With 20 stories on everything from CC's new Catalyst Grant, China's Remix and Share art exhibition, and the new Into Infinity iPhone app, there's something for everyone.

A great resource for all those interested in what's going on with CC in our neighbourhood.

Parliament House by Ryan Wick CC BY 2.0

Hopefully most of you have seen the official launch of the Australian v3.0 licences earlier today.

We’re very pleased to announce that the licences, only a few hours old, already have their first significant adopter. A couple of weeks ago the Australian Parliament officially announced, via the Australian Library and Information Association's mailing list, that it will be porting its central http://www.aph.gov.au website across to a Creative Commons v3.0 BY-NC-ND Australian licence. This is the website which houses all the most important documents of the Australian Federal Government – including all bills, committee reports and, most importantly, the Hansard transcript of Parliamentary Sittings – so this is a major move for the Australian Government.

From the Australian Parliament announcement:

The Parliament of Australia is committed to open access to the resources it publishes to support a vibrant democracy. Recognising the important of ensuring access to its resources published on the website the parliament has approved publication under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/au/)... Full implementation will occur when the new web site is released in late 2010...
We are enormously excited at this step to open up parliamentary information.

Since its endorsement of open access as its preferred default in its response to the Gov 2.0 Report last month, the Federal Government has released the Budget, the NBN implementation study and the Gov 2.0 response itself all under CC licences. This latest announcement solidifies the government's commitment to openness and transparency, and means that the entire public record of our government will now be available for non-commercial reuse by anyone, without the need for additional permissions.

Update (9 June)
The APH website has now added the Creative Commons licences to its official copyright page, with an explanatory notice and description.

This week marks the fifth birthday of ccAustralia's fabulous animated mascots, Mayer and Bettle. So we thought it was a good time to give them a bit of love.

A quick reminder for all the commons-based postgraduate researchers out there - abstracts are due this Monday for the special "Yes, We're Open!" issue of Platform.

The issue, guest edited by the ccAustralia and ccClinic teams, will focus on the mainstreaming of “open”. With Mozilla Firefox pushing towards a 25% share of the web browser market and the number of Creative Commons licensed works reaching more than 250 million in 2009, perhaps it is time to ask, ‘Is “open” the new black?’

PLATFORM: Journal of Media and Communication is an open-access journal published by the Media and Communications Program at the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne. We encourage submissions by postgraduate students working in media studies or related fields which critically examine the legal, social and technical parameters of open source, open content and open access.

For more information on the issue themes and deadlines, see here

In the debate over the merits of last night's conservative budget, there's one thing we'd argue Swan did get right - the licensing.

The entire budget has been released under a Creative Commons Attribution licence. This means the material it contains - the deficit strategy, the fiscal aggregates, the government's responses to the economic crisis - is all available for free reuse, by anyone, for any purpose, as long as the source is attributed.

A single document, even one that's 350 pages long, may not seem like that big a deal compared to some of the other open government initiatives over the last few years - like the release of the Australian Bureau of Statistic's entire store of census data under CC. But as a public endorsement of CC as the licence of choice for the Australian Federal Government, it's huge.

Following the strong support for open access in the government's response to the Gov 2.0 report last week, this is a great show of the government putting its money where its mouth is (sorry, I couldn't resist). In fact, the last week has seen the release of three major Federal Government reports - the Budget, the Gov 2.0 response and the NBN Implementation Study - all under CC licences. This seems to be a great indicator that the government really means what it says - open access is going to be the default position for the Australian Federal Government from now on.

Bring on the remixes, mashups and YouTube tributes!

Update: And for those interested, a couple of good articles on the budget's CC licensing by Craig Thomler and Computerworld

Design by Ben Crothers of Catch Media CC BY 2.5

Big news from the Australian Federal Government on the issue of access to public sector information (PSI).

CCau followers will remember the Government 2.0 Taskforce report released in December last year, which gave Creative Commons a very big tick as the licensing model of choice for Australian PSI. The Federal Government's official response to the report was released yesterday and is generally positive, with the Federal Government agreeing (at least substantially) to 12 of the 13 recommendations to come out of the report.

CCau's Elliott Bledsoe is speaking at the Models are Hot event at the Brisbane Powerhouse next Tuesday as part of the Independent Music Project's Music Stimulants series. The panel, which also features alongside Tim Price from Musicadium and James Milsom from Melbourne-based group Ancient Free Gardeners, will explore new models of distribution, collaboration and commerce emerging around music in the digital age.

From the website:

For musicians these days, there is a sobering reality about the distribution of music content; wake up and smell the peer-to-peer! How can you ask for the cake and get to eat it too?

... It’s one thing for Girl Talk, Nine Inch Nails and Yoko Ono to give away their music, but what about at the other end of the scale? The panel will discuss new opportunities in the changed media environment, using Melbourne band Ancient Free Gardeners as a case study.

The panel is followed by a gig by Ancient Free Gardeners.

Music Stimulants is a series of monthly gigs and seminars being run by IMP in collaboration with the Powerhouse to bring musicians and music lovers together in stimulating discussion about today’s music.

Where: Turbine Platform, Brisbane Powerhouse
When: Tuesday, 27 April, 6 – 8pm
Topic: Models are hot

The deadlines for the "Yes, We're Open!" Special Issue of PLATFORM: Journal of Media and Communication have been extended. The new dates are:

17 May 2010: Abstracts/Proposals (500-800 words)
5 July 2010: Full Papers (6,000-8,000 words, including 200 word abstracts and six keywords)

Through the special issue, ccAustralia and PLATFORM ask the question, ‘Is “open” the new black?’The Special Issue will be guest edited by Jessica Coates and Elliott Bledsoe from the Creative Commons Clinic at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation.