Creative Commons China Mainland conducted a survey with the aim of gathering knowledge about how well Creative Commons licenses are known and used by the Chinese Community. The special focus of this survey was on Chinese bloggers and on the non-commercial use aspect of CC. The survey was carried out both online and offline from October 28 through November 15, 2006.

We received a total of 122 valid responses to our questionnaire. Of this total, 9 were received online and 113 were received offline.

The survey shows that 90.1% of the people questioned have their own blogs, 78.7% have an account with social network websites such as Flickr, Myspace, or Facebook, and 28.7% create their own podcasts. The high percentages largely resulted from the fact that most participants in the survey were attendees at the Chinese Bloggers Conference held in Hangzhou from Oct. 28 to 29, 2006.

(Chart 1) Respondents’ Web Activities

The survey asked about the kinds of content incorporated in the online activities engaged in by the respondents. The results showed that 87.7% use texts, 53.3% use still photographs, 13.4% used video files, and 10.0% use audio files.

(Chart 2) Main Types of Web Content

Most of the people surveyed had limited knowledge of CC and CC China Mainland licenses and they indicated that they wanted to know more about them and were interested in adopting CC licenses for their works. The survey showed that 41.8% of the respondents indicated they “knew a little” about CC, 27.0% said they “have no idea” of CC, 23.8% reported they “know more than a little ”, and only 7.4% of the respondents indicated that they “know very well” about CC licenses.

(Chart 3) Awareness of CC

The survey further shows that 32.8% of participants have already adopted CC, 34.4% say they plan to adopt CC, and 86.8% say they want to know more about CC and CC China Mainland. Among all those surveyed, of those who indicated that they have adopted or planned to adopt CC, 71.2% said they would like to adopt the ported CC China Mainland licenses.

Regarding the “non-commercial use” aspect of CC, 69.7% of those surveyed said they would use a CC license that restricted usage of their content to non-commercial use, 58.0% said they were not clear on what the “non-commercial use” restriction meant, and 39.2% of those surveyed said they did understand what ”non-commercial use” meant.

The majority of respondents indicated that they understood “non-commercial use” to mean the utilization of the works without the aim of making any profit. More specifically, 61.3% of those surveyed said the use of creative works on web pages where advertisements were posted by the web site provider would not be considered as a “non commercial use” and 59.4% said the same would be true if the ads were provided by Google or some advertising provider.

Finally, a majority of respondents offered suggestions about the use of CC and CC China Mainland and indicated they hoped to strengthen the promotion of CC and make more people aware of the option of adopting CC licenses.

From October 28 to 29, the Second Chinese Blogger Conference was held in Hangzhou. More than 300 Chinese bloggers as well as the people who are interested in Chinese blogs got together and discussed many issues on the development of Chinese blogs. WANG Chunyan, the project lead of CC China Mainland, together with her two assistants, ZHENG Yi and XIN Xingzhi, attended the conference and introduced CC and CC China Mainland Project to the audience.

In the thematic discussion on “Free Culture and Open Society” presided by CC China Mainland project team, WANG gave a speech named “Creating Creative Commons for Culture “, introducing the possible problems related to copyright in blog creation and the significance of CC licenses in promoting the development of “free culture”—a balance between full control of copyright and no rights reserved. “According to the present copyright law, works are protected once completed and nobody is permitted to release and copy it without the permission of the right holder, which to a certain extent restricts the spread of works, since most bloggers have no intention to make profit out of their works, only hoping their works can be widely spread,” said WANG, “what’s more, the restriction of using works has greatly limited the recreating activities based on the existing works, since the cost of the traditional mode of being licensed through one-to-one negotiation is pretty high.” CC licenses provide a set of standard copyright licenses for the public. The right holders can choose from the licenses with different license terms according to their own needs, which will greatly save the cost of negotiation for the copyright licenses and play an important role in promoting the spread of works and in encouraging recreating activities.

In the thematic discussion, WANG also answered some questions put forward by attendants and had a passionate discussion with them.

WANG Chunyan was exchanging ideas with bloggers form HongKong

CC China Mainland conducted a questionnaire survey during the conference to find out how well Chinese bloggers know about CC and the China Mainland version of CC licenses, and to gather their opinions and suggestions on the terms of CC licenses. More than 100 valid questionnaires were collected. These first-hand data will undoubtedly play an important role in promoting the development of CC on the Chinese Mainland.

The project assistants ZHENG Yi and XIN Xingzhi also communicated with many bloggers during the conference, introducing the development of CC in Mainland China.

The project assistant was conducting a survey

On June 15, 2006, CC China Mainland organized its first “CC Salon Beijing” in Thinker Coffee House of Wansheng Bookstore in Beijing.

people attending the salon

People from CC, WikiChina, the National Library of China and some well-known websites such as sina.com, baidu.com, people.com.cn, together with those who are interested in CC and open access took part in the event.

