Creative Commons is coming to Malaysia. And it has already created a buzz amongst the creative and internet communities.

This initiative by the Multimedia Development Corporation (MDC) is expected to pave the way for other countries in the region to join in this international effort.

"All over the world, more than 30 countries have or are in the process of customising Creative Commons licences," read a statement by law firm Tay & Partners.

It added that artists, creators, writers and copyright owners including those having administrative responsibilities for traditional arts are beginning to listen and to show interest in exploring how Creative Commons may be of use.

In view of this, a public discussion will be held in Universiti Malaya (UM), Kuala Lumpur, on Oct 26 to obtain feedback from the public and to promote and publicise Creative Commons.

The discussion will be led by UM law faculty dean Prof Khaw Lake Tee together with representatives from MDC as well as Tay & Partners, the legal adviser to MDC for this project.

The discussion is open to the public.

What is Creative Commons?

According to the statement, Creative Commons introduces an innovative way to create a win-win situation for creators and users of creative works.

The project seeks to help create a body of free culture by making it easier to share creations across boundaries, time and space by the use of Creative Commons licences (CC Licences).

A Creative Commons on-line resource enables anyone to generate an individualised, legally enforceable copyright license.

It allows the creator of any creative work, such as a movie, animation, music, literary works, arts and crafts, to specify how the work may be used by others and what rights are retained by the creators.

The CC Licences are available for free and have been vetted by lawyers. Once a license is chosen, the creator will be given a small chunk of HTML code to be attached to the work, to indicate what are permitted by the licence.

When a user comes across a work on the Internet which he would like to use or build upon, he can use it without asking permission because permission, as stated in the CC License is already given.

That way, a body of creative works may emerge from collaborations across time and space, co-authorships between people who have never met. The aim is to skip the intermediaries, to make it a whole lot easier for complete strangers to share and build upon each other's works.

As of May 27, 2005, there were nearly 16,000,000 digital objects accessible over the Internet linked to a CC Licence. These resources include scientific journal articles, music files, picture files and weblog pages.

Interested users can easily find content licensed under Creative Commons and sites that have a Creative Commons licence by using the Yahoo! Search for Creative Commons.

Creative Commons Malaysia will be launched in December 2005.

For more information or enquiries, please visit www.creativecommons.org or email Dr Alina Ng (alina@mdc.com.my) or Julia Low (julia.low@taypartners.com.my)