Professor Anne Fitzgerald Queensland University of Technology Law Faculty Creative Commons Australia

Creative Commons Asia Pacific Regional Meeting and Conference Jakarta, Indonesia 11 November 2012

2012 Anne Fitzgerald. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia.

Government (Crown) Copyright

Vast amounts of government copyright materials Copyright applies to:
Informational works Research outputs (reports, papers, databases)

Cultural materials

Public Sector Information (PSI) in a broad sense

includes material that is:

created within government by government employees;
produced externally by recipients of government funding; or prepared by non-government parties and lodged with government

under a statutory obligation or regulatory direction.

2012 Anne Fitzgerald..

Public sector components

Government Federal State Local Education Secondary Tertiary Research Publicly-funded research institutes Government agencies e.g. CSIRO
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Copyright in data compilations

Copyright applies to data compilations if they are

sufficiently original
Copyright does not apply to mere facts/information or

trivial/obvious/mundane arrangements of data Copyright must apply to original collections of data - this is a requirement under the TRIPs Agreement and WIPO Copyright Treaty For copyright to apply, there must usually be originality provided by some independent intellectual creation/creative spark/application of skill and judgment Most countries (including Australia and US) do not have an additional (sui generis) legal protection for collections of data (cf European Database Directive)

2012 Anne Fitzgerald..

Creating information flows

Complexity of information pathways:
within government among departments, agencies, different levels

of government; between government and community:

from government to community; from community to government to community; from local to national to global

Problem of licence logjams

Copyright has been relied on by governments to control access (to

prevent flow of information or to preserve commercial rights) Often, there is no licence, so access/use/reuse rights are unknown high transaction cost of negotiating new licences Where licences exist, terms are incomprehensible or inconsistent

Promoting the flow of information requires appropriate

policy frameworks and licensing practices

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Open Access to PSI

Creating a commons of public sector materials
New conceptualisation of public domain insisting on no

rights constrains thinking about public domain Public domain is not just a no rights wasteland [or] dump on the outskirts of respectable culture (Bollier, Viral Spiral) Something of value in its own right open knowledge and content that can be accessed, reused and distributed Encompasses materials that are copyright-protected and made available for access and reuse under open source software and open content licences

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Building the commons

Openness is not a naturally occurring (or enduring)

state Openness must be constructed When dealing with intangible interests in intangibles, openness is achieved using legal tools (Uhlir, Reichmann, Stallman, Lessig) free beer vs free as in speech
Stallman the latter, not the former; the free beer approach will not achieve openness for data

instead, can lead to lock up/lock out

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Understanding the Creative Commons licences

a standardised system for licensing the use of

copyright materials a suite of 6 standardised licences

available in 3 forms: plain english (summary); legal code

and machine-readable code

Each licence grants baseline permissions to users to

use copyright material

that is, to copy, publish, distribute in digital form,

publicly perform whether the whole or a substantial part of it

on specified, standardised core conditions

Central elements of CC licences

Baseline Permissions

Core Conditions

Baseline Permissions
Fundamental baseline rights granted by all CC licences:
Reproduce
Distribute Publicly perform

On condition of Attribution
Additional baseline permission granted in four of the six

CC licences to create derivative works and Reproduce Distribute Publicly perform the derivative work

Core Conditions
Attribution (BY) attribute the author, and no false attribution This applies to all CC licences Non Commercial (NC) no commercial use (as defined)

No Derivatives (ND) no changes allowed to original work

Share Alike (SA) changes allowed, but new work is to be distributed under the same licence as the original work

* ND and SA cannot be used together

Licence combinations

CC BY
Core condition: Attribution (BY) attribute the author, and no false attribution
Baseline Rights:
Reproduce Distribute Publicly perform Create derivative works (and reproduce, distribute and

publicly perform the derivative work)

