It's World IP day this week and how better to celebrate than coming along to a free half day seminar on Maximising Creative Value and IP?

It's being run by QUT's Creative Industries Faculty, and goes from 1:45pm this Wednesday (not strictly World IP day, but close enough) at QUT's Kelvin Grove campus, here in Brisbane.

It looks like an interesting program, with lots of discussion of how to utilise new technologies to create business and innovation models for the creative industries. Jessica Coates of CCau will be presenting, along with:

* Anna Rooke, CEO, Creative Industries Precinct Pty Ltd
* Suzannah Conway, Chief Executive Officer, Australasian CRC for Interaction Design
* Regan Gourley, Patent Attorney, Cullen & Co.
* Matthew Tobin, Creative Director, Urban Arts Projects
* Christina Waterson, Architectural Artist

That's right - the kooky CCau duo Mayer and Bettle are back! And this time, they have a friend.

Following on from their fabulously successful cinematic debut, in which they introduced us all to Creative Commons, the new film provides a bit of an update as to what has been happening in Creative Commons over the last two years, and gives us a bit more information on using the Creative Commons licences. To do this, they travel into Creative Commons world, and run into one of Bettle's fans and collaborators, Flik.

Like the previous animation, this sequel was commissioned to inform young people (mainly targeted at upper high school) about the Creative Commons licences. It was produced by the original team, with animation by Pete Foley and sound and music by Chris Perren. The project was co-ordinated by our own Elliott Bledsoe. The animation was commissioned for the QUT Smart Train, which will be traveling around Queensland over the next few months, telling people all about some of the great things happening here at QUT.

Sailing on a Sunday Morning by magical-world CC BY-SA

Yes, that's right - we've got an update on the Powerhouse Museum's foray into the Commons on Flickr already.

As part of their initiative to release out-of-copyright photos from their Tyrrell Collection on Flickr (see below), Powerhouse has just launched a new initiative - Tyrrell Today. It aims to extend the Powerhouse Museum’s set of images on The Commons by allowing members of the public to post contemporary images from the same Sydney-centric locations as the original Tyrrell photos.

And, excitingly for us, they're encouraging people to provide the photos under a CC licence, so that the Powerhouse can archive them as part of their ongoing collection.

The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney made a fabulous announcement the other day - they have joined with the Commons on Flickr project as the first museum in the world to release publicly-held historical photographs for access on Flickr. PHM joins the US Library of Congress, the world's largest photo library, which released its first images for public access in January this year.

An initial 200 black and white images from the Powerhouse's Tyrrell Collection of Sydney life in the late 1800s and early 1900s were made available last Tuesday, with 50 more added since then.

The really exciting thing about this initiative is that the images are designated 'no known copyright restrictions', a new label for Flickr created specifically for this project. This means that the photographs are able to be re-used however you like, without any limitations or fear of copyright infringement - for commercial purposes, as part of a remix work etc. You don't even need to attribute (though it's still polite to).

From the CCau mailing list - Andrew Garton has announced that the Australian arm of the Association of Progressive Communication have released 10 years of essays, lectures, reports and articles dealing with information communication technologies for cultural development (ICT4CD) as part of Document Freedom Day. All the papers are available for sharing and re-publication under a Creative Commons Australia license.

Thanks, Andrew, for drawing our attention to this fabulous initiative. As part of CCau's contribution to the day, over the last few weeks we've been updating our Materials archive to include a whole lot of new powerpoints, speeches and publications. All under CC licences, of course. Feel free to check them out, download them, use them for your own purposes. More should be going up in the next few weeks.

Australian-based video distribution platform and network EngageMedia have released a Facebook application that allows users of the social network to embed the 'Latest Videos' feed into their profile. The widget, EngageMedia.org Latest Videos (+ to profile), further expanded the potential reach of videos published under open content licences.

The Asia and the Commons case study project represents an effort to uncover exemplary individuals and organisations engaged in the commons in the Asia-Pacific region. From Australia and New Zealand to Malaysia and India—in text and film and music and image—this booklet is a snapshot of the Asian commons. The booklet has been prepared as part of ACIA: International Workshop on Asia and Commons in the Information Age in Taiwan on 19-20 January, 2008.

This research is part of the Creative Commons Clinic research program, funded by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation at the Queensland University of Technology. It is being undertaken in collaboration with Creative Commons Australia as part of the iCommons Local Context, Global Commons initiative.

Its primary goal is to examine past, present, and future implementations of commons-based projects to offer insights into the innovative operation and possible future direction of Asia and the Commons.

The case studies assembled to date represent activities in nine countries, broader regions such as the Arab nations, and global efforts towards sustainability and social justice, revealing creative ways of participating in the commons. Featured are remix artists, performers, open-source software programmers, filmmakers, collecting institutions and publishing houses focused on democracy and change, who demonstrate a diverse set of motivations to engage with the shared ideals of openness and community collaboration.

We hope that you enjoy reading these vignettes, and are inspired to contact the individuals and organisations involved. This booklet will contribute to a larger selection of case studies to be presented at the iSummit ’08, to be held in Sapporo, Japan, between 29 July and 1 August, 2008.

Case Studies

For those who are looking for something to do during the slow late-January period, can I suggest a quick trip to Taiwan?

The International Workshop on Asia and Commons in the Information Age (ACIA) will be taking place in Taipei, Taiwan on Jan 19 and 20, 2008. It's a gathering of experts from across the Asia Pacific region, to meet, greet and generally discuss all things open access.

Youth media portal Vibewire.net has relaunched today with integrated Creative Commons licensing options. Vibewire has been publishing young people's voices on the things that matter to them since 2002.

The latest revamp of the website allows contributors to CC licence their content–whether it be a blog entry, article, review, interview, story, short story, poem or comment–under their licence of choice.

It also allows them to specify a CC licence as a default for all content they upload. The site is currently calling on writers, bloggers, multimedia artists, musicians, filmmakers and commentators to get involved with the site. For more, click here.