Free culture: cultivating the creative commons

Throughout March and April 2004 the authors have been involved (along with fellow Project Leader QUT DVC Tom Cochrane) in a series of talks to brief the community about the further development of the Creative Commons Project in Australia – http://creativecommons.org/projects/international/au/. In February 2004 Queensland University of Technology (QUT) became the institutional affiliate for the project and over the last few months has worked closely with Blake Dawson Waldron Lawyers, who have taken primary responsibility for drafting an Australian version of the Creative Commons licences. This overview of the project is based on a seminar delivered at Melbourne University Law School hosted by IPRIA. Creative Commons aims to promote better identification, negotiation and reutilization of content for the purposes of creativity and innovation. It aims to make copyright content more “active‿ by ensuring that content can be reutilized with a minimum of transactional effort. As the project highlights, the use of an effective identification or labeling scheme and an easy to understand and implement legal framework is vital to furthering this purpose.