[Cc-hk] Monday's CC meeting

Rebecca MacKinnon rebecca.mackinnon at gmail.com
Tue Jul 31 02:53:29 EDT 2007


Thanks to everybody who attended last night's meeting!  Sorry for  
those of you who tried to call in on Skype - the wifi kept kicking me  
off the network for some reason. Fortunately there were only one or  
two of  you and I promise in future I will sort out the remote  
participation issues a bit better :) Anyways, here is a summary of  
what went on:

We were honored to be joined by Dr. Catharina Maracke, International  
Coordinator for Creative Commons International. (For a full list of  
attendees, see the bottom of this summary.)

- HOST INSTIUTION, LEGAL LEAD & COMMUNITY LEAD:  Catharina announced  
that the Journalism & Media Studies Centre at HKU will serve as the  
host academic institution for bringing CC to Hong Kong, thanks to the  
generosity and decisiveness of JMSC Director Prof. Ying Chan. HKU Law  
Faculty Professors Alice Lee and Li Yahong will head the legal team,  
working with others in the legal community who want to help in  
localizing the CC license to Hong Kong law.  Rebecca MacKinnon,  
Assistant Prof. at the JMSC, will for now serve as community point  
person, with the help of other members of the Hong Kong community. As  
Catharina explained, the leadership team of CC HK can evolve over  
time,  and Rebecca certainly hopes that CCHK's public spokesperson  
will ultimately be a HK person not a recently arrived American. But  
this current arrangement seems to Catharina and the other people at  
CC headquarters as the most expedient approach to getting things off  
the ground and running.

- LOCALIZATION OF THE CC LICENSE:  One very important thing needs to  
happen before an official Creative Commons Hong Kong organization can  
be launched:  The international Creative Commons license needs to be  
localized into Hong Kong law, with versions both in English and  
Chinese. HKU Law Profs Alice Li and Li Yahong will spearhead this  
effort, and welcome other lawyers and law students in this community  
to get involved with helping. Once a draft of the localized license  
has been created, it will be circulated in the community for comments  
and suggestions. Then it will be revised into a final form. Once it  
has been completely finalized, only then will it be possible to  
officially "launch" a Creative Commons Hong Kong organization.  Profs  
Lee & Li :-) are hoping this can happen within the coming half year.  
Catharina says that the amount of time needed in different countries  
has varied dramatically: in some places only a few months were  
needed, in other countries it took several years. How long it takes  
in HK is up to all the lawyers and law students in our community here.

- USING THE LICENSE BEFORE THE CC HK LAUNCH:  Before the CC HK  
license is launched, people in HK are certainly free to use works  
that have been created and published/distributed under any CC license  
anywhere on earth, as long as of course we follow the terms of the  
individual license (i.e., whether the specific license is non- 
commercial only, whether it allows remixing or not, etc.).  Many  
people in Hong Kong are already publishing their own works under the  
generic international CC license, and we should all feel free to do  
so. This is naturally better than nothing but it will not necessarily  
hold up in a Hong Kong court if somebody uses your work in ways not  
permitted by the license you selected. A question was asked whether  
CC licenses have been upheld by courts in other jurisdictions and  
Catharina cited a couple examples of yes.

- THE LAUNCH: Once the Creative Commons license is completely  
localized under Hong Kong law and everybody is happy with it, it will  
be incorporated into the Creativecommons.org website, in the area  
where anybody creating content anywhere in the world can go to select  
the license they need. (See http://creativecommons.org/license/)  As  
soon as is practical after that, based on funding and logistics, we  
would plan to hold an official Creative Commons Hong Kong launch  
event. Schedule permitting, we would hope that such luminaries as  
Creative Commons founder Larry Lessig would come out. It would be  
great to combine this with seminars or workshops that would help to  
educate the legal community, government officials, educators, media  
organizations, artists, students, and general public in Hong Kong  
about CC.