How CC came to be applied to PSI in Australia a chronology

1990s: Cutler, Wainwright digital content strategy proposals 2001: Office of Spatial Data Management (OSDM) access and reuse policy 2004: Launch of Creative Commons in Australia 2004: Launch by Queensland Government of Spatial Information Licensing Project (GILF) 2005: Unlocking the Potential: Digital Content Industry Action Agenda, Strategic Industry Leaders Group report to the Australian Government 2005 2006: Queensland Governments Government Information Licensing Framework (GILF) proposed use of Creative Commons licensing for PSI 2007 2010: GILF project continues as a Queensland Government-QUT collaboration, developing knowledge about and models for use of CC on PSI 2007 on: Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Geoscience Australia (GA), Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) implement open access and adopt CC licensing; National Library of Australia; Australian Broadcasting Corporation; various State and local government initiatives 2008: OECD Ministerial Seoul Declaration on the Future of the Internet Economy - OECD Recommendations on publicly funded research (2006) and Access to PSI (2008) 2008: Venturous Australia report on National Innovation System (Cutler Report) 2009: Australias Digital Economy, Future Directions (Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy) 2009: Victorian Parliament Economic Development and Infrastructure Committee (EDIC) report (Governments response 2010) Government 2.0 Taskforce (2009), Engage: Getting on with Government 2.0 (December 2009) 2009: New Zealand (draft) Government Open Access Licensing Framework (NZGOAL); UK Power of Information report 2009 2010: Freedom of Information/Right to Information reforms State and Federal legislation 2010: Government response to Government 2.0 Taskforce report, accepting key recommendations and stating that CC BY should be the default licence for PSI; Declaration of Open Government; Commonwealth Government IP Principles 2011: Queensland Governments IP Principles CC BY as the default licence 2012: Attorney-Generals revised Intellectual Property Manual - CC BY as the default licence

I love A sunburnt country A land of sweeping plains Of ragged mountain ranges Of droughts and flooding rains.
My Country, Dorothea McKellar (1904)

Uluru at sunset by Richard Fisher, http://www.flickr.com/photos/richardfisher/3114503461/

Cyclone Larry Far North Queensland (March 2006)

Adoption of open content

licensing (Creative Commons) as the default position for distribution of government copyright materials

Licence logjams after Cyclone Larry

Problem of access to data held by different government departments

(State/Federal) and government-owned utility companies (power/gas)

information (to restrict flow of information or to preserve commercial rights)

Governments traditionally relied on Crown copyright to control access to

Survey of Queensland government departments found that the

majority of government business units did not use any formal licensing
For those that did, the legal frameworks varied significantly

standard approaches were outdated - many derivatives of licences Often, there was no licence, so access/use/reuse rights are unknown high transaction cost of negotiating new licences Where licences existed, terms were vague or inconsistent No standard approach towards data access for users Complexity for anyone outside dealing with multiple agencies Potentially more difficult for Gov agencies to deal with each other than to get same information from outside Government

Simplifying information licensing

How to overcome the George Street shuffle? Strengthening commitment to ensuring that information

would be accessible and reusable across the public sector and utilities Crown copyright in informational works should be managed so as to enable (not prevent) access and reuse Government Information Licensing Framework (GILF) project (QUT and Queensland Government) proposed the application of Creative Commons licences to government copyright materials permission for copying and distribution From 2007/2008 GILF proposals were taken up by major federal government departments with location and geospatial data: Geoscience Australia, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Bureau of Meterology
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Black Saturday Bushfires Victoria (February 2009)

Direct provision of raw data in

open formats suitable for immediate reuse

Burning Trees by Sascha Grant, http://www.flickr.com/photos/oflittleinterest/374255009/

Mother Natures Fury by Valley_Guy (Graeme), http://www.flickr.com/photos/40776356@N00/230021987/

Region of sorrow by Elizabeth Donoghue, http://www.flickr.com/photos/elizabeth_donoghue/3395598681/

Sam the Koala and David Tree Victorian bushfires, February 2009 Vale Sam

Black Saturday
Over 400 individual fires recorded on 7

February 2009 Affected 78 townships, destroyed 2,030 houses and > 3,500 structures Displaced an estimated 7,562 people 414 people injured 173 deaths Australias highest ever loss of life from a bushfire
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Google Victorian Fire Map

