Cc-hk mailing list

["Li Yahong" <yali AT hku.hk>]

Dear all,

 

Some of you on this list may have been wondering what is going on with the HK CC licence drafting.  On behalf of the legal team of HK CC project, I am happy to let you know that all 6 licences (Attribution, Attribution-NonCommercial, Attribution-NoDerivatives, Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives, Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike, Attribution-ShareAlike) have now been formally finalized.  The licences have been approved by the Director of CC International, Dr. Catharina, Maracke, and will be formally uploaded to CC International's website, as well as our own CC webpage.  Haggen will start to work on XHTML format of the licences.  They are just finished in time for HKCC launching event!

 

The drafting process started last September and has been through several stages.  The first stage is legal research of CC licences of other jurisdictions and HK's copyright ordinance to identify special features and issues under HK copyright law, and the differences and pros and cons of the licences of other jurisdictions.  This part of research was primarily done by our LLM student Rob Rogoyski and Ph.D student, Jerry Hua, of HKU faculty of law. Based on their excellent research results, Alice and I drafted the Attribution-NonCommercial-SharAlike 3.0 licence and put it out for public consultation. At this stage, many people on this list have contributed their views and comments. We received particularly useful comments from Peter Yu, Rebecca, Pindar, Ryanne and Sam and incorporated some of their suggestions.  Most importantly, we held meetings with IPD and Law Society (with the participation of Rebecca, Pindar, Ben, Kenneth, Alice and I) to inform and introduce the project to HK legal community and tried to facilitate discussions on this project.  Extensive discussion and revisions of the licence had been carried out during this stage, and the licence was eventually finalized in late August of this year.  Immediately following the completion of the first licence, we started to draft the remaining 5 licences.  Since these 5 licences are only the variations of the first licence, we did not consult public for the substantive issue, but only worked on the style, consistency, and format.  After many rounds of discussion, proofreading and revision with the participation of many people, particularly, Catharina, Rebecca, Alice, and Pindar, the all 6 licence were finalized and approved by the CC International on Sept. 17. 

 

In short, the English version of licence drafting process is formally closed.  We are still working on the Chinese translation of the licences and hopefully it will be completed soon.

 

Many people have rendered their substantive or moral support to the licence drafting process.  I apologize if I have missed some of the names in this email.  Thank you all and we look forward to working with you on the future development of HKCC project.

 

Best regards,

Yahong

(on behalf of the legal team)

 

 

Dr. Yahong Li

Associate Professor

Department of Law

The University of Hong Kong