David Bath

One of the issues that faces the DE, and involves international negotiations, is the way the same item of intellectual property (e.g. software, data, entertainment, engineering specifications) can have various licences, such as free for non-commercial use AND non-free for commercial use. Deciding whether a particular use is non-commercial or commercial, is tricky, as shown by recent activity by the Creative Commons trying to refine their "non-commercial" licence. These grey areas can include: * Use by an agency of government that charge money (e.g. roads and traffic authorities) * Use by an organization that sells goods to generate a social good (while not officially a non-profit) * Use by a normal company, but not directly in a revenue stream (e.g. use to support the organization's technical infrastructure, but not part of the product line) Organizations such as CreativeCommons.org are using very senior academic lawyers to develop various licences, and those definitions could be recognized officially by Australian law. This would allow people and companies to use (and share) "Creative Commons"-type goods without charge, but with confidence there would be no litigation, while giving confidence to producers of intellectual property that they can receive any compensation due them when used commercially. Similar considerations apply to misuse of products placed under the GNU.org GPL and LGPL. There have been quite tricky cases overseas where companies have included GPL/LGPL products in commercial product lines, but have not adhered to the licence conditions. Confidence by companies (and individuals) in the enforcability of such licences (which may require an advertising campaign) will allow companies and persons to make best use of freely-available goods (lowering costs to businesses), and also encourage intellectual property producers to release items under mixed free/non-free conditions. I recommend that dbcde.gov.au and legal agencies investigate licences such as the GPL, LGPL, and those described through , then prepare information to help the community make best use of such materials. I'd also recommend that such licences should be near-automatic for the products of all agencies of government (e.g. those from the ABS). Again, guidelines to agencies on which licence is most appropriate for which of their products would be useful.