Copyright is a legal right created by the law of a country that grants the creator of an original work exclusive rights for its use and distribution. This is usually only for a limited time. The exclusive rights are not absolute but limited by limitations and exceptions to copyright law, including fair use/fair dealing.
Local Government & Municipal Knowledge Base
The vast majority of information on this site is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License or has been released to the public domain. A small percentage of the images on the site have been provided by Councils or other organisations on specific conditions, and may be subject to copyright - see the photo library for more information.
Please don't upload any material to the site if that you believe to be subject to a restrictive copyright, and if you notice anything on the site that you believe may infringe anyone's copyright please let us know about it.
Australian Councils
Most Australian councils seem to apply a copyright notice similar to the one below to content published on their websites.
Copyright of materials present on this website is owned by, or licensed to, Council Name.
Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of the private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced or reused for any commercial purposes whatsoever.
This could almost be interpreted as meaning that the content can be reproduced and reused for non-commercial purposes, but few if any Councils appear to explicitly publish content under a Creative Commons Non Commercial License.
Related Pages
External Links & References
- copyright.org.au - User-generated content & Web 2.0 websites
- copyright.org.au - Websites: creating & publishing on the Internet
- Copyright Act 1968
- Australian Copyright Council Information Sheet
- Copyright Law of Australia (Wikipedia)
- Why deny US-style Fair Use copyright laws to Australians? - Sydney Morning Herald (February 2014)
- AusGoal