- PROMOTING CC IN HONG KONG: Many people in the meeting talked about  
how much work there is to be done in educating the government, the  
universities, the media, the arts community, and pretty much  
everybody in HK about CC and why it's a good thing, how the licenses  
can be used (and how they can't be used), etc.. There are lots of  
projects we can organize and support. Many people in the room already  
have specific projects they want to undertake. If you would like to  
propose a project or claim a particular area in which you'd like to  
promote CC, please go to the "Volunteer" area on our wiki and declare  
your interest. http://cchk.wetpaint.com/  If you don't have an  
account on the wiki, just sign up on the right hand side of the page,  
and then you will be able to add your thoughts and information easily.

- FUNDING:  We will of course need to raise funds to pay for a launch  
event and other CC promotion activities. It's likely we will want to  
hire somebody part-time to handle administrative coordination for the  
project. These funds will need to be raised from local businesses,  
individuals, other institutions, and perhaps there could also be  
public funds - as Charles Mok pointed out.

- GOVERNMENT RELATIONS: This is a good time to get going on CC HK  
because the Digital Copyright law is still under advisement. There is  
a lot of work to be done in educating regulators and lawmakers about  
the fact that there are alternatives beyond traditional copyright  
that might help to foster creativity and innovation in Hong Kong.  
Charles Mok has many good ideas about how we can proceed on this.

- REGULAR MEETINGS: It was suggested that we hold a CC HK meeting at  
least once every 2 months so that we can all continue to brainstorm  
and update each other where various aspects of the project stand.  
These don't always need to happen at HKU - they could be hosted by  
different members of the community on different months, so sometimes  
we will be more convenient for people on Kowloon side and sometimes  
more convenient for HK Island, etc.

- WEBSITES, EMAIL LIST, ETC. : Right now, since CC HK has not yet  
officially launched, we cannot create an official "Creative Commons  
Hong Kong" website without causing problems for CC International, as  
well as causing confusion in the community here about whether or not  
there is a localized license. Meanwhile we will use the "Fans of  
Creative Commons" Wiki at: http://cchk.wetpaint.com/  to inform the  
community and invite broad participation. Hopefully all of you will  
sign up for accounts on the wiki and use it to organize the work  you  
want to do.  I would suggest using Google Docs or a separate password  
protected wiki to jointly work on documents and projects in a more  
private space.
We will also continue to use this e-mail list. If there are people  
you know who want to get involved, they should sign up here:
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/cc-hk

ATTENDEES: (Please correct me if I got your name wrong or let me know  
if I missed your name. I didn't have everybody's full name and not  
necessarily all titles.)

Dr. Catharina Maracke, International Coordinator, Creative Commons  
International
Prof. Ying Chan, Director, HKU Journalism & Media Studies Ctr.
Li Yahong & Alice Lee, HKU Law Faculty
Hagen (sorry don't have full name - please let me know)
Deki - famous "Just a Sidekick" blogger :)
Janet Lau - City University
Micky Yip - City U, Legalvoice.hk
Nicky Tse - Trainee solicitor, Hau, Lau, Li & Yeung
Paul Cheung - City U., Legalvoice.hk
Chong Chan-yao HKU director of student dev
Ben & Oiwan Lam, Inmedia
Randy Shek - DotAsia lawyer, HKU, etc
Charles Mok - HK Internet Society etc.
Kenneth Yip- ASTRI.org - HK Applied Science & Technology Research  
Institute
Greg, Chinese U. information engineering student
Uta Lam - blogger, web 2.0 entrepreneur
Yat Siu, CEO of Outblaze
Rebecca MacKinnon, HKU



Rebecca MacKinnon
Assistant Professor, Journalism & Media Studies Ctr.
University of Hong Kong   (http://jmsc.hku.hk)

email: rmack at hku.hk
blog: www.RConversation.com
Tel: +852-2219-4005

Co-founder:
www.GlobalVoicesOnline.org
"The world is talking. Are you listening?"




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