Creative Commons Egypt

Creative Commons is working with the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) to create Egyptian jurisdiction-specific licenses from the Unported Creative Commons licenses.

CC Egypt List

Project Lead: Hala Essalmawi

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More About the Bibliotheca Alexandrina

In fulfillment of its mission as a center of excellence for the dissemination of knowledge and for dialogue, learning and understanding between cultures and people, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) has developed a growing interest in issues relating to access to knowledge, promotion of innovation and creativity and intellectual property.

BA has initiated several activities to spread the philosophy of access to knowledge (A2K) and build local capacity of researchers, librarians and practitioners to effectively implement new and emerging A2K tools and practices. It is within this context that BA has organized the first seminar on new tools for the dissemination of knowledge and the promotion of innovation and creativity in the Arab world and the region.

Description

The Creative Commons community in Egypt is a group of volunteers who are very passionate about promoting a culture of Intellectual Property (IP)-respect, sharing and collaboration through the use of the Creative Commons licenses on different community-levels.

Community

The A2K (Access To Knowledge) project initiated by Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) is considered to be the first and most active community for Creative Commons in Egypt and most of the BA A2K activities took place in Alexandria.

The Creative Commons team in Egypt is now working on how to widen the range of the Creative Commons community in Egypt to include more contributors and give more space for collaboration and sharing.

And the following are some of the groups/fields that the Creative Commons Community in Egypt is targeting...

• Arts: film-makers, musicians, visual artists, writers...
• Education: educators, educational institutions (formal/informal), edutainment companies...
• Young People: school/university students and young artists
• Research: researchers and research institutions
• Publishing: online and print publishers

And we will get these target groups involved through the following...

• Inviting them to our CC salons, workshops around Intellectual Property (IP)/A2K/how to use the CC licenses
• Answer all their questions and concerns
• Introducing them to projects that uses CC licenses for publishing their work

Priority Goals

• Foster a culture of "Intellectual Property (IP)-Respect"

In order for us to introduce people in Egypt to the Creative Commons licenses, we have to realize first that there are high rates of music and software piracy! So our main focus will be... how to help them understand what Intellectual Property (IP) is, how important it is to respect the Intellectual Property of a creator and what are the legal ways to use the work of others (providing them with Affordable/Free alternatives... CC licensed work, Open Source Software)

And only at this point we can introduce them to Creative Commons or otherwise they'll find the use of Creative Commons licenses pointless in the first place!

• Spread an Open-Source-Culture

A culture that is based on sharing, collaboration and open access and within this context people will realize how essential is the use of the Creative Commons licenses as a tool that allows more sharing and collaboration

• Sustainability

Our main goal is not only to introduce people to the licenses and let them know how to use it with their work, but one of our main focuses will be how to keep them motivated to collaborate, share and publish more content.

Metrics

The Creative Commons Egypt team will be tracking the progress of the project, through the following...

• Feedback from the Creative Commons Egypt community members (during events and online through surveys and polls)
• Regular (on-going) evaluation of the Creative Commons Egypt activities (from the organizing team)
• The number of projects that has adopted the use of the CC licenses with their work and activities.

Translation

• Arabic and English will be the main languages used to promote Creative Commons within the Creative Commons community in Egypt.