MANILA, Philippines –A Philippine law school has developed its own version of the Creative Commons license to make the license more applicable in the Philippines.

Creative Commons is a licensing agreement that helps people retain copyright of their works while permitting its use by others under certain conditions--a "some rights reserved" agreement as opposed to an "all rights reserved" arrangement. It is used as an alternative licensing agreement in blogs and some websites.

"This is an alternative way of licensing works," said lawyer Michael Vernon Guerrero, deputy project lead of Creative Commons Philippines and deputy executive director for the e-Law Center and the IT Center at the Arellano University School of Law.

The Arellano law school started working on the Philippines' version of Creative Commons to help encourage the "cascade of knowledge" from copyrighted works, according to Guerrero.

The Arellano law school now represents the country as the public institution required for all international affiliates of Creative Commons.

Copyright principles indicate that people can either have full control of their own content, such as in the case of "all rights reserved," or can opt to place it in the public domain (without a copyright agreement), in which case they risk exploitation by other users.

"When you create content, you own the copyright. So you want it protected. But if you want to share some of your content without them asking you permission every time they use it, then that's Creative Commons," the lawyer explained.

The Philippine version of the Creative Commons is designed to fit local terminologies and laws.

For example, Guerrero said the Philippine Creative Commons is both a contract and copyright, which means violations would lead to a breach of contract and copyright infringement.

The Philippine version also makes use of the term "sound recording, audiovisual work, or fixation" rather than "phonogram" as the former has a set definition under existing Philippine law.

Details of the change are listed in in the IT Law Journal blog.

Guerrero stressed that the Creative Commons license was not anti-copyright.

"This gives people an option on how to use content legally," he added.

At this time, however, awareness of the benefits of using Creative Commons is low, he said.

"Even government agencies don't understand what 'all rights reserved' means," Guerrero said.

Lawyer professor Jaime Soriano, who is also executive director of the e-Law Center, is the project lead for the Philippine Creative Commons, he said.