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Author Archives: Elliott Bledsoe
Emergency information wiki launched under Creative Commons
In late 2010/early 2011 the State of Queensland was affected by two significant natural disasters – the 2010/11 floods and Cyclone Yasi. You might remember that the ccAustralia office had to close as a result of the floods. During these incidences, … Continue reading
Posted in Government, Text Leave a comment
Prof Beth Noveck and Prof Brian Fitzgerald talk Gov 2.0
LECTURE CANCELLED: Please be aware that the Beth Noveck and Brian Fitzgerald lecture has been cancelled.
For those Creative Commoners in Australia interested in Government 2.0, ccAustralia is very excited to announce that we are co-hosting with the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCi) and the Queensland University of Technology Faculty of Law two lectures by Gov 2.0 heavyweights: Professor Beth Noveck, former Deputy Chief Technology Officer of the US Government and and leader of the White House Open Government Initiative, and ccAustralia’s Project Lead Professor Brian Fitzgerald, specialist Research Professor in Intellectual Property and Innovation at QUT and appointee to the Australia Government’s Government 2.0 Taskforce and the Advisory Council on Intellectual Property.
The two speakers have a wealth of knowledge and expertise in Government use of Web 2.0. Professors Noveck and Fitzgerald will talk through their involvement in Government 2.0 initiatives in the USA and Australia over the last two years reflecting on what this means for the operation of government and more broadly the general public. They will consider both at a conceptual and practical level arguments for “collaborative government” as a strategy for creating a more effective and democratic system. Continue reading
YouTube introduces CC Attribution option for videos
Google have expanded their utilisation of Creative Commons when it officially announced the introduction of Creative Commons licensing as a rights management option on YouTube (although you may have already read about it!). Now video publishers can now release their videos under a CC Attribution 3.0 Unported licence or utilise the “Standard YouTube License.”
Credits—Heading photo: ‘Play‘ by Annie Roi, CC BY 2.0 Generic.
CC-licensing now possible on Pozible
Australia’s first crowd funding platform, Pozible (nee Fundbreak), are always looking for ways to make their platform more useful for project creators. That’s why they rolled out a series of new rights management options for projects starting yesterday. Now Pozible project creators can make content related to their crowd funding proposals on the site available under Creative Commons licences.
Project creators on Pozible now have a ‘License Option’ as part of their project creation process. They can elect ‘all rights reserved’ or they can apply a CC licence using Pozible’s very stylish (yet functional) licence chooser.
Credits—Photo: Money‘ by Maestro_AU, CC BY 2.0 Generic. Continue reading
Posted in Arts and Creativity, Audio, ccAustralia, Design, Images, Text, Video Tagged crowd funding, crowdsourcing, Pozible Leave a comment
Putting the R.E.M in remix
To coincide with yesterday’s release of R.E.M‘s new album Collapse Into Now, the American alternative rockers announced their first remix competition. Stems from the song ‘It Happened Today’ from the new album are available for download under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. Stems (legally) up for grabs include percussion, brass, piano, celeste, vibraphone, guitar, drum, banjo and mandolin stems and of course Michael Stipe’s vocals. If Stipe isn’t enough for you there’s even a bit of Eddie Vedder on the track!!
Jacknife Lee, who helped produce Collapse Into Now with R.E.M, said that “Right from the early stages of recording this song in New Orleans Michael wanted to share the files with people to hear their different ideas and versions.” This was the impetus for the remix project and that’s exactly what Stipe has got!
Credits—Photo: Adaptation (crop and resize) of ‘R.E.M. – Arena, Verona – 21 luglio 2008‘ by Andrea Sartorati, CC BY 2.0 Generic.
ACMI generates rights literacy by releasing quality media products
The Australian Centre for the Moving Image joins a growing list of Australian and international arts institutions making resources available for reuse and remixing under Creative Commons. In September last year ACMI launched Generator, an online creative studio space for students and teachers to access and engage with screen content. This week ACMI expanded on its commitment to teaching screen literacy through dynamic programs by relicensing the downloadable media resources on Generator under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommerical 3.0 Australia licence. The 1000+ media products available in the Free Media Library go beyond being passive teaching aids – they are now part of the wider commons of legally reuseable content.
The ACMI has spent over 20 years delivering dynamic screen literacy programs that create deep and engaging learning spaces for young people to be active producers of screen content. ACMI’s Generator project was initiated as a concerted effort by the Centre to address changes in teaching screen media. It is the outcome of funding from the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development to develop premium content for the FUSE Portal, a State-funded repository of content and resources to help teachers Find, Use and Share quality Education resources. To further that aim, ACMI looked to CC.
