Home » australia (Page 35)
Category Archives: australia
Creative Commons Australia – 3.0 License Drafts and more…
I’ve been meaning to post about all the exciting things Creative Commons Australia have been up to since I returned from the fabulous Building an Australasian Commons national conference (and the linked Creating Value: Between Commerce and Commons international conference), but it’s taken a few weeks so first off I want to draw your attention to the Creative Commons Australia 3.0 draft licenses which have been ported to Australia, bringing CCau up to date with the global 3.0 releases. The licenses are in draft form and open for comment now, so I’d encourage you to take a look and leave comments if any come to mind. This version is more directly based on the CCNZ 3.0 licenses which are considerably more understandable for the layperson (ie non-lawyer, like me). The public comment phase has been going for a while, and for comments to be addressed before the official release they need to be made by 1 August 2008 (yes, I should have mentioned this earlier, but go look now, you’ve still got a couple of weeks).
Equally exciting, a global project spearheaded by Creative Commons Australia has been released: the Creative Commons Case Studies project. One of the biggest challenges when explaining Creative Commons licenses to other people was the lack of examples. Sure, we can all talk about Cory Doctorow’s exemplary book licensing, but there are so many other projects out there using CC licenses to share, publicise and allow others to build upon and remix their work. Well, the Case Studies project makes life a whole lot easier, collating a wealth of examples from across the globe when groups, bands, corporations, universities and more have used CC licenses. Each case study features an overview, how the CC license is used, and the motivations for choosing a CC license; this structure ensures that we understand what CC licenses can achieve and the various philosophies behind their use (from philanthropic to purely promotional). The best part, though, is that the Case Studies project is wiki-based, meaning anyone who wants to can add an example either of their own use, or of someone else’s exemplary work under CC. I’ve got a couple of examples of past work with my students I’ll by adding soon, and I hope if you’ve been using CC licenses either in education or anywhere else, you might want to consider documenting your best examples to share with the world, too.
Fallout 3 … won’t be coming to Australia. It’s banned.
Continuing their tradition of banning videogames, the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) have decided that Fallout 3 isn’t going to get a classification in Australia (and thus can’t be sold legally). However, the OFLC reasoning seems inconsistent even with their own past censorship efforts, and has reignited the debate over Australia’s lack of an R18+ gaming classification. As Asher Moses reports:
The Classification Board effectively banned the role playing shooter game by refusing to issue it an age rating, citing the simulated drug use in the game. In Fallout 3, players can use drugs to augment their characters’ abilities such as stamina, health and intelligence. The ban stems from the lack of an R18+ classification for games in Australia, which means any titles that do not meet the MA15+ standard – such as those with excessive violence, drug use or sexual content – are simply banned from sale.
Gamers were outraged by the board’s decision because other games featuring a similar or higher level of drug use have passed through the censors unscathed. Game review site Gameplayer.com.au, which has begun a petition to “Save Fallout 3”, has compiled a list of 12 games with stronger drug use. They include Battlefield Bad Company, BioShock, Haze and Grand Theft Auto IV.
As the uneven hand of the OFLC becomes more obvious, surely the time is at hand to admit the practice of banning games which have less offensive content than many films needs to be curtailed and Australia finally needs an R18+ category for videogames.
Update (14 August 2008): After unspecified edits and changes were made to the game, the ban was lifted in August 2008, with the game gaining an MA15+ rating.
UWA Student News on Channel 31 THIS FRIDAY
With Perth’s community broadcaster, Access 31, alive for a while longer, it’s my great pleasure to announce that the eight best news projects from students in my Digital Media (Comm2203) unit this semester will be screening as a half an hour programme this Friday night (11 July, 2008) on channel 31 at 8pm. There are some very impressive segments in here, including several news stories which engage with critical issues for Perth right now, and about larger issues such as media and the upcoming Olympics. If you’re near a TV (and in Perth) this Friday at 8pm, please tune in and take a look!
