Open Access Policies, Creative Commons and Local Government

With Professor Anne Fitzgerald

In Australia, as in other countries worldwide, there is a growing awareness at the governmental level of the advantages of using open content licences when distributing their copyright materials. During the last decade much attention has focused on policies and practices to enable public sector information (PSI) to be more readily accessed and used, as governments have come to appreciate that significant social, cultural and economic benefits stand to be gained from doing so.

This presentation will cover the application of copyright to government material, and consider how open content licences - specifically, Creative Commons (CC) licences - can be used by governments as a simple and effective mechanism to support the reuse of their copyright-protected PSI. Professor Fitzgerald will also canvass practical examples of how this has been done, and briefly consider the operation of the Government Information Public Access (GIPA) Act in conjunction with open access policies and practices.