Digital Liberty

In June Professor Brian Fitzgerald was invited to present at the inaugural ARC Graeme Clark Outcomes Forum at Parliament House in Canberra.

He outlined the outcomes the Creative Commons Project within the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation has had in the creative, public and education sectors.

CCI and the The Open Access to Knowledge (OAK) Law Project of Queensland University of Technology are pleased to present a free seminar with leading international and national experts. What is "Open Education" and what does it mean for the future of learning? What role can Australia play? Featuring guest speaker Melissa Hagemann (pictured right) from the Open Society Institute and Soros Foundations Network.

Rock group Nine Inch Nails caused a sensation in the music world recently - and it wasn’t for their front man’s antics. Every day, artists and consumers are finding new ways to engage with each other in a virtual world: traditional copyright rules are out; new business models are in. NIN’s online release of their current album under a Creative Commons (CC) licence which lets others share, burn and even remix their songs is just the latest example of artists allowing their fans to access and use creative product outside the powerful grip major corporations have traditionally held over distribution.

A new book, edited by Professor Brian Fitzgerald, Professor Fuping Gao, Mr Damien O’Brien and Mr Sampsung Xiaoxiang Shi, focuses geographically on the Asia-Pacific, and particularly on China and Australia, but addresses universal themes about the law of copyright and its adaptation to the Internet in the 21st century said the Hon Justice Douglas at the launch in Brisbane yesterday.

A new book has been launched by current and former researchers from QUT’s Intellectual Property: Knowledge Culture Economy program led by Professor Brian Fitzgerald. Copyright law, digital content and the Internet in the Asia-Pacific, edited by Brian Fitzgerald, Fuping Gao, Damien O'Brien and Sampsung Xiaoxiang Shi, provides a unique insight into the key issues facing copyright law and digital content policy in a networked information world.

Professor Fitzgerald’s article on ‘Copyright 2010: The Future of Copyright’ has been accepted for publication in 2008 as an Opinion Piece in the prestigious international academic journal European Intellectual Property Review.

The Digital libery project recently organised a two-day symposium held at the Creative Industries Precinct on 14-15 February 2008. Keynote speakers at the ‘Computer Games, Law, Regulation and Policy’ event were Fred von Lohmann from the Electronic Frontiers Foundation in the US and Dr Terry Cutler, industry consultant and Chair of ACMI, alongside a wide range of academics (including the research group, Professor Stuart Cunningham, Professor Brian Fitzgerald) and participants from the games industry.

One of the key achievements of the ccClinic during 2007 was the introduction of its QUT undergraduate unit (LWB499). Designed as a specialist research unit open only to high-achieving students, the 13-week unit provided eight students from the Faculty of Law with the opportunity to work closely with industry experts and Clinic staff on in-depth research into a topic of relevance to the Creative Commons.

In July 2007 the project launched a new research group to investigate issues relating to computer games and regulation, control, law and policy. The group runs an active email list with a subscription base that includes a number of games industry and legal industry professionals. In September Dr Sal Humphreys delivered a refereed paper, ‘Online social softwares: policy and regulation in a converged medium’, to the Communications Policy Research Forum in Sydney.

In May 2007 Digital Liberty researchers attended ‘The Legal and Policy Framework for the Digital Content Industry’ in Shanghai, China. It provided a critical opportunity to engage with Chinese academics, government officials, practising lawyers and representatives of web-based industries.

Blogging is now a key component of creative innovation, and in September 2007 project team member Peter Black (himself a prolific blogger who has attracted considerable national and international attention) organised the first major Australian blogging conference, to investigate the legal and other issues bloggers need to address. The day-long event attracted approximately 100 people from across Australia, and thanks to sponsorship from Microsoft, Get Up and Kwoff, it was free for everyone who attended.

We organised a number of events during 2007 aimed at engaging with the broader Australian community on Web 2.0-related issues. These included Australia’s first blogger conference, and the ‘Democracy 2.0: YouTube and MySpace’ forum (Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts, 4 September 2007). This brought together experts and members of the public to discuss how Web 2.0 technologies were being used by political figures in the run-up to the Australian general election.

To examine the international scope of issues facing the digital environment, the Digital Liberty team organised two international conferences: one in China and the other in Canada.