Monthly Archives: November 2006

so you’re looking for the ccSalon advert files. attached as a pdf below.

creative block by luke roberts, licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-sharealike licence v2.0
http://flickr.com/photos/lukeroberts/292148887/in/pool-ccsalon/
if you too want to reuse our ad, you can find the source file at http://creativecommons.org.au/ccsalonfiles Continue reading →

We came across this commoner while we were poking around the internet, and just had to share it with all of you. Definitely one of the more interesting CC licensors we’ve seen in a while.

OpenVoice, a small Australian business specialising in voice prompting services for the Asterisk™ Open Source PBX system, have released a whole lot of Australian PBX voice prompts/messages available for free download under an Australian v2.1 Attribution-ShareAlike licence. The prompts feature the voice of Alex Dalrymple, who is a regular announcer at a major Sydney radio station, and include everything from the standard (“I’m sorry, that number is not valid”) to the wacky (“We’re off gambling and getting drunk”). They have some great MP3 demos that you can listen to on the site – or you can download the whole set to use with your Asterisk PBX system.

Check them out [here](http://www.openvoice.com.au/free/).
Continue reading →

Our CC compatriots in the US have announced a new competition on the ccMixter site. The contest, which is being run in conjunction with XLR8R Magazine and Ghostly International, encourages the general public to remix the audio source files from the song “Colors Shifting”, which has been donated by its creator, Ghostly International artist Christopher Willits. The winning remix will be selected by Willits himself, and will be included on an XLR8R Incite CD compilation, which will be included in copies of a future issue of XLR8R Magazine.

Visit [http://ccmixter.org/ghostly](http://ccmixter.org/ghostly) for contest information, rules, and audio sources.
Continue reading →

ccSalon

creative commons australia (CCau) invites you to its first ccSalon, a showcase of the creative commons in australia.

the ccSalon is a public exhibition/performance/expo of how artists are using creative commons licences and material worldwide. the ccau event features creative commons licensed material by a range of australian artists, including a live audio/visual mash up including music by collapsicon and hybrid arts music ensemble collusion with music and visuals by andrew garton of toysatellite.

garton will be drawing on cc content by other australia creators including animation duo blackbrow, photographer frollop, the community convergent newsroom, a new leaf media and footage from engage media and a swag of australian flickr photographers.

The ccSalon will also and include a share your wares, a hands on space for people to experience the diversity of CC licensed content. If you’re interested in including anything in that hands-on event, please get in contact with us.

The CCau ccSalon will be held from 6pm on 29 November 2006 at the Block, QUT Creative Industries Precinct, corner of Musk Ave and Kelvin Grove Rd, Kelvin Grove, Brisbane. Free entry, all welcome.

ccSalon is a public event. For further information, please contact Elliott Bledsoe or Jessica Coates or you can phone us on (07) 3138 9597.

You can also access the full program for the Salon by clicking on the attachment below.
Continue reading →

On 29 November, Creative Commons Australia and The ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation will be hosting a series of industry meetings to discuss issues surrounding open content licensing in Australia. The forum will have three meeting streams:

1 Creative Commons + Government

2 Creative Commons, Open Access, Education + Libraries

3 Creative Commons, Creativity, Media + the Arts

You can download the program in pdf format below.

The forums aim to bring together representatives of Australian government, education, libraries and the creative industries (including film, music, publishing and multimedia) to discuss the various open content licensing projects that have commenced throughout the country and internationally; the potential for further implementation of the Creative Commons model in Australia; and the issues of technology, policy and law which need to be coordinated to provide a legally and operationally effective solution. The forum will also consider future projects and research that would assist in achieving the goal of utilising alternative licensing models to the benefit of Australian industry.

This series of forums aims to build upon the findings of the Australian Government’s Digital Content Industry Action Agenda, “Unlocking the Potential”, which aimed to identify opportunities and threats to the growth of Australia’s digital content industry, and advise strategies to take the industry forward and make it a major contributor to the Australian economy. One of the recommendations of the report was that Australian industry explore possibilities to engage with alternative approaches to IP licensing, such as Creative Commons. The Agenda concluded that an intellectual property framework that was abreast of changes in the way that intellectual property is created and disseminated was necessary to the growth of the digital content industry, and that alternative licensing approaches to IP were an essential part of such a framework.
Continue reading →

Elliott Bledsoe has gallantly donated the CC Australia film to support the 2006 worldwide Creative Commons fundraising campaign, Support the Commons. CC is using a innovative fundraising method in conjunction with Revver where a small ad is attached to the end of CC licensed videos. CC then receives 100% of the revenue generated from users watching the videos.

