[LINK] UK Parliament debates under a CC license?

[rchirgwin at ozemail.com.au]

What a curious conundrum... If I, as a journalist, chose to reproduce a 
parliamentary exchange in full "the hard way", I can do so. Moreover, if 
a journalist chooses to completely misrepresent events in parliament by 
leaving out important information, plenty of people might complain, but 
the opportunity for punishment is limited. However, if Theyworkforyou 
skips the re-typing step, there's a copyright infringement issue at stake...

I can't figure out whether a similar "parliamentary copyright" applies 
in Australia. The Hansard copyright notice says:
 >The Commonwealth of Australia asserts its copyright in all 
publications and
 >all published material produced by Commonwealth author organisations.
 >Government and Parliamentary departments and many agencies, unless
 >specifically provided for under any establishing/enabling legislation, 
cannot own copyright.
...which seems to contain an internal contradiction but IANAL!

RC
jeff.evans at iird.vic.gov.au wrote:

>Earlier Link postings on TheyWorkForYou.com and possible oz versions may be
>interested:
>
>Parliament should place its debates under a CC license
>     By Cory Doctorow
><http://www.boingboing.net/2004/07/21/parliament_should_pl.html>
>
>TheyWorkForYou.com, the brilliant political action site that scrapes and
>reformats the record of the UK Parliament, is technically in violation of
>the law: Parliament holds a "Parliamentary Copyright" in its debates, and
>by scraping and republishing them, TheyWorkForYou infringes upon it.
>
>Richard Allan has a great solution to this
>problem:<http://www.richardallan.org.uk/archives/000278.html>
>       What this is doing is forcing Parliament to look at how it handles
>   other people reproducing the material on the Official Parliamentary
>   Website. It would look awful if Parliament were to try and stop people
>   from using what is and should be public information. But the public
>   interest would not be served by people of dubious motives giving false
>   information by doctoring the official record.
>
>       What is the answer? Perhaps a Creative Commons license for the House
>   of Commons which can allow re-use of material without payment but
>   subject to conditions such as repetition in full without alteration? I
>   am starting to think there is a good campaign here to ask Parliament to
>   use appropriate Creative Commons licenses for all its output?
>
>Regards
>
>Jeff Evans
>Manager, Business Channel
>Department of Innovation, Industry & Regional Development (DIIRD)
>Victoria, Australia
>Ph 03 9651 9590 Fax 03 9651 9725
>Email jeff.evans at iird.vic.gov.au
>http://www.business.channel.vic.gov.au
>http://www.business.vic.gov.au
>http://www.export.vic.gov.au
>http://www.ecommerce.vic.gov.au
>
>
>
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