Fresh & New(er)

Direct from Mike Madison’s blog Microsoft Corp. and Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that offers flexible copyright licenses for creative works, have teamed up to release a copyright licensing tool that enables the easy addition of Creative Commons licensing information for works in popular Microsoft® Office applications. The copyright licensing tool will be available free [...]

At last the outcomes of the Attorney general’s Copyright Review have been released. Kim Weatherall at Lawfont summarises, comments and contextualises the major changes. There are some very significant moves on the museum front and her commentary is essential reading.

AESharenet, an Australian open content licensing organisation set up by the various state education bodies, have put all the sessions from their recent Making the most of creativity: In the public interest conference online. There are some interesting papers including one by heavyweight Peter Drahos whose book Information Feudalism is a must read.

Although this is based on US law it is a great and engaging look at the issues around Copyright at the moment and the erosion of concept of the ‘public domain’. A documentary is being filmed. A cell phone rings, playing the “Rocky” theme song. The filmmaker is told she must pay $10,000 to clear [...]

Kim Weatherall on CAL’s outlandishing push for charging schools for directing students to use the Net rather than photocopies (which they pay CAL a license fee for). It makes for excellent reading – here’s some excerpts – I’d encourage all to read the whole thing. Schools use copyright material in Australia under a statutory license [...]

Read this. What happened to ‘fair dealing’ and use of Copyrighted material for purposes of ‘study’ and ‘research’? SCHOOLS have warned they will have to turn off the internet if a move by the nation’s copyright collection society forces them to pay a fee every time a teacher instructs students to browse a website. Teachers [...]