A few months later, Mutchler got another e-mail from Francois Bourbon from France, who created a ballad for the song. Then Lawrence Cosh-Ishii and Takahiro Miyao from Japan made an video of it called My Life Changed Completely.

Finally, a virtual band with members from Washington, Ohio and Japan called Tryad perfected the song and named it Our Lives Change.

These people have never met. Yet, they complemented each other's work impeccably and legally. This amazing collaboration could only be achieved through Creative Commons.

CC is a nonprofit organization that promotes the creative reuse of intellectual and artistic works. Its licenses let people easily change their copyright terms from the default of "all rights reserved" to "some rights reserved."

Today, Mutchler's work, as well as that of thousands of others released under CC licenses, is available to the public for free and for legal sharing, use, repurposing and remixing.

Founded by Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig in December 2001, CC provides a middle ground for creators who prefer to release their works under a more permissive license. There are basically four conditions that can be combined to a set of six copyright licenses.

Attribution allows copying, distributing, displaying, performing and remixing as long as credit is given to the owner. Non-Commercial lets people copy, distribute, display, perform and remix for noncommercial purposes only. Share Alike also allows people to create remixes and derivative works as long as they publish it under the identical license that governs the original work. No Derivative Works mean people can copy, distribute, display and perform only verbatim copies.

"We believe in a copyright system that is balanced and makes sense in the digital age. We also want to express respect for all kinds of creative work, both from amateurs and professionals. These are the objectives of CC," said Lessig, who flew in for the launch of CC Hong Kong on October 25.

He reckons creative people, while publishing, should be free from unnecessary hassle - in the same way scientists produce knowledge that is universally accessible - without lawyers scampering in the middle.

CC is now practised in 50 jurisdictions, including mainland China and Taiwan, supporting more than 140 million ongoing projects.

Released under a CC license, Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States has made all of its course materials free for download, while rock group Nine Inch Nails has allowed its latest albums to be remixed for noncommercial purposes.

Video-sharing websites YouTube and eyeVio, digital photo-sharing website Flickr, best talk and performance website TEDTalks, and cable television network Current TV are all operating under a CC license. "And Wikipedia, I promise, is only one inch away from licensing," Lessig said.

Local indie band Snoblind is also a supporter of CC. Recently, the band worked with a group of people from all over Asia, and volunteered to distribute their music under a CC license.

The music album Cabaca brought together artists from Taiwan, Hong Kong, the US, Malaysia, Philippines, Japan, Korea and South Africa.

"We had heard of some CC artists in Taiwan before. We are glad to have a chance to make songs with them and other Asian artists, though we have not met before. It is an exciting experience to collaborate with artists in the internet realm," Snoblind said.

Hong Kong model and singer Ella Koon Yan-na is also doing her part by uploading some of her photographs under the CC license.

"At a time when Hong Kong is working to improve education and strengthen our creative industries, I see CCHK helping to provide a firm foundation on which to build Hong Kong's creative capital," says Pindar Wong, chairman of CCHK's preparatory executive committee.

CCHK is currently a project under Hong Kong University's Journalism and Media Studies Centre.

Websites under CC

Education: www.myoops.org

Movies: www.archive.org/details/ movies

Music: ccmixter.org

Drawings: www.deviantart.com

Photos: www.flickr.com