Towards an information policy

From 2005 on
reviews of government information access and reuse practices

Queensland Government Information Licensing Framework (GILF) report (2006) Cutler review (2008) Victorian Parliament review of access to PSI (2009) Government 2.0 Taskforce (2009) Lawrence (UK Ordnance Survey) reviews of spatial policy and practices (2011)

reform of Freedom of Information (FoI) schemes

introduction of Right to Information (RTI) proactive disclosure principles and practices (2009 on)

Review of the National Innovation System (Cutler review) 2008

Information flow is a central part of the innovation agenda

The value of information/content is in its use/re-use

Venturous Australia (Cutler report, 2008)

Australia should establish a National Information Strategy to optimise the flow of information in the Australian economy. The fundamental aim of a National Information Strategy should be to:

maximise the flow of government generated information, research, and content for the

benefit of users (including private sector resellers of information). A specific strategy for ensuring the scientific knowledge produced in Australia is placed in machine searchable repositories be developed and implemented using public funding agencies and universities as drivers.

Information, research and content funded by Australian governments including national collections should be made freely available over the internet as part of the global public commons,
to the maximum extent possible.
Open gate by chelmsfordblue (Nick)

Venturous Australia (Cutler report, 2008)

Recommendation 7.8

Australian governments should adopt international standards of open publishing as far as possible. Material released for public information by Australian governments should be released under a creative commons licence.

Victorian Parliament Economic Development and Infrastructure Committee (EDIC) Improving Access to Victorian Public Sector Information and Data (2009)

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Gov 2.0 Taskforce Engage: getting on with Government 2.0

December 2009; http://gov2.net.au Central recommendation: A declaration of open government by the Australian Government Recommendation 6: Make public sector information open, accessible and reusable [chapter 5, p 58] 6.1 By default, Public Sector Information (PSI) should be:

free based on open standards easily discoverable understandable machine-readable freely reusable and transformable.

6.2 PSI should be released as early as practicable and regularly updated to ensure its currency is maintained. 6.3 Consistent with the need for free and open reuse and adaptation, PSI released should be licensed under the Creative Commons BY standard as the default.
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Governments response to Gov 2.0 Taskforce report

http://www.finance.gov.au/publications/govresponse20report/index.html

Generally accepted Gov 2.0 Taskforces

recommendations (12 out of 13)

agreed in principle to Recommendation 6, including:

6.3 Consistent with the need for free and open reuse and adaptation, PSI released should be licensed under the Creative Commons BY standard as the default.

Governments response was released under a Creative

Commons Attribution (CC BY) 2.5 Australia licence

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Commonwealth Governments Statement of IP Principles (2010)

11.(b) Consistent with the need for free and open re-use and adaptation, public sector information should be licensed by agencies under the Creative Commons BY standard as the default. An agencys starting position when determining how to license its public sector information should be to consider Creative Commons licences (http://creativecommons.org.au/) or other open content licences. Agencies should license their public sector information under a Creative Commons licence or other open content licence following a process of due diligence and on a case-by-case basis. Before releasing public sector information, for which the Commonwealth is not the sole copyright owner, under a Creative Commons BY standard or another open content licence, an agency may need to negotiate with any other copyright owners of the material.

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Australian Government Attorney Generals IP Manual (2012)

Attorney Generals IP Manual makes it clear that PSI

should be released by default free of charge under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) Australian licence by default. (Chapter 9 - Sharing and Granting Public Access to IP)
Agencies are now required to make licensing

decisions about whether to use Creative Commons licences (or other open content licences) when publicly releasing their PSI.

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Queensland IP Principles (2011)

Queensland Government IP Principles (revised 2011) endorse the use of

CC licences and specify that the CC BY licence is the default licence, to be applied as a first choice unless there are clear indicators that the default licence is inappropriate in the circumstances:
Clause 1.3: Creative Commons licensing of government copyright information
In assessing the appropriate licence to apply to public information, the

Government Information Licensing Framework (GILF) mandates that:

(a) agencies license their public sector copyright information using the Creative Commons least restrictive licence (i.e. the Attribution BY licence) as the default licence of preference following a process of due diligence assessment on a case-by-case basis. However this least restrictive licence may not always be the appropriate licence to use.

