Adopting Creative Commons Licensing in the South Caucasus

Creative Commons is a licensing system that allows copyright holders the freedom to choose how much or how little control they have over their work. In a sense it can be considered as a set of open-source standards while also allowing copyright holders to retain some rights. Low resolution images on my Flickr site, for example, are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license.

As copyright infringement is widespread here — from CDs and DVDs as well as computer software — in essence it allows others to legitimately and freely use my work as long as they abide by the terms of my license for non-profit purposes while also allowing blogs and others to improve the presentation of their own materials through use of my images. Commercial use is still protected under national and international copyright law.

Therefore, I’m glad to see that the Eurasia Foundations is currently seeking to promote the use of Creative Commons in the South Caucasus.

Request for Proposals
05/29/08

Grant Competition to Support the Adoption of Creative Commons Licensing Framework in the Countries of the South Caucasus

Eurasia Partnership Foundation announces a grant competition to support the adoption of Creative Commons licensing framework in the countries of the South Caucasus. The initiative seeks to enable and popularize the legal sharing and reuse of cultural, educational, and scientific works in the countries of the South Caucasus through offering free and easy-to-use Creative Commons (CC) licensing framework to creators, artists, and educators, as well as other internet-based communities in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia. These goals will be achieved through exploring possibilities for implementing a consistent, robust and internationally accepted framework for intellectual property rights for web-based materials in the South Caucasus, adapting Creative Commons framework to conditions in the South Caucasus, and ensuring extensive stakeholder involvement and broad public awareness of the CC framework in each of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia.