Hi all Anyone interested in copyright might have seen the two big Australian court cases that are getting a lot of airtime at the moment - one stating that the iiNet ISP isn't liable for its users bittorrenting, and the other saying that Men at Work are liable for using part of "Kookaburra sits in the Old Gum Tree" in "I Come from the Land Downunder".
But because of this you might have missed another big Australian free culture announcement - the Victorian Government has become the first Australian government to commit to using Creative Commons as the default licensing system for its public sector information. The commitment is part of the Government's response<http://www.diird.vic.gov.au/diird-projects/access-to-public-sector-information> to its Economic Development and Infrastructure Committee's Inquiry into Improving Access to Victorian Public Sector Information and Data<http://www.creativecommons.org.au/node/250>, which recommended that the Victorian Government adopt a "hybrid public sector information licensing model comprising Creative Commons and a tailored suite of licences for restricted materials." Specifically, the response (which is under CC BY-NC-ND) states at p.8 that: The Victorian Government endorses the committee's overarching recommendation that the default position for the management of PSI should be open access. The Victorian Government further commits to the development of a whole-of-government Information Management Framework (IMF) whereby PSI is made available under Creative Commons licensing by default with a tailored suite of licences for restricted materials. As far as we are aware, this is the strongest commitment to Creative Commons implementation made by any Australian government. While there have been a number of excellent CC-friendly recommendations coming out of recent government inquiries - notably the Government 2.0<http://creativecommons.org.au/node/277> and Venturous Australia<http://www.innovation.gov.au/innovationreview/Pages/home.aspx> reports - these are yet to be officially adopted. And while there are some excellent implementation projects - the Victorian Government specifically mentions the Australian Bureau of Statistics<http://www.creativecommons.org.au/node/207> and Queensland's Government Information Licensing Framework<http://www.creativecommons.org.au/node/229> - these are still limited to individual agencies. We'll be very excited to see where the Victorian goes from here. Jessica Coates Project Manager Creative Commons Clinic Queensland University of Technology ph: 07 3138 8301 fax: 07 3138 9395 email: [email protected]
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