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Examples of Government use of CC

Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Geoscience Australia (GA)

Federal Treasury Budget Papers, 2010, 2011, 2012

ComLaw Australian Parliament

Emergency response report and wiki

Credits: Background photo by Matthew Knott, Tasmania 2012 Anne Fitzgerald.. CC-BY-NC-SA, http://www.flickr.com/photos/mknott/606575243/

AUSTRALIA

Geoscience Australia - Landsat 8 data

New Landsat 8 satellite to be launched in early 2013 Upon full implementation, which involves the deployment of major infrastructure upgrades by GA, data will be beamed from Landsat 8 on a daily basis to GA-operated ground stations in Alice Springs and Darwin. As soon as possible after receipt and processing, GA will make the satellite images publicly available free of charge. GA will make Landsat 8 satellite images available under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Austalia licence (CC BY) to facilitate legal reuse of the images GA already involved in projects with Indonesian government and is applying CC BY to data Jeff Kingwell, Section Leader of GAs National Earth Observation Group :
Our experience is that using the Creative Commons Attribution Licence which is the default licence for GA information makes the data more useful and easier to apply. For example, to help the Indonesian government to monitor forest management, GA supplies Landsat data from a number of foreign data archives. Since we can apply the same licence conditions to each data source, the information is much more useful and easier to share and reuse.
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AUSTRALIA

 2010 Federal Budget

Papers licensed under CC Attribution 2.5 Australia 2011 and 2012 Federal Budget Papers under CC Attribution 3.0 Australia

ABC 80 Days that Changed our Lives

To celebrate ABCs 80th anniversary , ABC released 22 files capturing

historic moments on Wikimedia under CC BY-SA first collection of broadcast packaged footage released to Wikimedia Commons under a free license

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet

NZGOAL
NZ Government Open Access and Licensing

framework (NZGOAL)
approved by Cabinet in 2010
standardises the licensing of government copyright

works for reuse under CC licences (CC BY as the default) and recommends the use of a no-known rights statement for material not protected by copyright. provides a Review and Release Process online tool to assess whether PSI can be released for re-use and under what conditions

NZGOAL Policy Principles

Open access to copyright works with Creative Commons Attribution (BY) licence as default
[Unless a restriction applies] State Services agencies should

make their copyright works which are or may be of interest or use to people available for re-use on the most open of licensing terms available within NZGOAL (the Open Licensing Principle). To the greatest extent practicable, such works should be made available online. The most open of licensing terms available within NZGOAL is the Creative Commons Attribution (BY) licence.

http://nzgoal.info/

NZGOAL and CC
Application of CC to geographical information by

government agencies At the national level,:

Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) licences information

on the Ocean Survey 20/20 web portal (which covers New Zealands Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), Continental Shelf and the Ross Sea Region) under a CC BY licence. Minister for the Environment has released its Land Cover Database and Land Environments NZ classification under CC BY through web portal Koordinates.

Local government bodies have also released geographical

datasets on Koordinates under a CC BY licence (covering subject matter from flood hazards to passenger transport information). http://www.os2020.org.nz/copyrightattributing/.
Wellington City Council, Northland Regional Council; and Auckland Regional Council

Christchurch Earthquake 2011

Through the standardised review and release process, government

agencies rapidly released CC-licensed information eg LINZs aerial photographs of the citys damage.
Post-quake imagery of Christchurch carries CC licence, CC NZ News, 2 April 2011, available at http://www.creativecommons.org.nz/news_and_events/news/post_quake_ imagery_of_christchurch_carries_cc_licence.

A non-government project, the Christchurch Recovery Map, an open

ad crowd-sourced map application recording the damage and relief reports through the city, was licensed under CC BY.

http://eq.org.nz/ (note that the map is no longer available).

Various projects documenting the devastation and recovery efforts (by

organizations such as the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority, the Defence Force, and the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management) have been released under CC licences.

See Ross Becker Photos at http://cera.govt.nz/ross-becker-photos and on Picasa at https://picasaweb.google.com/RossBeckerNZ/. See Flickr Collection: Christchurch Earthquake February 2011, available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/nzdefenceforce/collections/721576261436107 31/. See VIDEO: Central Christchurch, two weeks after the quake, National Business Review, 19 March 2011, available at http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/video-central-christchurch-two-weeks-afterquake-ck-88665.

