Australia may give go-ahead for Creative Commons on public data

Authorities in Australia are considering the use of Creative Commons licensing to facilitate sharing of geographical and meteorological data:

Last month, the government of Queensland approved the use of Creative Commons, which allows free re-use of copyright material subject to certain conditions, as part of a new licensing framework. Meanwhile, the Commonwealth (federal) government is expected to give the green light to creative commons in a new set of guidelines for the management of the government's intellectual property.

The new Australian policy will be watched with interest by Britain's free-data movement. Historically, Australia is a pioneer of free data: a 1968 law exempted most data produced by the federal government from copyright protection.

Link (thanks, Perry)

[#1 posted by cohesion , February 14, 2008 2:27 PM]

The US is also happily the first pioneer of this, with all federal work entirely public domain. This work is invaluable to works like Wikipedia etc. And honestly, places like the UK are ridiculous. They tax the poor people to make the work, and then copyright it? If you make the work from tax money it should be public domain.

Creative Commons non-commercial really doesn't cut it. Of course there is no way of knowing what license they are talking about, because like so many, they refer to "creative commons" as if it were a license, rather than an organization which produces many different licenses, which it is.

[#2 posted by Church , February 14, 2008 3:05 PM]

1968, huh? And now they're going too release some more stuff under CC license? Sadly, that's pretty progressive for a commonwealth country.

As bad as the MAFIAA is, it shouldn't be forgotten that governments also have a vested interest in restricting the 'right' to copy.

[#3 posted by Moon , February 14, 2008 6:06 PM]

YAY!

[#4 posted by Bobsledboy , February 14, 2008 6:55 PM]

Meanwhile, the Australia-United States free trade agreement has resulted in the Australian government being required to extend artist's postmortem copyright from 50 to 70 years, extend the rights of patent holders (as if they didn't have enough already) and implement a DMCA style law to enforce DRM systems.

[#5 posted by sabik , February 15, 2008 12:45 AM]

#4, don't complain - by dint of concerted lobbying, we got rid of the "possession of a device without intent to infringe copyright" provision, for instance. What's to complain about?

[#6 posted by Sam , February 15, 2008 1:51 AM]

Okay this is completely random - but I noticed an optical illusion with the image of Australia.

Look anywhere on your screen but directly on the image and scroll up and down - the image appears to pulsate, getting smaller and bigger each time.

Anyone else see it?

[#7 posted by showcasejase , February 15, 2008 3:44 PM]

Is there nothing that Creative Commons can't do?!

Actually, this is kinda geeky but I wrote song about Creative Commons recently:

http://showcasejase.blogspot.com/2008/02/song-for-creative-commons.html

[#8 posted by Irreal , February 17, 2008 5:09 PM]

I'm going to have a look around and see who's driving this and see about some encouraging correspondence.
I'd recommend other Aussies do likewise, it might help create widespread support against more restrictive copyright laws.