Abstract

It has now been over a decade since the concept of creative industries was first put into the public domain through the Creative Industries Mapping Documents developed by the Blair Labour government in Britain. The concept has developed traction globally, but it has also been understood and developed in different ways in Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and North America, as well as through international bodies such as UNCTAD and UNESCO.

Julian Thomas
The Australian
February 22, 2010 12:00AM

CONFUSION and disarray surround Stephen Conroy's decision to rebate licence fees for commercial television broadcasters.

The decision raises the most basic question that can be asked about government dispensation of any kind: what was this money for?

There are young Australians who are already making a name (and money) for themselves in the latest market for creative content – and it didn’t exist a moment ago. YouTube is a huge repository of amateur content, but it is also rapidly evolving into a site that has legally contracted Hollywood movies and TV shows but is working out ways to share revenues from advertising with gifted and committed amateurs whose creativity attracts a big following.

Can government play a role in assisting Australian creative talent to catch some of dynamism of emerging markets for culture?

Outlining their radical new roadmap for cultural R&D, the authors’ proposals challenge two entrenched prejudices, which block arts and cultural organisations from playing their full role in society and economy.

Australian Financial Review

Creativity is today’s ultimate black box a Rorschach blot onto which there are projected innumerable meanings. When academic Richard Green reviewed the literature recently, he found so much variation that he concluded the field was ‘so attenuated, extenuated, or misunderstood that operationalising of the key concepts is missing or impossible’. He tried to order the field, and constructed a profile of 42 models of creativity which, when combined with assorted variations and typologies, totted up 303 variables!

A pyrrhic victory for the American recording industry shows that fast broadband and new applications demand a rethink of the law, writes Julian Thomas on Inside Story.

Faculty Seminar Series

Professor Justin O’Connor, Research Capacity Building Professor Tuesday 28th April 12pm-1pm The Hall (Z2-226) CI Precinct QUT Kelvin Grove

Creative labour: emancipation or honey-trap?

Support is growing for a different perspective on intellectual property, write BRIAN FITZGERALD and BEN ATKINSON.

This article outlines and critically evaluates the case of Ice TV v National Nine Network. This case which is being heard before the High Court of Australia in October 2008 considers the boundaries of copyright protection for compilations.

The Open Access to Knowledge (OAK) Law Project, together with the U.S. Library of Congress National Digital Information, Infrastructure and Preservation Program, the U.K. Joint Information Systems Committee and the SURFfoundation in The Netherlands, released their International Study on the Impact of Copyright Law on Digital Preservation at the WIPO International Workshop on Digital Preservation and Copyright in Geneva, Switzerland on 15 July 2008.

Founded by Prof Lawrence Lessig in 2001 and publishing its initial licences in December 2002, to counter “a culture in which creators get to create only with the permission of the powerful or of creators of the past”, Creative Commons (CC – creativecommons.org) is now a global phenomenon. Creative Commons Australia (CCau – creativecommons.org.au) is one of forty-three countries involved in the initiative, with another nineteen potential member nations currently being developed.

Copyright law, digital content and the Internet in the Asia-Pacific provides a unique insight into the key issues facing copyright law and digital content policy in a networked information world.

The production of knowledge has become central to economic life. Competitiveness in the 21st century market place is now characterized by the ability to translate scientific and technological knowledge into innovation. But does this render cultural and social knowledge unimportant?

The question of access to and re-use of materials produced by government and other publicly funded bodies has emerged as an important issue in recent years.

This article seeks to highlight the unique and fundamental interaction between the legal notion of providing permission to reproduce or communicate copyright content (copyright licensing) and the building of open user generated online communities such as ccMixter and Flickr.

Book chapters

Suzor, N. and Fitzgerald, B., ‘The Role of Open Content Licences in Building Open Communities: Creative Commons, GFDL and Other Licences’ in C. Kapitzke (ed), Rethinking Intellectual Property (2007) Sense Publishing

Articles
Fitzgerald, A., Fitzgerald, B. and Coates, J., 'Creative Commons Licensing and the Re-Use of Public Sector or Government Copyright Material: The Australian Experience', iCommons Annual 2007, iCommons, July 2007

Published by the Sydney University Press, this book draws on papers presented at the QUT conference of the same name, which took place in January, 2005. It provides a snapshot of the thoughts of over 30 Australian and international experts on topics surrounding the international Creative Commons movement, from the landmark Eldred v Ashcroft copyright term decision to the legalities of digital sampling in a remix world.