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Author Archives: Jessica Coates
New Open Access Principles for Australian’s Collecting Institutions
Those who have been following open access activities for a while know that some of the most interesting and innovative work in the field, both in Australia and internationally, is being done by galleries, libraries, archives and museums. Collecting institutions are a natural home for open access activities – after all, the whole point of most of them is to provide material, information and resources to the public.
It is hardly surprising, then, that as digital technologies have developed collecting institutions have generally been in the forefront, delivering their material to users and connecting with the general public in new, creative and fun ways. And as the public seeks more and more to use and interact with these materials, collecting institutions are exploring how open access policies can increase their utility for the public.
Seeing this potential, in 2009 Creative Commons Australia’s sister research centre, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, established a research project aimed specifically at exploring and encouraging open access strategies within Australia’s collecting institutions.
After spending most of 2009 and 2010 consulting with representatives of the collecting sector in Australia, the Opening Australia’s Archives has now released its first output – the Open Access Principles for Australian Collecting Institutions.
Credits—Photo: Adaptation (crop and resize) of ‘Escher’s Cabinet of Curiosities‘ by fdecomite, CC BY 2.0 Generic.
What’s going on with CC in Asia and the Pacific
Just a quick note to mention that the Spring 2010 edition of the CC Asia and Pacific newsletter is now up.
Credits—Image: Adaptation (crop and resize) of ‘Cover 2‘ by Lairaja, CC BY-SA 3.0 Philippine.
Posted in Arts and Creativity, Images, Video Tagged catalyst grants, CC Asia and Pacific, fundraising, Into Infinity iPhone app Leave a comment
The Australian Parliament goes CC – with v3.0
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.
Credits—Photo: ’Parliament House‘ by Ryan Wick, CC BY 2.0 Generic.
Australia Version 3.0 Launched
Creative Commons Australia is pleased to announce the release of version 3.0 of the Australian Creative Commons licences.
The new licences bring Australia in line with the most current CC licence standards being used internationally by adding changes to clarify the operation of the licences and increase their compatibility with other open licensing systems. They also incorporate simplified formatting and language designed to align the licences with Australian conventions and increase their readability.
Credits—Screen capture: Of Attritbution, Attribution-Noncommercial and Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Australia licence Commons Deeds by Creative Commons Corporation, CC BY3.0 Unported.
“For free and not illegally!”—A great big happy birthday to Mayer and Bettle
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.
I’m sure you’re all fans, but for those new to CC, Mayer and Bettle are the stars of a 5 minute animation, first commissioned for the QUT Smart Train back in 2005 to provide a simple and friendly introduction to CC. Created jointly by local animation team Blackbrow (aka Pete Foley and Chris Perren) and our own Elliott Bledsoe, the film has the little blue guys travel through land, sea and space while discussing what Creative Commons is and how it works. In 2008 Mayer and Bettle returned in glorious 3D in a sequel, joining Bettle’s biggest fan, Flik, in a through the looking glass CC world to talk about how to apply the CC licences to your material.
Credits—Still: From ‘Mayer and Bettle‘ by Creative Commons Australia and Blackbrow, CC BY-SA 2.0 Australia.
Posted in Arts and Creativity, Video Tagged Blackbrow, Chris Perren, Elliott Bledsoe, Mayer and Bettle, Pete Foley, QUT Smart Train Leave a comment
“Yes, We’re Open!”: A Special Issue of Platform Journal – Call for Papers Reminder
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?’
Credits—Photo: Adaptation (crop and resize) of ‘Untitled‘ by pheezy, CC BY 2.0 Generic.
Show us the money! Oz Budget under CC
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
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Australian Federal Government Commits to Open Access
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.
Models are Hot: ccAustralia at the Brisbane Powerhouse next Tuesday
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
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Platform Special Issue Call for Papers Extended
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)
Credits—Photo: Adaptation (crop and resize) of ‘Untitled‘ by pheezy, CC BY 2.0 Generic.