Credits—Photo: ‘Chunky‘ by Yun Huang Yong, CC BY 2.0 Generic.
Dr Tama Leaver talks up CC for education
We just got word from long-standing friend of ccAustralia, Dr Tama Leaver eloquently discusses the CC licensing suite and it’s application to teaching and learning. Published by the College of Fine Arts and the University of New South Wales as part of their ‘Learning to Teach Online‘ video series, Tama takes us through the licensing protocols and each licence you can apply to your work, the metadata associated to CC licences and why that is usesful, how to choose a licence and motivations for why you might want to use CC.
Credits—Photo: Adaptation (crop and resize) of ‘
Credits—Photo: create environments for learning doodle‘ by Inha Leex Hale, CC BY 2.0 Generic.
Posted in ccAustralia, Education Tagged COFA Online, Dr Tama Leaver, UNSW, UNSW College of Fine Arts Leave a comment
ccAustralia office reopens
We are very happy to announce that the Creative Commons Australia office has reopened as of today. The information on our contact page is up-to-date. Our sister projects in the QUT Law School Intellectual Property: Knowledge, Culture and Economy research program have also reopened.
Credits—Photo: Adaptation (crop and resize) of ‘ IMGP6046_floods-museum-dinosaur‘ by Rae Allen, CC BY 2.0 Generic.
Get your floaties on, the (ABC) Pool has reopened
The roller door has been raised, the turnstiles unlocked, and everyone is invited to take a dip in the all new ABC Pool website. The new site boasts all kinds of new functionality and usability. Bomb dive your way into the site’s 11,000+ contributions with the site’s new structure, making it much easier to see uploaded content, pool contributors, collaborative projects and opportunities to get your content onto ABC websites, radio and even television. And now you can easily follow people and projects to help you keep up with your favorite pool-side punters and comment on pretty much everything on the site.
While we love the new 2.0 functionality, probably the most exciting addition (as far as ccAustralia is concerned anyway :p) is the ability to search for Pool content published under a Creative Commons licence. A much-awaited addition, users can now use the advanced search to find CC-licensed content by keyword using a drop-down menu that will return results under a specific type of CC licence. Better still is the ability to limit your results further by designating the type of media you’re looking for too!
Credits—Photo: Screenshot of ABC Pool website. Incorporates ‘Kiss me where?‘ by Kate Gauld, CC BY-NC 3.0 Unported.
Posted in Arts and Creativity, Audio, Design, Education, Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums, Images, Text, Video Tagged ABC Pool, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, International Urban Screens Association, My Tribe, social media, social networks, social web, user-centered design, user-generated content 1 Comment
“Yes, We’re Open!”: Platform Journal Special Issue Launched!
The team at ccAustralia and the Editorial Board and team at PLATFORM: Journal of Media and Communication are very pleased to announce the publication of the “Yes, we are open!” special edition issue. Guest edited by ccAustralia staffer Elliott Bledsoe, and former staffer Jessica Coates, this issue presents submissions by postgraduate students around the world working in media studies or related fields which critically examine the legal, social and technical parameters of open source, open content and open access.
Jess and I received a number of really interesting submission exploring the question we posed in the abstract: why open? We open the issue with an interview with Esther Wojcicki, Vice-Chair of Creative Commons, to discuss the importance of teaching ‘open’ in schools. Rachel Cobcroft follows with an reflection on the development of the international Creative Commons Case Studies initiative. Cobcroft’s piece examines the progress of open content licensing; identifies models of implementation and licensing trends across industry sectors as diverse as music, government, wikis and fashion; and, perhaps most importantly, explores individual motivations for the adoption of open philosophies.
Credits—Photo: Adaptation (crop and resize) of ‘Untitled‘ by pheezy, CC BY 2.0 Generic. Continue reading
ccAustralia office temporary closure
Due to recent flooding in Brisbane City, the Creative Commons Australia office and our sister projects in the QUT Law School Intellectual Property: Knowledge, Culture and Economy research program have moved to temporary offices. The period of this relocation is undetermined at this stage. During this period we encourage people to contact us by email as our phone systems are currently offline. Our contact details are available here. We apologise for any inconvenience and hope to return to normal operations soon.
Credits—Photo: Adaptation (crop and resize) of ‘ IMGP6046_floods-museum-dinosaur‘ by Rae Allen, CC BY 2.0 Generic.
Fiat brings open hardware and crowdsourcing to car manufacturing
Starting with a very basic premise—’What will cars be like in the future?’—car manufacturer Fiat began the Fiat Mio project to capture the many different answers to that question. The project sought to conceptualise and ultimately manufacture a concept vehicle that was informed by the crowd.