For a sample of what’s going to be screened take a peak at this post.
Links for June 27th 2008
Interesting links for June 21st 2008 through June 27th 2008:
- Simpsons Map for Quake III Arena [YouTube] – A fantastically detailed mashup, bringing 3D textures from the Simpsons into Quake III. [Via Waxy]
- Is YouTube truly the future? [SMH] – Henry Jenkins and John Hartley give their take on the “pre-history” of YouTube, looking at DIY culture more broadly, including punk, zines and fandom, arguing for a deeper conception of participatory culture than just YouTube.
- Monster mash gives ad boss nightmares [The Age] – “More than 6000 spoof ads made by viewers have been uploaded to the website for an ABC television series about the advertising industry, delivering the state broadcaster the kind of viewer participation that would be the envy of the commercial world.”
- Half UK web videos are from YouTube [WatchingTV Online] – Comscore:”During March, 48% of the 3.5 billion web videos watched in the UK came from Google sites, of which 99% were from YouTube…. The BBC only has 1.2% share of the video viewing market despite the launch of the BBC’s iPlayer catch-up service. “
- Spore Creature Creator Trial – Download the first tool from Will Wright’s next gaming masterpiece … Spore! Make your creatures now and be ready to unleash them! (Check the specs – this one’s resources hungry!)
- Star Wars Crawl – Make a custom Star Wars Intro – Make you own opening crawl, Star Wars style. Come on, who hasn’t thought about doing this at some point in their (geeky) life? 🙂
- NASA spacecraft finds ice on Mars [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] – “The Mars Phoenix Lander has found ice on the surface of the Red Planet, NASA scientists say, in a key discovery for the spacecraft as it searches for water and signs of life on Earth’s closet planetary neighbour.”
Links for June 2nd 2008
Interesting links for June 2nd 2008:
- It Really Looks Like Ice on Mars [Universe Today] – The Phoenix Lander on Mars may have uncovered ice. As anyone with a passing interesting in Mars science fiction will know, actually finding water/ice on Mars is the single either makes or breaks the possibility of terraforming Mars! 🙂
- ABC Earth [ABC Online] – “The ABC Earth content layer (to be viewed using the Google Earth 4.3 application) is a trial that consists of video, images and content developed by the ABC. The layer includes National News and video …” (Fun way of engaging with news!)
- Facebook ban for PM’s staff [Australian IT] – “Staffers working in Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s office and on his household staff have been asked to remove their Facebook profiles.” (A move sure to reinforce the image of Australia’s PM as something of a control junkie!)
- Town forces Google to scrap street images [The Age] – “The small, private community of North Oaks in Minnesota enforces its trespassing ordinance, and Google Maps is no exception. The mapping service’s Street View feature allows users to see what a certain address or intersection looks like …”
Links for May 21st 2008
Interesting links for May 21st 2008:
- The Long Tail Wags the Dog [Technorati Weblog] – “Nowhere have we seen a bigger impact of blogging and social media on the American political landscape than on the 2008 presidential election. Candidate appearances formerly confined to a small town are uploaded to YouTube and seen by millions.”
- Big Brother’s vault for all net use, calls and emails [The Age] – “A digital vault containing information about every email, internet visit and phone call made in Britain is to be created in a European bid to battle terrorism. The plan, …has alarmed civil libertarians who are already anxious about a proposed ID card”
- Teenage burglar snapped on cameraphone [PerthNow] – “A teenage boy is facing burglary charges after being photographed on a mobile telephone after allegedly breaking into a Thornlie house. A woman took a snap of the 17-year-old as he rode away on a BMX bike …”
- Net starts to overtake TV [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] – “A new survey of internet consumer trends has revealed that people with broadband connections spend more time on the net than watching television. … Australians with broadband spend an average of 22 hours per week on the web. “
Tama Leaver dot Net by Tama Leaver is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.