Founded in 2001, Creative Commons, a nonprofit dedicated to building a body of creative work free to share and build upon, recently unveiled a localized version of its innovative licensing system in Malaysia.
Creative Commons copyright licenses are available free of charge from the group’s website (http://creativecommons.org). The licenses allow authors and artists to mark their works as free to copy or transform under certain conditions—to declare �some rights reserved,� in contrast to the traditional �all rights reserved�—thereby enabling others to access a growing pool of raw materials without legal friction.
Staff at Creative Commons’ offices in San Francisco and Berlin worked with Project Leads Alina Ng, Hasnul Hadi Samsudin, and Hasnul Nadzrin Shah to adapt the standardized licenses to Malaysian law. Creative Commons Malaysia is being supported by The Multimedia Development Corporation, Cyberjaya.
Badlisham Ghazali, Chief Executive Officer of the Multimedia Development Corporation said �It is timely that Malaysia participates in the Creative Commons Project. At a point in time when Malaysia is becoming a rich and vibrant information society, the Creative Commons project allows Malaysians from all walks of life, whether they are students, academics, researchers or in the creative content industry, such as independent musicians and filmmakers or creative content companies to participate in content development and distribution around the globe.�
The Multimedia Development Corporation (MDC) was established in 1996 to oversee the growth of the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) project, a strategic project to develop the country’s economy to a developed nation status by the year 2020. MDC works in partnership with government agencies and the private sector to develop initiatives such as market access assistance, human resource development and training support, financial and non-financial incentives, research and development (R&D) grants, venture capital funding and business incubation centers.
One of the initiatives of the MSC is to tap the potential of technology and creativity integration to meet local and global demand for content in education, entertainment and other applications. For this purposes, the MDC overlooks the Creative Multimedia Cluster that seeks to utilize multimedia and information communication technologies to cultivate creativity in schools, institutes of higher learning, universities as well as in the private sector.
A nonprofit corporation founded in 2001 Creative Commons promotes the creative re-use of intellectual and artistic works—whether owned or in the public domain. Creative Commons licences provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists, and educators that build upon the “all rights reserved” concept of traditional copyright to offer a voluntary “some rights reserved” approach. It is sustained by the generous support of various foundations including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Omidyar Network Fund, the Hewlett Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation as well as members of the public.