Vocational training materials

vocational training packages (modules) on

training.gov.au
previously licensed under AEShareNet licences
1n 2011 shifted to CC BY ND licence see

http://training.gov.au/Home/Copyright

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Adapt project: teaching adaptations

2012 pilot project - Bridging the Gap: teaching adaptations across

the disciplines and sharing content for curriculum renewal. led by the University of Tasmania, with support from the Australian Governments Office of Learning and Teaching (OLT) aims to enhance the teaching of adaptations (the study of the adaptation of an original novel, play, film, poem, video game or other form of narrative to a different medium) in an Australian context through the creation of a community of practice of scholars. will develop a repository of OER relevant to learning and teaching adaptations.
See http://www.teaching-learning.utas.edu.au/designing/open-

educational-resources/open-education-resources.

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USQ OpenCourseWare
University of Southern Queensland (USQ), based in

regional areas (Toowomba, Hervey Bay and Springfield) provides distance education programs 75% of USQs students study by distance education USQs OpenCourseWare (OCW) portal makes 10 courses available under a CC BY-NC-SA licence.
http://ocw.usq.edu.au/. See the OCW FAQs on how to cite USQs materials:

http://ocw.usq.edu.au/mod/resource/view.php?id=105#1 2.

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 2012 Anne Fitzgerald..

National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) policy on access to research publications and data
Revised policy, effective 1 July 2012, mandates that: any publications arising from an NHMRC supported research project must be deposited into an open access institutional repository within a twelve month period from the date of publication.

http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/media/notices/2012/revisedpolicy-dissemination-research-findings

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Joint Statement on Data Sharing of Public Health Research

NHMRC is a signatory to the Joint Statement on Data

Sharing of Public Health Research issued by the Wellcome Trust Joint Statement expresses a commitment to the timely and responsible sharing of public health data:
Much of the data collection that could improve public health

research is expensive and time-consuming. As public and charitable funders of this research, we believe that making research data sets available to investigators beyond the original research team in a timely and responsible manner, subject to appropriate safeguards, will generate three key benefits:

faster progress in improving health better value for money higher quality science.

2012 Anne Fitzgerald..

Collaborative data sharing

Atlas of Living Australia - www.ala.org.au
funded by the Australian Government to develop an

authoritative, freely accessible, distributed and federated biodiversity data management system encourages contributors to upload their materials under a CC licence via the systems contribution form. See ALA Data Licensing FAQs at http://www.ala.org.au/faq/data-licensing/.

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Reef and Rainforest Research Centre

Advantages of using CC
Discoverability and retrieval of CC materials by search engines (CC

machine readable code)

Explicit statement of re-use rights: information provided upfront to

users about what they CAN do with the material conditions surmounts language barriers

Standard, internationally recognised icons depict the licence Facilitates legal re-mix and re-use of CC-licensed materials Identification and attribution of the creator/owner of the licensed

material

Licences have been held to be valid and enforceable by courts

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Advantages of CC in the public sector

mirrors the fundamental purpose for recognising

copyright in government materials

supports governments open access policy objectives

contributes to the body of publicly funded content available for innovative reuse

clear statement about the source of the data

(attribution/provenance) increased user confidence

avoids financial and technical lock-up of taxpayer-funded

materials

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CC & Government Guide

CC & Government Guide: Using Creative Commons 3.0 Australia Licences on Government Copyright Materials Anne Fitzgerald, Neale Hooper & Cheryl Foong (2011) <http://eprints.qut.edu.au/38364/> <http://creativecommons.org.au/sectors/government>

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Townsville Tripping by Rob and Stephanie Levy http://www.flickr.com/photos/robandstephanielevy/1557428475/

Thank you
Professor Anne Fitzgerald QUT Law School CC Australia Publications

(http://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/Fitzgerald,_Anne. html) Access to Public Sector Information (http://www.aupsi.org) Creative Commons Australia (http://creativecommons.org.au/)
2012 Anne Fitzgerald. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia.