Continuing our series of interviews with interesting people, we have today with us someone whose homepage reads

Theorizing and analyzing sustainable and democratic alternatives of globalization.

Hey wait a second, we are not talking about globalization and if its effects on our GDP, at least not here, not now. We are talking about Creative Commons in India. Prof Jha is the project lead of CC India. You can read more about CC India here.

Ujj: Nice to have you on Mutiny sir. First of all, how did you get involved with creative commons?

Prof Jha: I came to know of CC through a meeting with Prof. James Boyle, a professor at Duke University Law School, USA. Subsequently I got in touch with Lawrence Liang who was already looking for someone to collaborate with and host Creative Commons India. That is how we settled on IIT Bombay as the host organization and with Lawrence and me as the Legal and Project Leads. The Indian jurisdiction was launched on January 26th, 2007 at IIT Bombay.

Ujj: Does CC hold any special significance for the student community?Are there any plans of organizing events etc inside campuses to enlighten students about creative commons?

Prof Jha: CC is of particular interest to young people, including students, as they graduate into their working arenas and create new forms of knowledge. We held creative workshops on CC during the India launch. Most recently I’ve also had a Creative Commons sponsored film contest on the Right to Information to encourage young film makers to create content on RTI and distribute it using CC licenses. We had a modest success. RTI is an area that CC-India finds close proximity to.

Ujj: Can Creative Commons be applied to non digital works? Like handicrafts?

Prof Jha: CC can be applied anything that can also be copyrighted - both digital and non-digital. The design part of the craft can certainly be copyrighted.

Ujj: How are people taking Creative Commons, I mean are they taking it as something technical, computer and internet related, or something thats not there for layman usage or are they accepting it as something that will liberate them and protect their rights?

Prof Jha: It is too early to tell rather comprehensively about our experience in India. We are targeting the educational institutions and certain other creative communities. Going by the worldwide experience, CC is being used by all kinds of people: artists,educators, technicians and others. At the last count there were more than 150 million artifacts worldwide that were using CC licenses. You can use http://search.creativecommons.org/ to search for CC specific digital works.

Ujj: Are there any special projects being pursued under CC in India?anything to look forward to in coming days?

Prof Jha: As mentioned above we recently had the Chitra Katha, a RTI film contest whose results will be soon displayed on our website. National Program on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) [funded by Ministry of Human Resource
Development (MHRD)] [www.nptel.iitm.ac.in/] has considered using Creative Commons-India license for the over 250 web and other courses being designed by IIT faculty for wide scale dissemination among engineering colleges. We are also in conversation with some organizations in pursuing a vibrant web 2.0 digital space within the country. A conference on such issues will be forthcoming in the near future.

Ujj: whats the road map for the Creative Commons from here. Do you see it as valuable addition to protection of people’s works? Whats the future like?

Prof Jha: CC will help to decisively widen India’s copyright policy options. The success of Indian development in the remotely rural areas as well as the densely networked urban areas requires access to information that is relatively inexpensive and quickly accessed. CC can legitimately help decrease the impediments in the national flow of information. The building blocks of research and creativity can thus be positively affected.

The digital based information revolution is posing fresh challenges as well as offering newer promises. The impact of digital copyright is expected to be rather acutely felt in the music, film/video, telecommunications and publishing industries. Consumers, authors, academic institutions, students and the general public at large will be quite deeply impacted by newer
access regimes slowly coming into place. We would like CC-India to actively chart and document this space.

Ujj: Prof Jha, thank you for your time. It was really enlightening, talking to you.

Prof Jha: Thanks.

Stay tuned on mutiny for more interviews.