Consumers International (CI) Asia Pacific and Middle East office is organizing a Regional Consumer Access to Knowledge (A2K)  Meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on 17 Feb 2009.

More than a year ago, Free Culture advocate Anas Tawileh analyzed the state of Arabic content online. His portal Arab Commons has grown modestly but steadily since its launch in 2007, offering 11 full textbooks in Arabic, plus magazines, podcasts, poetry collections, and a number of art works — all within a few months.

Just got back from a day in Brisbane and spent the better part of the evening with the good folks at CC Australia. The whole evening was put together by the activist, artistic designer, journalist and one helluva party planner Elliot Bledsoe.

Al Jazeera Network today announced the world’s first repository of broadcast-quality video footage released under the Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution license. Select Al Jazeera video footage – at this time, footage of the War in Gaza – will be available for free to be downloaded, shared, remixed, subtitled and eventually rebroadcasted by users and TV stations across the world with acknowledgement to Al Jazeera.

The United Arab Emirates claims to take the lead in building a prosperous and developed society through the development of human resources; which are able to interact with the rapid developments in the international community, and building the foundations of economic and trade community; through which the Emirates always intends to promote, progress and prosper.

The first Jordanian Forum for Electronic Legislations & Transactions, is due in Amman, Jordan on the 16th – 17th of Feb. 2009 at Le Meridien Hotel, Amman.

The General Counsel Department at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina (BA) has organized a three days workshop entitled “Intellectual Property in the Digital Age” on 20-22 December, 2008.

King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), which is an independent scientific organization, administratively attached to the Prime Minister (the king) is holding a two day workshop in Riyadh on 17/18-1-2009 entitled “Arabic Open Content”.

Our music, our culture, our science, and our economic welfare all depend on a delicate balance between those ideas that are controlled and those that are free, between intellectual property and the public domain.

Copyright related issues are important for Jordan as it wants to be an active participant in the participatory media age; hence it needs to understand the implications of the digital revolution and determine appropriate legal regimes.