Click here to see the video on the ccBlog entry. Continue reading →

Following on from our article below about the potential extension of the copyright term in the UK, [Boing Boing](http://boingboing.net) has an entry today about a report by The Institute for Public Policy Research proposing more amendments to UK copyright law.

Interestingly, the Boing Boing article quotes one of the Report’s authors, Kay Withers, as saying: “The idea of all-rights reserved doesn’t make sense for the digital era.”

As well as the proposed copyright term extension, the Report also discusses possible new exceptions to allow “format shifting” ie the transferring of songs from CDs to iPods – an amendment that is also being proposed in Australia as part of the huge [Copyright Amendment Bill 2006](http://parlinfoweb.aph.gov.au/piweb/browse.aspx?NodeID=46).

The Bill was tabled by Attorney General Phillip Ruddock on 19 October, and is currently the subject of an extremely short [inquiry](http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/legcon_ctte/copyright06/index.htm) by the Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs. The Bill contains some new exceptions designed to assist consumers, like the format shifting amendment, but overall is a massive win for copyright owners.

Here’s some commentary on the proposed amendments by [Brian Fitzgerald](http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5068) and [Kim Weatherall](http://weatherall.blogspot.com/). The Electronic Frontiers Foundation also has [information](http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004975.php) up about the Bill, and an [Action Page](http://action.eff.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ADV_australiacab&JServSessionIdr009=petw5o5fx1.app13b) on users can get their concerns about the Bill heard.

The most concerning amendments proposed by the Bill include:

* an extension of Australia’s Technological Protection Measure provisions, which significantly broadens the rights of copyright owners to control how people can use legitimately bought products;
* a whole swathe of new criminal offences, which will significantly lower the bar for criminal prosection for copyright infringement in Australia, increasing the chances of people being held criminally liable for actions they undertake in their own home; and
Continue reading →

Want to be part of cinema and internet history?

A Swarm of Angels is a project to create a £1 million ($2.47 million) film and give it away to one million people in one year.

Writer and filmmaker, Matt Hanson, plans to draw on the collective efforts of at least 50,000 people to create the world’s first internet-funded, crewed and distributed feature film. A Swarm of Angels is a non-commercial venture that uses the Creative Commons licence, so anything it produces can be downloaded, shared and modified for free. The project needs to sign up at least 50,000 members each willing to pay £25 to be a part of the project. Using an online discussin board contributors get to have their say on important creative decisions such as what’s included in the script.

Any profit from licensing commercial use will be rolled into the next A Swarm of Angels production.

To find out more visit [A Swarm of Angels](http://www.aswarmofangels.com) website. Continue reading →

CCau-ers Damien O’Brien and Professor Brian Fitzgerald have been getting a fair amount of media attention regarding their research paper about the legalities of YouTube, with articles in the Internet Law Bulletin, [ABC News Online](http://abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200610/s1775303.htm), the [Sydney Morning Herald](http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/youtubers-cut-and-paste-at-their-peril/2006/10/30/1162056900936.html) and [the Age](http://www.theage.com.au/news/web/youtubers-upload-at-their-peril/2006/10/30/1162056903282.html).

The paper warns that many of the 65,000 new videos uploaded daily onto [YouTube](http://www.youtube.com/) might be illegal. If they’re reproductions or communications of the whole, or even a little bit of the original, then they probably infringe copyright. This includes, for example, uploading a video of yourself miming to a popular song, or using a song in the background of a video you’ve uploaded.

The paper says that remixes and mashups of copyrighted content, as well as amateur miming, have been overlooked by new copyright reforms announced on May 14.

The researchers suggest amendments that will allow someone to remix a small amount of another person’s work and put it in a different context as long as it’s not for commercial purposes and doesn’t compete with the original.

While there haven’t been any prosecutions in Australia yet, major music companies, particularly in the United States, have demanded that such videos be removed from YouTube.

Continue reading →

The question of whether or not the term of copyright protection on sound recordings in the UK should be increased from 50 years has come up in a [Review of Intellectual Property](http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/gowers_review_intellectual_property/gowersreview_index.cfm) by Andrew Gowers.

On one side of the argument the music industry are lobbying government for the copyright term on sound recordings to be the same length as the copyright in the composition: life + 70 years.

From the other side, copyright reformers argue that in order to protect the public domain and free old recordings which are no longer commerically viable the term should remain the same. In response to the music industry’s view that the royalties they earn from old recordings are essential to support new acts and old musicians, they argue that a greater economic benefit exists in allowing works to pass into the public domain so new works can be made from them, and this market can flourish.

This debate is particularly interesting for Australia, as we recently extended our own copyright term as part of the US Free Trade Agreement amendments. It will be interesting to see whether Britain makes the same decision, in the absence of an international agreement requiring them to do so. Continue reading →