Posted in Arts and Creativity, Education, Text Tagged Elliott Bledsoe, Jessica Coates, Platform, University of Melbourne, Yes We're Open! Leave a comment
Victorian Government commits to CC licensing
As mentioned in our previous post, today is a very significant day for free culture in Australia, with the Victorian Government becoming 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 to its Economic Development and Infrastructure Committee’s Inquiry into Improving Access to Victorian Public Sector Information and Data, 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.”
Credits—Photo: Adaptation (crop and resize) of ‘Untitled‘ by Brian Giesen, CC BY 2.0 Generic.
Kookaburras, Bittorents and CC commitments – a big day for copyright in Australia
If you have an interest in copyright chances are that you, like us, have spent much of today getting excited by the two big copyright cases that were just handed down by the Australian courts.
For anyone who missed it, Judge Cowdroy of the Federal Court has handed down a decision that Australia’s third biggest ISP, iiNet, is not responsible for authorising copyright infringements undertaken by Bittorrenting clients. The decision is very long, but it is also well written and thorough, and we’re impressed with Cowdroy J’s common sense approach, with statements like “There does not appear to be any way to infringe the applicants’ copyright from the mere use of the internet” and “The law recognises no positive obligation on any person to protect the copyright of another.”
Credits—Photo: ’Laugh Kookaburra Laugh‘ by -just-jen-, CC BY 2.0 Generic.
Posted in Government Tagged Bittorrent, Federal Court of Australia, iiNet, ISPs, Justice Cowdroy, Justice Jacobson, Men at Work, Victorian government Leave a comment
Government 2.0 Taskforce gives CC a very big tick
Design by Ben Crothers of Catch Media CC BY 2.5
This is a bit belated, as it was released in 22 December – but we thought people would like to hear about the final report of the Government 2.0 Taskforce and its fabulous CC recommendations.
Headed by well know economist Dr Nick Gruen and including representation from the public, private and academic sectors, the Taskforce was launched in June by the Finance Minister, Lindsay Tanner, to advise the Australian government on “increasing the openness of government through making public sector information more widely available to promote transparency, innovation and value adding to government information” and “encouraging online engagement with the aim of drawing in the information, knowledge, perspectives, resources and even, where possible, the active collaboration of anyone wishing to contribute to public life.”
Over the last few months it’s been everywhere – running competitions, public forums, seemingly endless blog posts.
Now the Taskforce has released its final report – Engage: Getting on with Government 2.0 – and pretty impressive it is too, with an excellent summary of the current state of play for Australian government online – the goods and the bads.
Key findings of the report, which is published by the Finance Department, include:
- Public agencies and public servants should engage more using the tools and capabilities of ‘collaborative web’ or Web 2.0. Forming or join existing online communities of interest around issues of relevance to government policy, service delivery and regulation will help public agencies and their officers become more informed, responsive, innovative and citizen-centric.
- Once public sector information is liberated as a key national asset, possibilities — foreseeable and otherwise — are unlocked through the invention, creativity and hard work of citizens, business and community organisations. Open public sector information is thus an invitation to the public to engage, innovate and create new public value.
- To seize the opportunities of Government 2.0, the existing public service culture of hierarchical control and direction must change sufficiently to encourage and reward engagement. Yet it must at the same time, stay true to enduring public service values of impartiality, propriety and professionalism.
Most importantly from our point of view – the report (which is under a CC BY licence) wholeheartedly endorses Creative Commons Attribution as the default licence for government material. In fact, it contains a page and a half long recommendation (no. 6) which spells out exactly how open content licensing can, and should, be made central to Crown copyright policy.
Continue reading
Posted in Government Tagged CC BY, CC BY Aus, Government 2.0 Taskforce, Lindsay Tanner MP, Nick Gruen Leave a comment
Last days to donate!
Just a quick reminder that there’s only a few more days to donate to CC’s 2009 fundraising campaign.
It’s been a hard year financially for everyone, including CC, and unfortunately at this point there’s still a fair way to go to our goal of $500,000.
So while we’re all winding down 2009, if you’ve got a bit of change in your pocket from Christmas and the sales, think about using it to support CC’s good work in free culture. Anything and everything is appreciated.
Here’s a great post by Michael Carroll going over some of the amazing things that CC has achieved in 2009.
