The Creative Commons Licence

The Bureau of Meteorology recommends using the Creative Commons Licence for water information because it:

• provides a legally binding public notice about how your organisation's information may be used
• will provide a consistent and transparent legal framework for all water information resources
• contains strong limitation of liability and warranty clauses
• is an established de-facto international standard of licensing electronic information
• is free and costs little or nothing to implement
• requires attribution of the information author.

Creative Commons licences are widely used across the Internet by individuals, companies and governments. For example, Wikipedia and Flickr both use Creative Commons Licences. The Australian Bureau of Statistics has licensed the majority of the information on its website under the Creative Commons Licence. Geoscience Australia has licensed numerous datasets, including its Australian Mines Atlas and MODIS data under the Creative Commons Licence.

Using an organisation's information under the Creative Commons Licence

The Creative Commons Licence allows the community to share (copy and distribute) and remix or adapt your information, provided that they attribute you as the author. However, this cannot be done in a way that suggests that you endorse them or their use of your work. The Licence also stipulates that these conditions can be waived with special permission from you.

Because the Licences are compatible with Australian copyright law, none of the community's statutory rights, such as their right to fair dealing are affected. For instance, they may use your information for private study without your permission.

The Creative Commons Licence is available in plain English text and a full legal code. The Licence requires the Bureau's website to link to the text and the code.

Attributing water information suppliers and use of the Creative Commons Licence

The Bureau of Meteorology wants to ensure that water information suppliers are correctly attributed for their information. The Bureau's Australian Water Resources Information System (AWRIS) is being designed to correctly capture and publish attribution details of organisations providing water information. It will also say whether an organisation has agreed to license their information under the Creative Commons Licence.

If your organisation wishes to apply the Creative Commons Licence to its information, you must advise the Bureau of how you would like the information to be attributed. For example: © State of Queensland (Department of Environment and Resource Management) 2009. The Bureau will ensure that your organisation's water information is correctly and prominently associated with the Creative Commons Licence on the website.

Licensing my water information under the Creative Commons Licence

The Bureau will write to all organisations named in the Water Regulations and include a form to enable organisations to license their data under Creative Commons. If you would like to license your data under the Creative Commons Licence now, email b.moran@bom.gov.au