Home
| Databases
| WorldLII
| Search
| Feedback
University of New South Wales Faculty of Law Research Series |
Last Updated: 31 October 2011
Re-use Rights and Australia’s Unfinished PSI Revolution
Graham Greenleaf, University of New South Wales
Catherine Bond, University
of New South Wales
This
paper is available for download at
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1951625
Citation
This article has been
published as Greenleaf G and Bond C ‘Open Data and re-use of Public Sector
Information’ [2011] Informatica e diritto – Rivista
internazionale, n. 1-2, 341-69, ESI, Naples; it is an abbreviated version of
G Greenleaf and C Bond ‘Open government works (Open PSI)’,
a Chapter
of Revitalising Australia’s Copyright Public Domain, Sydney University
Press, to be published 2012.. This article
may also be referenced as
[2011]UNSWLRS 37.
Abstract
An understanding of the re-use of public sector
information in Australia starts from the fact that the provisions for Crown
Copyright
in the Copyright Act 1968 means that no PSI (including
legislation and cases) is available for re-use without permission, and there
are nine different regimes
(federal, plus States and Territories) governing
re-use permissions. Since 2008 this situation is changing rapidly, with a series
of reports leading to a federal government policy that, when it licences PSI the
default licence will be a Creative Commons BY licence
(requiring only
attribution). However, we argue that this is incomplete, because there is as yet
no requirement that PSI be licensed
when it is made freely available to the
public (in which case Crown Copyright still applies). The State of Queensland
has taken a
similar approach, but it is arguable (but not certain) that it has
‘joined the dots’ so that all PSI made available to
the public
should, in default, be under a Creative Commons BY licence. In both
jurisdictions Information Commissioners with a new
pro-active role in relation
to freedom of information may facilitate the transition to a ‘re-use
culture’ in the public
sector. In the other seven jurisdictions the
position is still evolving, but the federal and Queensland practices are likely
to be
influential. This is a remarkable achievement in a few years for Creative
Commons Australia, and for the development of Australian
public
policy.
Despite these very positive developments in Australian policies
and practices, we argue that liberal licensing regimes are not enough,
and that
there is also a need to reform Australia’s antiquated Crown Copyright by
abolishing it for some categories of PSI
such as legislation and related
information, limiting its duration in other cases of government publications,
and limiting the duration
of copyright in unpublished government works.
AustLII:
Copyright Policy
|
Disclaimers
|
Privacy Policy
|
Feedback
URL: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/UNSWLRS/2011/37.html