Vietnam businesses and Creative Commons Licenses

Dr. Lynne McNamara, Executive Director of VEF
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization. Its mission is to increase the amount of creativity (cultural, educational, and scientific content) in “the commons” for free and legal sharing, use, re-purposing, and re-mixing.
With the Creative Commons licenses, it is quick and easy for the Vietnamese content creators to indicate how they allow users to reuse their content, while retaining full copyright ownership of their work. Using CC licenses can be an effective way of encouraging norms of sharing and re-use within an online community. Once sharing one’s creative work online becomes a habit, businesses and entrepreneurs in Vietnam can easily find and share new and innovative ideas that can be applied and developed in their own industry, which would help bring about the growth for that industry in particular and to the Vietnamese economy in general.
To promote the use of CC licenses in the community of Vietnamese businesses and entrepreneurs, here are some ideas:
– Create a forum for sharing and promoting ideas and potential uses.
– Get the media involved to raise people’s awareness.
– Report about successful cases in the region and in the world in using the CC licenses.
– Organize seminars and workshops at different levels and in different fields of interest to promote CC licenses.
– Set up a hot line phone for people to ask questions about CC licenses.
– Have an ongoing blog on CC licenses.

So far, I understand that here in Vietnam Mr. Mario Behling (Founder of Lubuntu) and Ms. Dang Hong Phuc (MBM International) from the CC Saigon Salon as well as Mr. Nguyen Vo Minh Hung, Senior Quality Engineer of Conforama Southeast Asia and Indian-subcontinent; have used CC licenses in their businesses. I believe that many more businesses and entrepreneurs in Vietnam will use CC Vietnam Licenses as an easy way to protect their work while still retaining some rights in their work and sharing their creative endeavors with others.

Mr. Dang Viet Cuong, Deputy Managing Partner  of D&N International
Generally copyright laws creates legal frameworks permitting copyright holders to effectively protect exclusive rights in their works and receiving profits from their exploitation, thus encouraging them to create more new works. However, such copyright protection may prevent authors from sharing their works with potential users for legitimate purpose, reducing their chance to be known by the public and receive creative contribution from the community.

According to the Vietnamese law, CCL is a standard copyright license ready for use to help Licensor share their works with the public.

CCL has been used by Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) in Vietnam Open Courseware Program (VOWC), a program organized by VEF in cooperation with MoET. This program helps teachers, lecturers, students and pupils legally share with each other their lectures and educational materials in order to improve quality of young generation’s training and learning.

Currently the Vietnam CCL project is entering into Phase 2 with the aim to promote the use of CCL in all creative fields to enrich the national literary, scientific and artistic treasures and foster the development of IT industry in Vietnam through legal sharing of software. Speed and efficiency of Phase 2, which is decisive for the promotion of creativity in the Vietnamese creative community depends on ourselves, who have ambition to integrate into the world’s Creative Community.

The availability of CCL in Vietnam has created an opportunity for authors to share their work with the public while preserving their copyright. It is a solution which satisfies both reason and sentiment. It satisfies sentiment because the public are permitted to use published works under certain conditions. It satisfies reason because authors can preserve copyright in their works. However, when users commit an act of use which is not covered by CCL, then the copyright enforcement mechanism must be effective to help authors protect their rights.

Ms. Mary Lou Forward, Executive Director of OCWC
Creative Commons licenses allow the creator of a work – such as a photograph, piece of music, academic paper, and design – to specify in advance how that work may be used by others.  This allows the work to be shared, used and potentially added to, but others.  If you are a musician but don’t have the resources to mix a final cut of your music, you can release it under certain Creative Commons licenses and others can add to your piece, making a more complete composition very quickly.  In education, teachers or experts can share knowledge openly by adding a CC license to their work, allowing others to benefit from their expertise and to add their perspectives and ideas.  The original author can then benefit from the contributions of others to their ideas, while gaining recognition for their knowledge and creation.  Creative Commons licenses allow for collaboration across the world, and allow ideas to be shared quickly and openly, which can be very important for entrepreneurs.

A few people have to start using them and then tell others about them.  The media can highlight cases where people are successfully using CC licenses and the results.

Sharing ideas and strategies can strengthen businesses, especially small businesses.  A good idea can reach more people, more quickly if it is shared.  People will come to know about things and be able to contribute to them, and new businesses can be built on these collaborations and sharing.

Ms. Michelle Thorne, Project Manager of CC
Creative Commons is an organization dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright. We provide free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof.
There are many ways creators can use Creative Commons licenses to effectively in business. Our licenses are non-exclusive which means you are not tied down to only make a piece of your content available under a Creative Commons license; you can also enter into other revenue-generating licenses in relation to your work. One of our central goals is to encourage people to experiment with new ways to promote and market their work.
Secondly, the noncommercial license option is an inventive tool designed to allow people to maximize the distribution of their works while keeping control of the commercial aspects of their copyright. With this arrangement, people who want to copy or adapt a work, “primarily for monetary compensation or financial gain” must get your separate permission first.
A Creative Commons license terminates automatically if someone uses your work contrary to the license terms. This means that, if a person uses your work under a Creative Commons license and they, for example, fail to attribute your work in the manner you specified, and then they no longer have the right to continue to use your work. This only applies in relation to the person in breach of the license; it does not apply generally to the other people who use your work under a Creative Commons license and comply with its terms.

You have a number of options as to how you can enforce this; you can consider contacting the person and asking them to rectify the situation and/or you can consider consulting a lawyer to act on your behalf. Also, if you do not like the way that a person has made a derivative work or incorporated your work into a collective work, under the Creative Commons licenses, you may request removal of your name from the derivative work or the collective work.

By: Vân Hương -phongcachdoanhnhanonline.com