When you create some creative work, you store it away, make
sure you squeeze out the most (earnings) out of it, and don't
allow anybody to copy it. Right?

Wrong. The message of the South African Creative Commons
network -- http://za.creativecommons.org -- is that you have
a wide range of options to choose from, away from the 'all
rights reserved' model that writers, artists, musicians and
others are often psched into believing in.

Creative Commons South Africa has a real-life and web-based
presence, dedicated to "showcasing the work of local
creators, educators and administrators who use Creative
Commons licences to distribute their ideas and creative
expressions".

To begin at the beginning, what's all this about?

Two young women spearheading this initiative are project lead
Heather Ford and researcher Kerryn McKay. They say: "Our main
challenge really is persuading people to think about
ownership of information differently. And to adopt a
completely new way of distribtuing knowledge. Money still can
be made (when you share information and creative work). It's
just about changing your model."

The Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization
devoted to expanding the range of creative work available for
others legally to build upon and share. The Creative Commons
website enables copyright holders to grant some of their
rights to the public while retaining others through a variety
of licensing and contract schemes including dedication to the
public domain or open content licensing terms.

It aims to avoid the problems current copyright laws create
for the sharing of information. Headquartered in San
Francisco, this project was officially launched in 2001 and
founded by Lawrence Lessig.

In South Africa, the LINK (Learning Information Networking
Knowledge) Centre at Wits University in Johannesburg promotes
official, locally adapted licences, as well as to host and
maintain the Creative Commons licences in South Africa.

Recently, the South African branch of the project supported a
web portal in showcasing regional initiatives that make use
of the Creative Commons licences, and conducted workshops on
Creative Commons licencing in Africa.

And this counter-intuitive but eminently-sensible project
introduces itself thus: "The vision of Creative Commons South
Africa is of a thriving African internet community using
Creative Commons licenses to educate our people, grow our
markets, share our knowledge and celebrate Africa's culture
and heritage with people around the world."

Ford and McKay say there's just the two of them working on
the project currently. They have three major funders, with
the Canadian group IDRC being the largest funder.

McKay was upbeat when we spoke: "We've just recently created
a multimedia CD-ROM for Grade Nine (age 14, approx)
technology learners. It actually covers everything for the
South African national curriulum. From IT to making a box."

"It's called Copyright and Responsibilities in South Africa.
It's about Free/Libre and Open Source Software, the history
of copyrights, the impact of copyright on traditional
knowledge, and then it looks at alternative forms," she adds.

Recently, they've compiled a snapshot 'digital commons' of
all educational open content organisations within Africa.

What is the range of material they cover? "Everything. Any
cultural content that would normally have a copyright imposed
on it. It covers music, audio, video, books, e-books, any
kind of reading material. And, of course, educational
material -- for Africa that's one of the most relevant
really," says McKay.

Education is vital to all of us. It's almost a basic human
need. Can anyone justify profiteering over it, rather than
taking a people-before-profits approach?

Says Ford: "People are taking to its very well. Specially in
South Africa. There are big stake-holders that have got
funding from huge corporations and funding agencies, that
have made it their business to distribute various tools --
like the Mindset network in South Africa. They're setting up
a licensing policy with Creative Commons, but it's not formal
yet."

For instance, South Africa's National Department of Education
has an internet portal called Thutong. It's an online
resource for learners, for educatiors, administrators, and
parents www.thutong.org.za They have got a policy on using
the Creative Commons licenses.

CC-South Africa was launched in May 2005. Heather Ford had
been a Reuters Digital Vision Fellow, and brought the project
to South Africa. Initally, they spent a lot of time "porting"
(adapting) the license into South African law.

Both Ford and McKay see the copyrights regimes growing
tighter -- and more unhelpful -- globally.

'Most of major educational technology players in South Africa
have either adopted Creative Commons or plan to adopt it
shortly," says Ford. "One other important thing is that there
has been a lot of media attention to alternatives to
copyright law since we started," she adds.

They ran a comppetition with the local music station YFM, and
it involved a re-mixing competition with the 'Go Open Source'
campaign (run by HP-Shuttleworth-CSIR-Canonical). "We ran
this competition around Software Freedom Day, and it was to
get musicians to get Free Software and free content to remix
music under Creative Commons license. Also DJ Fresh, a famous
DJ, agreed to release the components of one of his tracks.
Because he owns his own label, he was able to do that," says
Ford.

One challenge: the publishing industry is still very fearful
of Creative Commons.

"We got phone calls, with people telling us that sharing and
remixing music would be detrimental to artistes. They saw
this as a threat and basically started saying to us, 'Can you
prove that all the content on your website is always going to
be legal... and that the other people haven't just sampled
copyrighted songs'," says Ford.

"They also said this is going to make people take any song and
believe they can remix it. Which is nonsense...," said Ford.
She points to misleading campaigns which equates sharing
music with stealing handbags or cars.

Creative Commons ideas are specially suited for education.
Argues Ford: "It's important for education. Not just for
South Africa. Because we need to adapt all available material
for our specific environments. We need to be able to make
derivative copies, in other words, translate material, into
different languages. And we need to be able to share content,
because content is expensive (to create)."

Besides, making a book available online could only stimulate
demand for the print product, McKay points out. It also helps
publishers get their work noticed by education
decision-makers.

What was their inspiration?

Says Heather Ford: "I was at Stanford, doing the Digital
Vision fellowship programme. At that time, the Creative
Commons project was based in Standford. I started
voluntering. Then, I realised that IPR ("intellectual
property rights") is probably the most critical issue for
development in South Africa." She came back home to launch
the project in 2004.