South Australian Government launches Government Data Directory under CC BY 3.0 Australia licence

In September 2013, South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill issued an Open Data Declaration, which will require all government agencies to ensure their data is publicly accessible. The Premier also officially launched data.sa.gov.au, the South Australian Government Data Directory that will provide access to open government data.…

Belgian court recognises CC licences

Photo: Creative Commons by Karin Dalziel
TechnoLlama is reporting that a Belgian court upheld a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works licence. Quoting Professor Séverine Dussollier of the University of Namur, TechnoLlama says:

A Belgian court today has applied the CC license to a copyright infringement suit. I attach the judgement (in French). The facts were simple, a music band had posted on its website some music under a CC license Non commercial – No derivative works. A theater adapted the music to make an advertisement for their theatrical season. The ad was broadcast on the national radio several times (with no attribution).
The band refused the damages that the theater proposed (1500 €) and decided to sue for copyright infringement.

The court acknowledged the licensing under the CC license and the fact that the theater did not respect any of the license features:

  • no attribution was made
  • the music was slightly modified for the ad
  • the advertisement, even for a theater was a commercial use prohibited by the license.

Credits—Photo: Adaptation (crop and resize) of ‘Creative Commons‘ by Karin Dalziel, CC BY 2.0 Generic.

Australia Version 3.0 Launched

CC Version 3 Australia licences - page banner

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.

Hello

As a songwriter and musician who has been through
the “mill” that is the Australian recording and
publishing industry…and having played in bands
for over 10 years in the 70’s 80’s… I am very
interested in the Creative Commons project.

I have many questions and even some ideas on how
to publish music in the “Age of the Internet”

File sharing, remixing, sampling, mix tapes etc etc
have changed the way people make and listen to music
forever IMHO.

I am a member of APRA and was surprised to see the
very negative appraisal of Creative Commons on their
website….. Anyone else seen this?

What APRA are calling “excellent and balanced commentaries”
seem very biased, uninformed and sensationalist to me.

A few questions….

How do you see the Creative Commons licensing system fitting in
with the “normal” copyright license system as currently administered by Apra?

How would a songwriter go about registering a Creative Commons licensed song
with Apra?
How would various splits (the money ) be handled?

Do you think APRA will even recognise Creative Commons licenses?

As a songwriter I want to be able to make money out of my published works
but still allow Remixers, DJs, Mashup Artists, and Sample Based Musicians
etc etc ….to use our songs, without giving up the right to recoup the
various money streams that are associated with use of them….

How do you think it’s all going to work?

Whatever happens it’s going to be very interesting don’t you think?