January 1 2007, was a big day for those of us in the Commons, as we welcomed the digital version of a New Year's baby to the family - a brand new commons group in the Arabic speaking world.

The Arab Digital Commons (ADC) initiative was launched to promote and support the creation of works in Arabic that are licenced under Creative Commons.

The powerhouse behind the project is Anas Tawileh, who has been involved in the Free and Open Source Software movement in his home country of Syria for several years, promoting the use of FLOSS.

Now based in the UK, Anas explains how he first became involved in Creative Commons and iCommons: 'We realised that the FDL, although very effective in several aspects, may not be the most appropriate option for different contexts,' he explains. 'We started looking for an alternative that provides more flexibility in licensing creative works, which may ease our task of convincing authors. That was when I first encountered the Creative Commons and started to get involved.'

Response to the idea of the Commons in the Arab world has been mixed.

'The main problem,' says Anas 'is that [discussion of] the copyright issue is not very well developed in the Arab world.' He goes on to explain that authors are not very aware of the restrictions that traditional copyright places on their work, especially if they fail to licence it properly.

The recent increased infiltration of multinational corporations in the Middle East also means that more rigid copyright restrictions and protections are being applied to Arabic content.

'Therefore,' says Anas, 'we realised that the Arab Commons initiative is of the utmost importance to protect the Arabic Digital Commons and to raise the awareness among Arab artists, creators, authors and researchers about the implications of copyright regimes. We also want to encourage them to licence their works under a Creative Commons licence, and support them in selecting the most appropriate CC licence for their works and requirements.'

As it stands, the Arab Digital Commons currently includes the works of poet Dr Rayan Helou, artist Hanadi Traifeh and training materials developed by Wissam Tawileh, an expert on information security. Within one week of the launch, they have been joined by several authors who contributed creative works to the Arab Commons. A reputed professor in psychology released an extensive study he conducted under a CC licence, and a podcast about child labour in Morocco was added, another poet also contributed all of his works to the commons. An owner of a computer-related portal decided to release dozens of articles about computing and technology under CC licences, and a Moroccan magazine is now also released in the commons.

One of the advantages of the ADC is that work that has been developed and licenced in one country can be freely used in another. And while IP legislation differs between Arab countries, the ADC is working on developing a generic Arabic CC licence scheme, which can then be adapted to suit local jurisdictions.

At the time of writing, Anas is also involved in translating the commons deeds into Arabic.

tags: Cardiff United Kingdom culture arab-commons translation cc digital-commons

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