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.
25
26 PHILIPPINE COMMONS
DEVELOPING A PHILIPPINE COMMONS
THE PHILIPPINE IT LAW JOURNAL
BY MICHAEL VERNON GUERRERO
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
track[3] 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
[1]
http://wiki.icommons.org/index.php/ISummit_2007/
Open_Education_Track
[2]
h t t p : / / w i k i . i c o m m o n s . o r g / i n d e x . p h p /
Towards_an_Open_Future_for_Education
[3]
h t t p : / / w i k i . i c o m m o n s . o r g / i n d e x . p h p /
Open_Educational_Project_Showcase
http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ph
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/)
incidentally is now Creative Commons Creative Commons Philippine
licensed, some noteworthy efforts are jurisdictional licenses, on 14 January
those by the Philippine e-Learning 2008, serves as a preliminary means to
Society,[5] filipiniana.net, wikipilipinas.org, gather some of the stakeholders in the
Bluepoint Foundation, [6] Bayanihan commons, and communicate with each
Books,[7] among others. other what can be done, whether
bilaterally or multilaterally. Nevertheless,
Truly, what seems necessary at this point the direction of the Philippine Commons
in time are opportunities for collaboration, lies with the Filipino community. Its future
especially if they favor the commons. depends upon the eagerness of
Following the footsteps of Creative stakeholders to contribute into the
Commons International in the formation commons pool.
of the iCommons, Creative Commons
Philippines is currently spearheading the Lastly, the Philippine Commons website[9]
paving of an avenue for collaboration aims to provide articles and updates to
through the Philippine Commons.[8] The events relating to the commons in the
Philippine Commons is envisioned to be Philippines, and also link to developments
a movement-organization which aims to in the commons occurring in the
develop a national front through the international stage. The domain was
collaboration of communities involved in acquired in December 2007, in time for
free software, open education, access to the soft-launching of the Creative
knowledge, open access publishing, free Commons Philippine jurisdictional licenses
culture, legal commons, and similar and Creative Commons 5th Birthday Party.
pursuits. The public launching of the
[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

CREATIVE COMMONS PHILIPPINES AND ASIACOMMONS
CC-PH SET TO PARTICIPATE IN THE ACIA:
INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON ASIA AND
COMMONS IN THE INFORMATION AGE
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
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/
http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
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
THE PHILIPPINE IT LAW JOURNAL
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.
27
To know more, see http://
meeting.creativecommons.org.tw/

28 CREATIVE COMMONS PHILIPPINES
CC PHILIPPINE LICENSE SOFT LAUNCHING
THE PHILIPPINE IT LAW JOURNAL
AND THE CC 5TH BIRTHDAY PARTY
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
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.
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).
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.
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 [5x5]
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.