Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Rami Olwan
Former project leader of CC Jordan
PhD Student at QUT Faculty of Law
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Outline
- Where is Jordan located?
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Where is Jordan located?
Jordan, “is a country in the ‘Middle East’ in Southwest Asia bordered by Syria
to the north, Iraq, to the north-east, Israel and the West Bank to the west, and
Saudi Arabia to the east and south. It shares the coastlines of the Dead Sea, and
the Gulf of Aqaba with Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt”.
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When did CC Jordan Begin?
- Creative Commons (CC) has been working with Abu-Ghazaleh Intellectual
Property (AGIP) since March 2004 to port the CC license into the Jordanian
copyright and civil law system.
- AGIP was the first organization from the Middle East to bring CC to this region of
the world.
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What did CC Jordan Do?
- We translated the license into Arabic and we had to make it fully compatible
with the Jordanian legal system.
- The drafting process was hard since it was difficult to find corresponding and
appropriate legal and technological terminology in Arabic.
- We are helping two UK artists (Eileen Simpson and Ben White) to sample old
Jordanian films and musical works to produce new work.
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The Problems of CC License in Jordan
-Cultural differences.
-General public are not aware of CC the movement and its importance.
- Few creators are keen on publishing their work under CC licenses, they are
suspicious of using an American concept.
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What Are Arab Commons?
-Arab Commons (www.arabcommons.org) is a an initiative that aims to educate
Arab artists, intellectuals and creative workers about the advantages of releasing
their works under CC.
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What does the future look like?
Although the concept of CC licensing in the Arab World is not as developed as in
many CC jurisdictions, there are opportunities to further promote CC by:
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References
- Jordan’s CC page at http://creativecommons.org/international/jo/
- Taylor Luck, ‘Artists advocate for establishment of creative commons’, the Jordan
Times, available at
http://www.jordantimes.com/index.php?news=8309
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Thank you
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