Grants/BatasPinoy Project
Describe the project you are proposing as clearly as possible in just five sentences.
Philippine laws are complex and many times complicated for the understanding of ordinary Filipinos and non-lawyers. Most available legal references are obviously under the strict application of copyright, expensive because they are proprietary, and couched in legalese.
The idea of BatasPinoy is to commission 5 to 10 legal scholars to write basic legal information and materials that affect the Filipino day to day life ranging from laws governing the family, marriage, labor, human rights, crimes, taxation, property ownership, business transactions, intellectual property, and litigation properly organized expressed in layman's terms like an FAQ and make them accessible to Filipino end-users, here and abroad.
Detail the tangible project output (e.g., paper, blog post, written materials, video/film, etc.; this would be in addition to the final written report that successful grant recipients will be expected to deliver to CC at the conclusion of the project).
The project seeks to come up with a minimum of 30 user-friendly and layman-understandable legal articles/literature on pre-identified popular legal topics to be made available on line in the AidLaw website in PDF format under a CC-BY-SA-NC Phils 3.0 license, which the general public may freely download and even print for distribution. Every legal article will carry the CC license and a brief explanation of what CC is all about.
Describe the community you are targeting. How would the project benefit the community?
The project is seeking to target civil society in general as its audience. Through then dissemination of the legal information clearly under a CC license, the project expects to also propagate the notion of Creative Commons to institution that provides knowledge and information to make their otherwise copyrighted work dedicated to public service via the CC license.br />
The people behind the project have been in the academe and legal education for many years. With our LawPhil Project (www.lawphil.net) experience, we were able to provide free and open access to Philippine laws, rules and jurisprudence under a CC license, not only to the academe, legal scholars, and law practitioners but also to government, institutions and the public in general. The LawPhil Project in fact is the most popular online legal resource website in the Philippines. This time and unlike LawPhil raw content, BatasPinoy aims to provide value-added content of legal literature/refernce.
How will you measure and evaluate your project’s impact - on your main participants? Other contributors? On the larger community?
WE will measure the project's impact through an online feedback and testimonial mechanism that will be integrated with all the legal materials that will be be uploaded in the AidLaw website.
How many participants do you expect to be involved in your project? How will you seek and sustain their involvement?
Depending on the size of the grant that would be made available, we expect a maximum of 10 legal scholars to get involve in the project. We will sustain their involvement by providing a modest honorarium for their output and the inspiration and motivation that the project is intended to serve the public interest on free access to law.
Describe how your project will benefit Creative Commons' mission to increase the amount of creativity (cultural, educational, and scientific content) in "the commons".
BatasPinoy Project seeks to capture initially basic Philippine laws involving popular topics/issues. After the launching of the project, we intend to have an active campaign to inspire other legal scholars to develop their own materials and have them uploaded and be made available in the AidLaw website under a CC license until such time that we are able to cover every legal concern in our jurisdiction. In this way, we accomplish CC's mission to increase the amount of creativity at least in legal content.
Describe what technologies and tools your project will use. What kinds of technical skills and expertise do you bring to the project? What are your technical needs?
The project will utilize open source applications for each technology needs, to which we are very familiar with in terms of technical skills. We do not need additional hardware or equipments.
What challenges do you expect to face, and how do you plan to overcome them?
The only challenge we expect to face is the accuracy and organization of the content of the legal materials to be produced. To overcome, we intend to organize a Board of Legal Editors to handle the review of the form and legal substance of every article. We also intend to adopt a standard format for the presentation of the legal materials.
How do you plan to sustain your project after the Creative Commons funding has ended? Detail specific plans. How do you plan to raise revenue to continue your efforts in the future?
After funding has ended, we intend to encourage legal scholars to contribute their knowledge. And depending on the traffic and patronage of end-users of the site, we may seek for private donations or sponsors or other alternative business models to fund the production of more legal literature under a CC license.
How can this project be scalable, or have a scalable impact?
The project may not be scalable in terms of money or money's worth. Just like LawPhil its scalability will depend on use and patronage of the public at large after its launching.
What resources and support do you expect Creative Commons to provide to your project to ensure its success (if any)?
For the moment, BatasPinoy will only need the financial support to start the selection and organization of the legal scholars and sign up contracts with them to commence the project under a modest financial arrangement.
Describe how your organization currently communicates with its community members and network partners. (100 words)
Being in the academe and our regular interaction with the legal community as active law practitioners, the system of communication is in place both personal and online. From the commencement of the BatasPinoy project, however, we also intend to utilize the social networks to get feedback and suggestions as the project progresses.
Legal
Yes
