Artists Travel Far and Wide to Promote Creative Commons Licensing

However, UK artists Eileen Simpson and Ben White of the Open Music Archive have been touring the country, advocating for the Kingdom to establish a "creative commons" for artists to freely collaborate without harsh licensing restrictions.

Creative commons licensing, which can also be referred to as open source or open content licensing, allows individuals to access and build upon previous work, promoting the creative reinterpretation of intellectual property, whether owned or in the public domain.

What's in the Public Domain?

In an effort to highlight the importance of a diverse and vibrant public domain, Simpson and White spent the last six months attempting to sample old Jordanian films and musical works whose copyrights have expired, an experiment to work within restrictions imposed by international and local trademark and copyright laws.

The Jordanian Copyright Law imposes a 50-to-70-year moratorium on using artists' work after their death. In the country, which last week celebrated its 62nd anniversary of independence, very few recordings are in the public domain of artists who fall within the defined time line.

At first, the UK artists attempted to use old television and film clips, but faced obstacles in the form of international trade agreements when trying to access material from the major entertainment hubs in the region, Cairo and Beirut.

Unable to find archived material that is now completely accessible in the public domain, they turned to the Jordan Academy of Music, which collected folk songs from the Kingdom for the 2002 celebration of Amman as Arab Cultural Capital.

As the recordings are from the shared community and have no accredited author, the folk songs are a part of the public domain and therefore are not owned or controlled by anyone and are considered as "public property."

The Spirit of Sharing

Simpson and White plan on taking the songs and remixing them with local artists, updating the ballads and encouraging artists to explore the music further.

"We all build on the creativity of others, and we should be able to build on others' work in a fair manner," Simpson told The Jordan Times.

Creative commons licenses often have built-in requirements that future users of the creative works must, in turn, apply a similar creative commons license to their new interpretation, keeping the item in the public domain.

"The whole concept passes on the spirit of sharing, which in a creative community is important to do," she said, adding that legally allowing creative collaboration would curb intellectual property rights violations.

Clearing Things Up

Similar efforts are seen in open source software, such as Linux and Firefox, which individuals are free to build upon and recreate in their vision, and have become some of the fastest growing computer programs, White noted.

Such a model is at odds with proprietary models, where software businesses focus on locking down ideas and creativity, and in turn trading and selling them to turn a profit, White added.

According to copyright expert Ziad Marqa, the two approaches are not mutually exclusive and both "are in line with copyright law," but with an increasing digitized world it is difficult to attribute electronic works and properties.

"There is a huge amount of data on the Internet, and it is difficult to discern who did what work, and whether it is allowed to use certain material or not. Creative commons licensing makes it very clear," said Marqa, who also works with Creative Commons and NGO specialized in the field.

Reaching All Arab Countries

According to Charles Shaban, executive director of the Abu Ghazaleh Intellectual Property (AGIP) regional office, creative commons licenses provide clear definitions for what is allowed to remain in the public domain, something not elaborated on in the Jordanian Copyright Law.

Since 2004, Creative Commons and AGIP have been working to create the first Arabic translation of such licenses. The two organizations are currently working to create a well-defined third version of an Arabic creative commons license, which both Marqa and Shaban hope will reach the regional level.

"We are trying to develop a creative commons covering all Arab countries. With Jordan in the lead, we can do it," Marqa said.

The Arabic creative commons license defines "collective work," such as a periodical, anthology or encyclopedia, where individual works are included in their entirety along with other entries and therefore constitute a separate and new intellectual property.

"Derivative work," such as plays, musical works, translations, sound recordings and art reproductions that may be adapted, recast or transformed by a future artist, is also included.

'We Would Just Be Lost'

The license goes on to define the guidelines and parameters for open content work, and for its redistribution or reinterpretation, which experts hope to promote to authors, filmmakers and students across the region.

The absence of such a license would be a step back for the region's artists, musicians and writers, according to Simpson.

"If we weren't allowed to refer back to previous works, to walk down the path of others, we would just be lost, and the creative community will be stifled," she said.

"And that would be a loss for everybody," she added.