“Why make people steal? Let them share!”

Lema Chehimi reports from Lebanon's 1st Creative Commons Salon.

On Friday, April 16, Lebanon's creative community came together to present work that they've licensed under a Creative Commons (CC) licence at Obros in Clemenceau, Beirut. Artists, photographers, authors, podcasters, comics illustrators, musicians, filmmakers, and civil society organizations talked about why they license their work under CC.

Being a newspaper that publishes under a CC license and actually prints this fact on each issue’s front cover, Hibr also showed up at this wonderfully engaging event to share samples of its hard work so far.

It was interesting to learn that Al Akhbar newspaper is also licensed under Creative Commons.

“The old model doesn’t work anymore in our digital age, it’s good to make all creations benefit the public,” said Mansour Aziz, the Al Akhbar web and IT manager, talking about the reasons why Al Akhbar decided to use Creative Commons and share its content, with just a few restrictions, of course.

An Al Jazeera representative was also at the Salon to talk about releasing some of its broadcast quality footage about Lebanon under a Creative Commons license. Their license invites anyone to reuse and remix the footage as long as Al Jazeera is credited.

Representatives from Samandal, the first magazine of its kind in the Middle East, were also there to present a hilarious sequence demonstrating the remixing of different creative outlets.

The Salon's participants also watched avidly an extract from the short film 'Beirut, I love you, I love you not', which was screened during the event.

Representatives from Media Opportunities were also there to announce their objective: to provide a place for people and organizations working in online media in Lebanon and the wider Arab region to find and share talent, funding, training and job opportunities.

Lara Zankoul, sister of Maya Zankoul, was also there to present her Flickr photographs that are also publicly available under a Creative Commons license. The Lebanese rock band Meen literally rocked the house while performing a few of their fantastic songs that are also designed to be shared with the audience. “Why make people steal? Let them share!” said Tony Yammine, one of the members of Meen.

Many more talented folks were there to share their interests and present their CC licensed work. 

It was a wonderful experience! Here's hoping that the next CC salon will be just as successful and entertaining!