Jon Phillips, a member of CC headquarters, made a special trip to Beijing to take part in the activity. He is also one of the important organizers and hosts of CC Salons held in San Francisco. Jon first presented the purpose of organizing CC Salons as well as their worldwide progress. He said when the first CC Salon was held in San Francisco, the aim was to provide a platform for creators and scholars, who showed great interests in CC and the idea of open access, to exchange their thoughts and ideas. At present, CC Salons have been held in many cities, such as San Francisco, Toronto and Berlin. Besides Beijing, CC Salon in Warsaw is going to take place soon. These activities will provide regular opportunities for creators all over the country and the people who are interested in CC to get together to communicate with each other, inspiring them for creation. Jon also discussed with people on the issues like open source and Free software.

Dr. JI Yanjiang from qiji.cn referred to how well CC was used in qiji.cn and in the field of scientific research. He put forward some questions related to the open access to the information and results in the scientific research field.

Professor Hal Abelson from MIT, also a member of CC Board, introduced Scholar’s Copyright Project lately initiated by CC under the Science Commons (SC), a project in the scientific research field. It is a new project launched by SC, aiming at promoting the idea of sharing and opening in the scientific research field. According to him, MIT was recommending MIT Amendment to Publication Agreement to its researching staff, which allows them to reserve the rights to release and spread their articles in digitalized forms before and after the dissertations are published. This is going to be the policy of MIT, in the hope of promoting the sharing of scientific research papers and making more people access to the latest research results, which will promote the development of technology.

After several keynote speeches, the attendants had a wide and passionate discussion about the issues that they are interested in.

Jon Phillips was giving a speech（ by shizhao ）

Hal Abelson was talking at the dinner table （ by shizhao ）

Brainstorming（by Zoom.Quiet ）

Brainstorming

For more pictures, please visit http://www.flickr.com/photos/shizhao/tags/ccsalon/   and  http://www.flickr.com/photos/zoomq/tags/ccsalon/

For further information, please visit shizhao’s blog and report from zoom.quiet (both in Chinese)

On May 22th, Bababian.com, a Chinese Flickr-like website for online picture storage and sharing, formally integrated licenses of CC China Mainland into its service. Bababian users can license others to use their pictures by choosing CC licenses now.

Bababian.com provides individualized service for users to store, search and share pictures. Currently, there are thousands of pictures added in the website every day. Bababian users can make pictures into the forms of picture badges, ppt, and cartoons etc. and link them to their blogs, bbs, alumni to show their pictures in a more individualized way. Bababian.com also provides professional picture storage and space management service (API service) for blog, community, alumni, SNS etc.

By using CC licenses, Bababian users, with some rights reserved, can license others to use their pictures in a more convenient way so that their works can be widely spread. At present, there are more than 10, 000 pictures in the website licensed under CC licenses. If you want to check these pictures, please visit http://www.bababian.com/cc.sl.

Beijing, 30 March (China Daily): The Chinese version of the Creative Commons (CC) licences was launched yesterday as part of efforts to better protect intellectual property rights (IPR).

Such licences provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists, and educators, according to Lawrence Lessig, chief executive officer of Creative Commons, a non-profit organization offering copyright licences for creative works.

“We have built upon the ‘all rights reserved’ concept of traditional copyright to offer a voluntary ’some rights reserved’ approach,” said Lessig, also a law professor at Stanford University.

CC licences can help avoid rigid protection of intellectual property rights, said Wang Chunyan, an associate professor at the Law School of Renmin University of China.

They will allow Chinese people to have easier access to foreign creative works, said Wang, who is responsible for running the project on the Chinese mainland.

“Distinguished Chinese works can also be more easily accessed by the world,” said Lessig.

A CC licence does not mean giving up the copyright it entails offering some rights to any member of the public on certain conditions.

All CC licences require attribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor, according to Lessig.

(China Daily 03/30/2006 page1, link to orignal post on ChinaDaily)

BEIJING, March 29 (Xinhua) — The simplified Chinese version of the Creative Commons (CC) licenses, offering a flexible range of protection and freedom for authors, artists and educators, was launched in Beijing on Wednesday.

The Chinese version was translated from the English versions of the CClicenses based on China’s law on copyrights, by the Law School of Renmin University of China in Beijing, who is in charge of the project of the CClicenses on the Chinese mainland.

Wang Chunyan, leader of the project, said that it is significant for the Chinese mainland to introduce the licenses as it makes it easier for Chinese people to share knowledge and creative works.

“The Chinese version will promote the development of creative activities and works, and cultural exchanges between China and other countries,” she said.

Founded in 2001 in the United States, the Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that offers flexible copyright licenses for creative works, by using a voluntary “some rights reserved” approach compared with the “all rights reserved” concept of traditional copyright.