Building an Australasian Commons

Last year I undertook a small research project with some colleagues from QUT's School of Cultural and Language Studies in Education in which we aimed to investigate the role of copyright education in media literacy classrooms. A significant part of the project focused on the Creative Commons copyright framework and how it might be used with students in school contexts as a resource during media production. In a nutshell, Creative Commons allows individual to indicate which copy rights they wish to reserve when publishing their work. Various licenses can be generated from the four basic options of: attribution, non commercial,no derivative works and share alike.

The 'Building an Australian Commons' publication provides an excellent range of case studies of people and groups using CC. It is highly recommended for anyone wanting to get a sense of the range of ways in which CC can be used.

Here's the description of the project from the Creative Commons website:

The 2008 publication Building an Australasian Commons: Creative Commons Case Studies Volume 1 aims to document and provide examples of how Creative Commons licences are being used in Australia and internationally. With more than 60 case studies across the government, arts and education sectors, it provides a snap shot of the current practices of open access creators. Building an Australasian Commons is part of the international CC Case Study Wiki initiative.

The book can be downloaded here.