Cc-au mailing list

[Jessica Coates <j2.coates AT qut.edu.au>]

From the CCau website:

We know we've been publishing a lot about licensing of government documents and data of late, but there really has been so much happening that we just can't resist. This week's story is one we've actually been meaning to post about for a while.

As of late November Geoscience Australia has officially adopted Creative Commons Attribution as the default licence for its website. This means more than 18 877 products available through the website, including 3690 datasets, are now free to be reused, repurposed and remixed, including for commercial purposes - as long as you attribute Geoscience Australia as the original source, of course.

I'm just guessing, but I wouldn't be surprised if this put Geoscience Austalia up with Australian Bureau of Statistics as the two largest sources of Creative Commons material in Australia.

As Chief Information Officer, Stuart Girvan, says in the press release: “Our agency is custodian of a vast range of valuable geological and spatial datasets that are used by the public sector and private sector industries in the exploitation of resources, management of the environment, safety of critical infrastructure and the resultant well-being of all Australians. The Creative Commons licence has created a more efficient process for them to access this valuable information.”

With open map applications in every phone and climate change firmly at the top of political and popular debates, it's more and more important that Australians have access to reliable, reuseable information about their land and landscape. Geoscience Australia is to be congratulated for ensuring that this information is available, for free, for everyone to use for the good of the country.

 

 

Jessica Coates

Project Manager

Creative Commons Clinic

Queensland University of Technology

 

ph: 07 3138 8301

fax: 07 3138 9395

email: j2.coates AT qut.edu.au