The Creative Commons (CC) initiative offers a flexible licencing scheme that simplifies the sharing of ideas in cyberspace while protecting intellectual property rights. Here are local first hand accounts of how it is gaining momentum.

UNITED WE STAND: Teo (fourth from right) got some 120 Malaysians together, including 30 artistes, to shoot the video Here in My Home, a project by Malaysian Artistes for Unity.

SURF to the Malaysian Artistes for Unity website (www.malaysianartistesforunity.info) and you’ll find these words: “Welcome! Please make yourself comfortable. Listen to Here in my home. Watch our music videos. Look at our naked photographs [if you wish!]. Leave us a message. Help us spread the word. Download anything you want. We won’t charge a cent. Serious!”

Suffice to say, this is definitely not a Metallica website but the words of peer-to-peer generation artistes. These local artistes are believers in the Creative Commons (CC) ­initiative, an open-source-like ­platform for the creative arts community.

“People have been making money in free software for years; it’s time for free culture to follow,” CC animation artiste Nina Paley said on her website (www.sitasingstheblues.com).

CC is a flexible licencing scheme that allows collaboration in cyberspace. CC copyrighted work has the “Some Rights Reserved” clause rather than the restrictive “All Rights Reserved” clause.

On the home front CC Malaysia, formed in 2004, is a project that allows local artistes, musicians, filmmakers and creative producers to bring their works to the public and even allow fellow artistes to evolve and change works.

CC encourages the production of original, creative content. If you apply for a free Creative Commons licence, you have the chance to state how other people may use your work — including adapting it, attributing it, distributing it or using it for commercial purposes.

The CC music factory

Musician Pete Teo is one of the many artistes that sings the praises of CC. Teo considers CC to be an indispensable part of what he does as an independent musician.

“I’ve been a CC user ever since it was created. I continue to use it as a quick and convenient web licencing tool. It allows me to customise the ownership and the usage of my work,” he said.

Teo said that a good example of a CC product was the Malaysian Artistes For Unity project that he produced and launched last year.

The project, which happened in May, enabled people to download, share and remix the Teo-penned song Here In My Home, with their own style. There were at least half a million downloads, according to Teo.

“Given the ‘viral’ nature of the project, it was important that we legalised free downloads and ­subsequent dissemination of the song and video,” he said.

“CC allowed us to do this without going to lawyers and drafting expensive and verbose traditional licences, every time someone wanted permission to use the song or video in their projects,” said Teo.

He added that usage was limited to only non-commercial endeavours. Fifty two people were involved in the project, including filmmakers, ­dancers, singers, producers, musicians, actors, ­entrepreneurs, designers, ­footballers, activists, celebrities and students.

Teo believes that in this age of user-generated content, CC will become more and more important as a means of cheaply and quickly establishing the legal boundary of legitimate usage of user content on the net. “I am a fan,” he said.

A 28-year-old musician, Sudev Bangah concurred.

“I am still very active in CC and am still advocating it.”

Last January, Sudev flew to Taiwan to attend a workshop on CC and to perform at a CC event, called the CC Asia Mega Mix concert.

Sudev was chosen because he had long been a CC supporter. “I’ve been supporting CC since 2005. My music was released under the CC blanket in 2007,” he said.

“The concert was a lot of fun and many other artistes from Taiwan, South Korea, Philippines and other countries were there to perform at the concert,” said Sudev.

The “jam” didn’t stop there, it moved to cyberspace via CC.

“In the middle of last year the collaborative team that formed in Taiwan, got together to record an album called Cabaca (www.cabaca.org),” he said.

“All collaboration was done over the Internet, by sending bits and pieces of music from everywhere. It’s a mix of Asian flavour with some westernised style music,” he said.

The CD has been released and sold commercially in Taiwan music stores. It is also available on iTunes and CD Baby.

Close to 500 CDs have been sold, according to Sudev. “After ­deducting recording company royalties, the total ‘clean’ profit is around RM5,100, which will be used to fund future projects,” said Sudev.

Good for artistes

Muid Latif, a graphics artist, said that CC is also good for him. “Besides the collaborative spirit of CC, learning and understanding CC helped me understand copyright law,” he said.

Muid, 30, a board member of CC Malaysia, says, “It’s more about creativity than money but CC is a platform for you to showcase your talent, which could lead to some financial benefit,” he said.

Inspired by the Malaysian Artistes for Unity (Mafu) music project, Muid was involved in an art ­collective group Digital Malaya Project (www.digitalmalaya.com/unity), which worked on a ­photography project.

The theme of the project was ‘Love and Unity.’

“I uploaded an image with the lettering 'Love’ and ‘Unity’ and people used it as a template to create something new,” said Muid.

UNIQUE: The winning entry of the Digital Malaysia Project by Adi.

“This is what CC is about — not being afraid to use someone else’s work and creating something of your own from it,” he said.

The winner of the Love and Unity project, Adi Afran, said he joined the competition “not looking to win” but as an opportunity for him for artistic exploration and meeting new people.

Adi, 32, said, “I’m relatively new to photography. I’ve been doing it less than two years. So having people out there who want to use my photos (on CC) gives me encouragement to continue doing it.”

Adi is not sure how many people have used his work.

CC evangelist

Muid also promotes CC at ­workshops, whenever possible. Last April, he introduced CC at the Art of Seeing photo-journalism talk, held at KLIUC (Kuala Lumpur Infrastructure University College.) The talk was attended by 200 photography lovers and students.

In July, Muid also gave a talk at the Mini-Summit of New Media Practice (in conjunction with the Singapore Electronic Arts Symposium).

“I tried to explain how CC can help photographers share their work at the media summit,” he said.

The New Media Summit was organised by Asia-Europe Foundation, a non-profit body that promotes greater mutual ­understanding between Asia and Europe through intellectual, cultural and people-to-people exchanges.

Upcoming CC events

This year, Muid will be teaching CC to more people at workshops.

“We will be showcasing the Mafu photography project on April 2, in conjunction with Kuala Lumpur Design Week. This (entry by donation) talk and workshop will show how I create artwork by using CC,” he said.

Hasnul Samsuddin, head of the Creative Content Centre, said that the Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC), which initiated CC in Malaysia, will be putting in resources to promote the CC programme.

Hasnul said that CC Malaysia would be working with the British Council, to arrange a series of ­workshops and talks about ­scriptwriting and production.

“Scriptwriters have to understand copyright law and how they could use CC, should they want another scriptwriter to improve their work,” he said.

“Any time that MDeC has the opportunity to speak with the artiste community, we will be promoting the CC movement,” he said.

“With the coming of High Speed Broadband and the growth of User Generated Content, content rights will be critical in protecting the artists’ shared work,” he said.

MDeC will also be promoting CC through MDeC’s ongoing Digital Storytelling (DST) programme.

“The DST programme seeks to create digital-story based content that could be streamed, shared and enjoyed by students and teachers. This will promote the culture of sharing and respecting of ­copyright,” he said.

The DST is held at secondary schools around the country, during the school holidays, thrice a year.

“Awareness of CC will be given to high school students creating content. They can put together works, remix them and publish them under the CC licences,” he said.

Muid said, “We need more people to step up to be CC activists here. People are scared to use this CC, which changes their ‘All Rights Reserved’ to ‘Some Rights Reserved.’

They don’t actually understand the foundation of what CC is all about. It’s about a culture of sharing.”