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Revisioning iCommons
In 2005, iCommons was established as an outgrowth of Creative Commons with an objective to ‘advance the wider dissemination of non-commercial sharing of scientific, creative and other intellectual works by the general public’. Creative Commons was the sole member, guarantor and sponsor of the charity, providing organisational and financial support.
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The Growth of Arab Commons
anas (United Kingdom) · Nov 05th, 2007 4:53 pm · 39 votes · 3 comments
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| www.arabcommons.org, by Design: Hanadi TRAIFEH |
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Ten months after its official launch, a quick reflection may shed some light on the Arab Commons project and its growth over the year. Arab Commons went live on 1 January 2007 with the ambitious aim of promoting the development of open content in the Arabic language and to educate creative workers in the Arab world about the philosophy of Creative Commons and the benefits they can reap by making their intellectual and creative works available under CC licences.
Arab Commons intends to build a directory of Arabic works that are released under any of the Creative Commons licences. For this purpose, the website provides an easy to use interface to search or browse published works. The website also offers “information packs” that provide a simplified explanation of Creative Commons, the different CC licences, how they can be used and their advantages, written completely in Arabic.
After ten months, Arab Commons’ directory contains 11 full text books, seven poetry books, 46 art works, one magazine, one podcast and 11 articles. This may seem to be modest growth for a language that is spoken by more than 200 million people all over the world, but the picture is a little bit more promising if viewed in the light of the very slow growth of digital Arabic content on the Internet as a whole. Moreover, considering the completely voluntary nature of the project, these figures qualify as a plausible achievement.
On the outreach and media side, the project was able to attract considerably high attention. It was featured in several leading print newspapers and online blogs in the Arab world, and several speakers dedicated a slide or two of their presentations in different conferences and workshops to introduce Arab Commons. This is probably one of the project’s strengths that can be built upon in the coming month to accelerate its growth.
Lastly, it seems that Arab intellectuals and creative workers, once they have their works digitised, are quite receptive to the ideas of the commons. What is still needed, however, is to convince them to cross the digital chasm.
Additionally, I believe that the focus should shift towards combining the promotion of Creative Commons in the Arab world with the larger objective of increasing the development of digital content in the Arabic language. It is in this regard that Arab Commons intends to join forces with other initiatives in the region to improve both the quality and quantity of Arabic digital content. The message is clear: Let's develop more Arabic content, but even better - let's develop more “open” Arabic content.
tags: damascus syrian arab republic culture arab commons arabic
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