Creative Commons Australia

Offering an alternative copyright system for creative work

Read the interview with Jessica Coates, Project Manager

Creative Commons Australia (CCaustralia) is the Australian derivative project of the USA-based non-profit organisation, Creative Commons, and is an agency which facilitates the use of intellectual property in Australia. Aiming to foster a creative community premised on re-mixable creativity, Creative Commons has developed a system of flexible protections and freedoms for creative works as an alternative to existing legislative copyright protection schemes.

Building upon the traditional ‘all rights reserved’ of traditional copyright, Creative Commons has created a series of voluntary licences that allow authors and artists to reserve some rights in their works, while still allowing future use of their work by other artists, under certain conditions.

Licences include: Attribution – which ensures that the original creator of a work is correctly recognised; NonCommerical – which limits the use of the work for noncommercial purposes only; No Derivative Works – which allows others access to your work without alteration; and Share Alike – which permits others to distribute any derivative works only under an identical Creative Commons licence to the one that governs the original work.

CCaustralia is based at the Queensland University of Technology and lead by Professor Brian Fitzgerald (Professor of Intellectual Property and Innovation) and Tom Cochrane (Deputy Vice Chancellor, Technology, Information and Learning Support). CCaustralia is closely associated with the Creative Commons Clinic research program of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation.

Creative Commons is a non-profit organisation, founded in the USA by Lawrence Lessig in 2001. Creative Commons promotes the creative re-use of intellectual and artistic works — whether owned or within the public domain.

Australia is one of 43 countries worldwide who have taken up the Creative Commons project, with the Queensland University of Technology based offshoot working to integrate the Creative Commons licences into the Australian copyright environment since 2003.

Last updated by Emma Stephens (2009-10-20)