When you create some creative work, you store it away, make sure you squeeze out the most (earnings) out of it, and don't allow anybody to copy it. Right?

Wrong. The message of the South African Creative Commons network -- http://za.creativecommons.org -- is that you have a wide range of options to choose from, away from the 'all rights reserved' model that writers, artists, musicians and others are often psched into believing in.

Creative Commons South Africa has a real-life and web-based presence, dedicated to "showcasing the work of local creators, educators and administrators who use Creative Commons licences to distribute their ideas and creative expressions".

To begin at the beginning, what's all this about?

Two young women spearheading this initiative are project lead Heather Ford and researcher Kerryn McKay. They say: "Our main challenge really is persuading people to think about ownership of information differently. And to adopt a completely new way of distribtuing knowledge. Money still can be made (when you share information and creative work). It's just about changing your model."

The Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization devoted to expanding the range of creative work available for others legally to build upon and share. The Creative Commons website enables copyright holders to grant some of their rights to the public while retaining others through a variety of licensing and contract schemes including dedication to the public domain or open content licensing terms.

It aims to avoid the problems current copyright laws create for the sharing of information. Headquartered in San Francisco, this project was officially launched in 2001 and founded by Lawrence Lessig.

In South Africa, the LINK (Learning Information Networking Knowledge) Centre at Wits University in Johannesburg promotes official, locally adapted licences, as well as to host and maintain the Creative Commons licences in South Africa.

Recently, the South African branch of the project supported a web portal in showcasing regional initiatives that make use of the Creative Commons licences, and conducted workshops on Creative Commons licencing in Africa.

And this counter-intuitive but eminently-sensible project introduces itself thus: "The vision of Creative Commons South Africa is of a thriving African internet community using Creative Commons licenses to educate our people, grow our markets, share our knowledge and celebrate Africa's culture and heritage with people around the world."

Ford and McKay say there's just the two of them working on the project currently. They have three major funders, with the Canadian group IDRC being the largest funder.

McKay was upbeat when we spoke: "We've just recently created a multimedia CD-ROM for Grade Nine (age 14, approx) technology learners. It actually covers everything for the South African national curriulum. From IT to making a box."

"It's called Copyright and Responsibilities in South Africa. It's about Free/Libre and Open Source Software, the history of copyrights, the impact of copyright on traditional knowledge, and then it looks at alternative forms," she adds.

Recently, they've compiled a snapshot 'digital commons' of all educational open content organisations within Africa.

What is the range of material they cover? "Everything. Any cultural content that would normally have a copyright imposed on it. It covers music, audio, video, books, e-books, any kind of reading material. And, of course, educational material -- for Africa that's one of the most relevant really," says McKay.

Education is vital to all of us. It's almost a basic human need. Can anyone justify profiteering over it, rather than taking a people-before-profits approach?

Says Ford: "People are taking to its very well. Specially in South Africa. There are big stake-holders that have got funding from huge corporations and funding agencies, that have made it their business to distribute various tools -- like the Mindset network in South Africa. They're setting up a licensing policy with Creative Commons, but it's not formal yet."

For instance, South Africa's National Department of Education has an internet portal called Thutong. It's an online resource for learners, for educatiors, administrators, and parents http://www.thutong.org.za They have got a policy on using the Creative Commons licenses.

CC-South Africa was launched in May 2005. Heather Ford had been a Reuters Digital Vision Fellow, and brought the project to South Africa. Initally, they spent a lot of time "porting" (adapting) the license into South African law.

Both Ford and McKay see the copyrights regimes growing tighter -- and more unhelpful -- globally. But they keep pressing on... 'Most of major educational technology players in South Africa have either adopted Creative Commons or plan to adopt it shortly," says Ford. "One other important thing is that there has been a lot of media attention to alternatives to copyright law since we started," she adds.

They ran a comppetition with the local music station YFM, and it involved a re-mixing competition with the 'Go Open Source' campaign (run by HP-Shuttleworth-CSIR-Canonical). "We ran this competition around Software Freedom Day, and it was to get musicians to get Free Software and free content to remix music under Creative Commons license. Also DJ Fresh, a famous DJ, agreed to release the components of one of his tracks. Because he owns his own label, he was able to do that," says Ford.

One challenge: the publishing industry is still very fearful of Creative Commons.

"We got phone calls, with people telling us that sharing and remixing music would be detrimental to artistes. They saw this as a threat and basically started saying to us, 'Can you prove that all the content on your website is always going to be legal... and that the other people haven't just sampled copyrighted songs'," says Ford.

"They also said this is going to make people take any song and believe they can remix it. Which is nonsense...," said Ford. She points to misleading campaigns which equates sharing music with stealing handbags or cars.

Creative Commons ideas are specially suited for education. Argues Ford: "It's important for education. Not just for South Africa. Because we need to adapt all available material for our specific environments. We need to be able to make derivative copies, in other words, translate material, into different languages. And we need to be able to share content, because content is expensive (to create)."

Besides, making a book available online could only stimulate demand for the print product, McKay points out. It also helps publishers get their work noticed by education decision-makers.

What was their inspiration?

Says Heather Ford: "I was at Stanford, doing the Digital Vision fellowship programme. At that time, the Creative Commons project was based in Standford. I started voluntering. Then, I realised that IPR ("intellectual property rights") is probably the most critical issue for development in South Africa."