Creative Commons licenses adapted for Portugal will be launched after the summer

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The Faculty of Economic and Business Sciences (FCEE), of the Catholic University, is leading the process of introducing Creative Commons licenses in Portugal, allowing creators to flexibly protect their works and at the same time protect some of their rights. The licenses are expected to be launched after the summer, and their adaptation to the Portuguese legal system is currently underway.

The process is guided by Pedro Oliveira, assistant professor at the Faculty of Economics and Management at the Catholic University, who explained this initiative to TeK. «FCEE is responsible for streamlining efforts to adapt licenses to national jurisdiction, disseminate them, create a user community and maintain contact with international coordinating entities», he adds.

Pedro Oliveira also explains that the current legal system makes it difficult to share and freely disseminate content, which often ends up happening illegally, since at the outset everyone is protected by copyright. «Creative Commons licenses can contribute significantly to facilitate the dissemination of creative productions by making them available to third parties, promoting the use of knowledge and facilitating the innovation process», adds Pedro Oliveira.

The Creative Commons license is completely free and is already used by a number of content creators, such as the Brazilian musician Gilberto Gil, who thus protect the copy and use for commercial purposes but authorize its free disclosure.

Pedro Oliveira was contacted by the person in charge of the project when he was still in the United States and the formal contact for the introduction of this license in Portugal took place in July 2004, he explained to TeK.

The Memorandum of Understanding ended up being signed only a few weeks ago, after the presentation of the first translation and adaptation of the license to the Portuguese legal system. The process has not yet been concluded and Pedro Oliveira declares that it is expected to have the license finalized during 2005, with the official launch expected after the summer.

A website in Portuguese is still under development with all the information about Creative Commons licenses and the way Portuguese creators use them. FCEE also has the collaboration of INTELI for the promotion and dissemination of licenses to a wider range of potential users.

The Creative Commons project emerged in 2001 at the initiative of Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Stanford University, who wanted to create conditions that would allow the expansion of the number of freely available works, as well as the creation of others based on originals. The created licenses facilitate access to the works, in a very simple way, and under flexible conditions, dispensing with intermediaries and were inspired by the idea of ​​»copyleft».

Creative Commons licenses have already been adapted in several countries, including Germany, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Spain, USA, Finland, France, Holland, Japan and Taiwan. In the two years after its creation, more than 5 million licenses have already been awarded.

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