Creative Commons Hong Kong

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The Commons Crossroads: Defining the Roadmap for Creative Commons in Asia and the Pacific

The second Asia Pacific Creative Commons Conference, “The Commons Crossroads: Defining the Roadmap for Creative Commons in Asia and the Pacific”, was held in Manila of the Philippines on 5-6 of February 2009. CCHK participated in this event by sending our project manager, Dr. Haggen So.

The conference started early at 8am, first with the presentation of the Philippine National Anthem from the Arellano Law Singers, Invocation and welcome remarks from the host, followed by the presentation from CC Philippines on their current projects.

Though CC Philippines was only launched in January 2008, the presentation comprised of an array of impressive projects. The first presenter was from Vibal Foundation, which was funded by the Vidal Publishing House. Vibal Foundation ran two famous online knowledge bases, namely Filipiniana.net and WikiPilipinas.org. Filipiniana.net was a digital library containing historical and cultural artefacts of the Philippines. WikiPilipinas.org was the largest online Philippine encyclopaedia in the world. The foundation also started E-turo.org, an online repository of teaching and learning tools.

The next presenter, DRIP, was a local band who made themselves famous and collaborated with other musicians worldwide through licensing their works under CC and distributing them using different online tools, especially ccMixter. With the lowering cost of distribution of music, DRIP was able to make a living comfortably using this new business model.

The most different and valuable part of the conference from last year (1, 2) was the Commons of the stage, where most part of the programme was comprised of presentations and sharing from all the jurisdictions represented.

Our representative from Hong Kong, Dr. Haggen So, presented the exciting development of CC in Hong Kong last year with Lessig and Ito at the official launch and the future direction on education. A good number of current and potential CC projects initiated by CCHK and the community were shown to the audience as well.

Other jurisdictions also shared their experiences on the topics of current and future CC related projects and licence usage, where a good number of presentations focused on the area of education, government and Web 2.0 sites.

The organisation, operation and funding of each jurisdiction were also discussed and compared. Most CC organisations were hosted in academic institutions, with the exception of Korea. The common problems were to find funding and the difficulties in using research funding for promotion purposes.

At the end of the conference, the topic of collaborations between different Asia-Pacific CC movements was discussed. The conclusion of this conversation is encapsulated in the “Action Plan Statement”, which will be made public soon.

Other than presentations and discussions, the host also organised a cultural night where the participants could see the performance of traditional-native Filipino dances from different tribes and origins as well as a surprise presentation from TrueFaith, a well-known local band. Other artists included the Arellano Law Singers, DRIP and Lisa Diy.

This conference was a great time for relationship building, sharing experiences and resources. A number of jurisdictions were similar to CCHK with education as an important focus and employed CC as a tool for the development of curriculum materials. A number of collaboration initiatives will be announced in the “Action Plan Statement”. Last but not least, we would like to thank CC Philippines and the Arellano University School of Law for the effort and the hospitality in organising this successful event.

For more information, please refers to http://www.cc-asiapacific.net/.