Macedonian CC Licenses Launched

20 June 2007

Macedonia joins the group of over 30 countries in the world with localized Creative Commons licenses. At the event organized yesterday, June 19, 2007, at the Holiday Inn Hotel in Skopje, the Metamorphosis Foundation presented the Macedonian CC licenses. Macedonia has localized the 2.5 version of CC, and Metamorphosis hopes that soon enough it will move to the latest version of Creative Commons.

The localization process was led by a team of Metamorphosis, while legal issues and approximation to positive Macedonian legislation were handled by Neda Zdraveva from the �Justinian I� School of Law, expert in copyrights and copyright law.

In his opening address, Nikolce Mickoski from Metamorphosis, provided a brief overview of the activities included in the process of localization, and noted the importance of the CC licenses for Macedonian authors.

�We hope that the CC licenses will lead to a significant Macedonian contribution to the already huge body of works, currently assessed at more than 6 million works of all types, licensed under various CC licenses available all over the world today�, said Mickoski.

Joichi Ito, the Chairman of the Board of Creative Commons and Chairman of the Board of Six Apart Japan, gave a lecture about Creative Commons as a movement, as philosophy, and as legal solution to the existing restrictive system of copyrights.

Ito discussed the importance of various problems existing in the world of copyrights today, reflecting on a number of areas, including the freedoms of artistic expression and political speech. He paid particular attention to the dichotomy happiness vs. pleasure.

�In the west, we have learned to measure everything through its worth in money. But, as we know, money can buy pleasures, they can�t by happiness. On the other hand, sharing one�s works with other people can lead to achievement of happiness�, said Ito.

He also touched the problem of CC community often being accused of being �anti-copyright�. He emphasized that, in fact, CC is totally pro-copyright, but for copyright that will be less restrictive, and more free, and will lead to a freer and more open world.

Dessi Pefeva, from ISOC Bulgaria talked about Bulgarian experiences with Creative Commons localization process. She welcomed Macedonia into the great community of countries with localized CC licenses and placed emphasis on the importance of building of communities of people engaged with similar problems, or working on similar issues that CC licenses provides.

Neda Zdraveva, from Skopje University�s School of Law �Justinian I�, presented the legal issues that occurred during the process of localization, but also asked several important questions about Macedonia, its citizens and their attitudes towards creation, creativity and copyrights.

�These CC licenses, in my view, are a great opportunity for Macedonia and its citizens to prove the well established notion we have about ourselves as a nation with some special creative capacities, a nation of artistically talented people that come from the �cradle of culture��, concluded Zdraveva.

In the Q&A session that followed, most of the questions regarded the validity of the CC licenses in possible litigations and judicial processes, as well as other intellectual property and copyright related issues.