Monthly Archives: April 2009

We’ve been a bit lax in not mentioning this earlier, but a historical vote is currently taking place over at Wikipedia. The vote is to determine whether Wikipedia (and other Wikimedia sites) should add Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike to its default licences, alongside its current GNU Free Documentation Licence.

This would mean that the entire of Wikipedia – yes, that’s right, all 6 million+ articles – would be licensed under CC BY-SA.

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For those who missed it the first time round, you still have a few more days to fill in the Creative Commons questionnaire on what makes a use noncommercial.

The questionnaire, which has been running for the last couple of weeks, is the second and final round of a survey being run by the head office in San Francisco to collect information on how people understand the term “noncommercial use”. The results of the survey will go towards formulating CC policy, and may even result in a change to the licences.

So this is your chance to shape the future of the free internet – until 28 April, that is, when the questionnaire closes.
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Those interested in open access to public sector information (PSI) will be pleased to see that the Government Information Licensing Framework project (GILF to their friends) have launched their own website.

The GILF project is without question the Australian leader in researching, advocating and implementing open access to government information. They were born from research conducted by the Queensland Spatial Information Council, and were behind the switch to Creative Commons Attribution as the default licence for all the material on the Australian Bureau of Statistics website late last year.

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Below is a collection of fact sheets we’ve put together giving detailed instructions for various methods of finding Creative Commons material. Continue reading →

Below are a number of fact sheets we’ve put together providing indepth information on how to find Creative Commons material using various methods.

Finding CC Material – General Information

Finding CC Material for Particular Search Engines

• How to Find Creative Commons Licensed Material Using the Creative Commons Search Portal
• How to Find Creative Commons Licensed Material Using Google

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Creative Commons Australia is proud to announce the launch of the Blog, Podcast, Vodcast and Wiki Copyright Guide for Australia.

The Guide, which was launched in March 2009 by Creative Commons Australia’s sister project, the Law Research Program of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI), examines copyright issues which impact upon creators and users of blogs, podcasts, vodcasts and wikis in the Australian legal environment. In doing so it provides practical examples of how these issues may arise and be resolved.

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I bet you never thought that you could find new music from independent and emerging musicians from all around the world while you pick up parts for your car. Right? Wrong!!

European online music service Jamendo have just struck up a deal with Supercheap Auto, a 256-strong auto-parts chain store with locations across Australian and New Zealand, which will see music from Jamendo’s catalogue played across the stores in the two countries. This means that all the music you hear in the store (which Supercheap Auto has paid for) is also available for free under a Creative Commons licence. Continue reading →

Those who have been following CC and the public domain in Australia will know that the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney has long been one of the best local advocates of open access in action. Not only have they released hundreds of public domain photos from their collection as part of the Flickr Commons, they also publish much of their teaching material and their ‘photo of the day’ blog under CC.

Yesterday they announced they were going one step further. In an Australian (and possibly world) first, they’ve released all of their collection documentation under CC. From now on, all the online descriptions of their objects will by under CC Attribution-Noncommercial, while the mainly factual data about each object will be under CC Attribution-ShareAlike.
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