Quoted in Contagious Magazine, Fiat’s manager of the Latin American Fiat Style Center, Peter Fassbender, explained:
A good designer tries to realise the wishes of everyone, and with this concept car we were truly working on everybody’s behalf. The group of designers working in the Fiat Mio house were totally open. There was transparency about every decision, which were all communicated online and commented on. This is completely different to the usual design process, which is entirely hidden and secretive.
Fassbender is also featured discussing Fiat’s rationale for the project in this video from Fiat’s YouTube channel:
Credits—Photo: Adaptation (crop and resize) of ‘Fiat Mio‘ by Alexandre F. Jorge, CC BY-NC 2.0 Generic.
Continue reading
Posted in Arts and Creativity, Design Tagged CC BY-SA, Fiat, Fiat Concept Car III, Fiat Mio, Salão do Automóvel 2010, user-centered design Leave a comment
Ideas Australia needs to share – CPD release their first book
The Centre for Policy Development has just release its first book, More Than Luck: Ideas Australia Needs Now (ISBN 978-0-9808356-0-1). Edited by Mark Davis, author of Land of Plenty, and CPD’s Executive Director Miriam Lyons, the volume is “both a collection of ideas for citizens who want real change and a to-do list for politicians looking to base public policies on the kind of future Australia needs.” Featuring ideas from a variety of established and emerging thinkers, it touches on everything: from human rights to taxation, work/life balance to sustainable city planning, and even calls for the end of union and corporate political donations and the Australia Council for the Arts.
The book features authors including Prof Larissa Behrendt, Phil Lynch, Prof Marian Sawer AO, Prof Lee Godden and Chris Bonnor AM, mixed in with CPD Fellows including Eva Cox AO, Prof John Quiggin, Ian Dunlop, Fiona Armstrong, Marcus Westbury and Ben Eltham, who put forward bold new ideas to take Australia forward. More Than Luck is not just ideas Australia needs now, but ideas Australia needs to know!
Credits—Photo: Adaptation (crop) of the cover of More Than Luck: Ideas Australia Needs Now by the Centre for Policy Development, CC BY 2.5 Australia.
New biodiversity atlas encourages sharing of knowledge
The Atlas of Living Australia is a new Australian Government collaborative initiative led by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). Acting as a portal, the Atlas facilitates users to explore, combine and analyse information and data on Australian plants and animals. It includes authoritative species lists and classifications, mapping and identification tools, images, literature and occurrence records contributed by a number of data providers.
To help support that aim, the Atlas encourages contributing data providers to license their contributions under a Creative Commons licence. Specifically, because the Atlas wants to ensure content is open for downstream use, the Atlas does not support licensing under either of the two No Derivative Works licences.
Credits—Photo: Adaptation (crop and resize) of ‘Superb Lyre Bird 1‘ by Ian Sanderson, CC BY-NC 2.0 Generic.
Posted in Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums, Government, OA Research, Science, Uncategorised Tagged Atlas of Living Australia, Australian Biosecurity Intelligence Network, Australian Museum, Australian Phenomics Network, Australian Plant Phenomics Facility, Biodiversity Heritage Library, CSIRO, Data Observation Network for Earth, Department of Agriculture, Department of Sustainability, Distributed Dynamic Diversity Databases for Life, Education Investment Fund (Australia), Encyclopedia of Life, Environment, Fisheries and Forestry, Global Biodiversity Information Facility, Integrated Marine Observing System, Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Museum Victoria, National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (Australia), Population and Communities, Queensland Museum, South Australian Museum, Southern Cross University, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network, University of Adelaide, Water, Western Australian Museum Leave a comment
News you can use
YouCommNews, Australia’s first croudsourced/funded news site, has published its first people-powered story today. “In search of non-toxic housing for health’s sake“, (pitched and) written by Toula Mantis, chronicles Katherine McIntosh’s extreme case of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. With funding received from 17 people (totaling $878), Mantis was able to research and write an article about McIntosh’s chemical sensitivities. It also made possible the production of a complimentary video that accompanies the story.
Running on platform developed by US crowd news service Spot.us, YouCommNews aims to introduce the concept to Australia. The project hopes to engage members of the public in a more active role in the reporting process. This investment is multifaceted; including an investment in the content, by aligning with and financially supporting a pitch and by suggesting story ideas they would like to see reported on.
Credits—Photo: Adaptation (crop and resize) of ‘Stack of News Papers‘ by ♥ Cishore™ – busy, CC BY 2.0 Generic.
