Licensing for sharing and trading content: Working models?

Phillip Crisp,
Special Counsel, Australian Government Solicitors

New publishing paradigms and the ‘Free-for Education’ licence

Link to presentation and FfE licence model

This paper explains the rules and rationale of the new AEShareNet-FfE (‘Free-for-Education’) Licence Protocol. It places the new protocol into perspective by:

briefly examining the historical evolution of publishing models from relatively proprietary to the new paradigm described as ‘open source / open content’
explaining those fundamental structures and concepts underlying AEShareNet which are helpful in understanding the AEShareNet-FfE licence protocol.

Philip Crisp is an IP specialist with many years policy and practical experience. He wrote the current Commonwealth Guidelines relating to Management and Commercialisation of Intellectual Property in the field of Information Technology (‘the IT IP Guidelines’). In 2001 he was awarded an Australia Day Medallion for his contributions to public sector IP management.

Philip has built a specialist practice advising the education sector on copyright and other issues arising from information and communications technologies, including:

conceiving and developing the AEShareNet system - an innovative solution for web-based copyright management in the VET sector;
investigating the legal issues associated with flexible learning, leading to the publication of a major report, Legal and Regulatory Framework for Flexible Learning;
advising DEST on educational copyright issues raised by the ‘Digital Agenda’ and the US Free Trade Agreement;
acting for The Le@rning Federation (TLF) in the design and negotiation of copyright arrangements for Content developed under the TLF Initiative.

Ian Oi,
Special Counsel, Blake Dawson Waldron

iCommons: Creative Commons, Australian version

This session introduces the licensing model for the Creative Commons project, in the context of the Australian implementation of the Creative Commons licences. It includes a summary of the background and objectives of Creative Commons, describes similarities and differences between the Creative Commons project and licences and other open content projects.

Ian Oi is a special counsel in the Canberra office of Blake Dawson Waldron who practices primarily in the area of information technology, communications, intellectual property and cyberlaw. For a number of years, he has particularly focussed on the development, licensing, distribution and management of open content and open source software. Amongst other things, Ian is co-project lead (and leader of drafting team) for the iCommons Australia project, which promotes the Creative Commons licences in Australia. Ian has also drafted contractual frameworks for the development and deployment of open source software, and open source software licences in an Australian environment.

Licensing multiple layers of intellectual Property to the school sector

Link to materials.

The Le@rning Federation (TLF) is is an initiative of State and Federal governments of Australia and New Zealand. Over the period 2001-2006 the Initiative aims to develop online interactive curriculum content specifically for Australian and New Zealand schools.

TLF's curriculum content contains multiple layers of licensed-in third party material and TLF commissioned works. The presentation will provide a map of TLF's end-to-end licensing regime, focussing on how the licensing regime allows users to build complex layers and compositions of intellectual property. The presentation will also discuss how TLF communicates special conditions to end users in dynamic conditions of use statements.

Dr Nigel Ward,
The Le@rning Federation

Nigel Ward is "Interoperability Analyst" at The Le@rning Federation - an initiative of State and Federal governments of Australia and New Zealand that is developing online interactive curriculum content specifically for Australian and New Zealand schools. At the Le@rning Federation, Nigel is responsible for creating technical specifications for the initiative's content and systems. These specifications aim to ensure that the initiative's content is usable across a range of systems and in a range of contexts.

In a previous life, Nigel was a lead researcher on a project investigating context-sensitive ways of satisfing the information needs of people in complex information environments. In a life before that, he worked in a research group designing formal methods for the development of real-time software systems. His PhD is titled "A Refinement Calculus for Nondeterministic Expressions."

Nicky Pitkanen,
The Le@rning Federation

Nicky Pitkanen is the Business and Process Analyst with The Le@rning Federation - an initiative of State and Federal governments of Australia and New Zealand that is developing online interactive curriculum content specifically for Australian and New Zealand schools. Nicky is responsible for identifying the business and functional requirements for infrastructure systems and integrating the systems and processes into the organisation. The systems include content management, intellectual property rights management and basic learning management.

Previously, Nicky worked as a functional architect consultant for business and IT system consulting companies in Australia, Finland and United Kingdom, where she was involved in the business and functional system design for mainly web-based business applications within various industries.

Peter Eckersley,
Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia (APRIA)

Funding the Development of Free & Open Source Software

Link to materials.

One of the central economic questions which surrounds free software is whether and how the benefits of liberal licensing can be combined with timely, user-driven financial support for development. There are several kinds of innovative business models which can allow developers to earn money from meeting a consumers' demand for free software. One, sometimes termed a "bounty market" or the "Wall St. Performer Protocol", involves decentralised ex ante contracts between coders and user communities. Another, called "dual" or "two-tiered" licensing, can fund the development of free software libraries by using a strong copyleft (usually the GPL) with the alternative of a paid-up license for clients linking to proprietary code. I will review the theoretical stengths and limitations of these models, the experiences to date which free software communities have had with them, and the prospects for widespread deployment in the future.

Peter Eckersley is a PhD student and digital technology researcher, at the Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia, and the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, at the University of Melbourne. His research interests include interactions between public "open science" and proprietary R&D; the role of copyright, patent and trade secret rules in determining the organisation of software production, and the possibility of alternatives to DRM-based copyright for digital culture.

Session Chair:
Dr Roger Clarke, Xamax Consultancy