Insights from a CC.au Roadshow

It was a drizzly morning as I entered the side passage into the State Library's conference and meeting room facilities, its hidden facades a brace of hoardings, undergoing yet another face lift.

An attendant asked whether I was here for the Creative Commons Roadshow. He pointed me to a room directly ahead of me. As I walked towards it he had me change direction entirely, leading me into another meeting room that left me some what disorientated and curious as to what all that was about.

I entered as Brian Fitzgerald opened the day with a brief introduction of the agenda and an over view of Creative Commons. Attendance was a lot lower than I had anticipated for a national event. Given we were in the heart of Melbourne's literary and learning culture, the fifty or so persons that braved the drizzle seemed poor evidence of the interest I have known to flourish for Creative Commons in this town, if not much of the cultural centres of the State.

That aside, the day introduced me to projects and advances in the use of CC licenses that were fresh and encouraging. For example, I was very impressed with the extent to which Magnatune have gone to provide a range of licensing options, clearly described, for the music available from it. Not just about CC, but integrating the licenses with a range of uses such as telephone hold music, public space music for retail stores and galleries.

From the various presentations, John Jacob's ABC Pool and Blaise Murphet's PLATFORM: Journal of Media and Communication, emphasis on the searchability of CC licenses is proving increasingly critical in providing more direct access to content for the use producers and publishers intend.

Another interesting factor in the use of CC was how much it lowered administrative overheads at the ABC. When ever material from The Pool is broadcast the licenses provide so much clarity in terms of the reuse of content, there is less for admin staff to do in terms of ensuring clearance of numerous rights.

CC.au's Elliott Bledsoe's presentation highlighter broader application of the CC API towards more dynamic collation of content from various sources. For instance, I was impressed with content from Flickr can be searched by license and colour. I wondered how such ideas could be applied to EngageMedia, knowing too the difficulty facing researchers and engineers in the search-ability of video.

The entire Roadshow was tweeted with some further insights available at #CCRdShow10. Found someone had quoted me as saying, “I don't want to spend my time responding to [permission] requests, I'd rather play my guitar in the bush.” Thanks @peterneish.

I've been told presentations materials from all CC presenters will be available … as soon as they do, there'll be links galore!