[LINK] apc.au celebrates Document Freedom Day 2008

[andrew garton]

Melbourne, Australia, 26 March 2008: apc.au celebrates Document Freedom 
Day releasing 10 years of articles under Creative Commons


apc.au (formally c2o / Toy Satellite) releases 10 years of essays, 
lectures, reports and articles dealing with information communication 
technologies for cultural development (ICT4CD). The full list can be 
found at http://wiki.apc.org.au/index.php?title=Documents in both open 
and portable document formats. All the papers are available for sharing 
and re-publication under a Creative Commons Australia license.

A global initiative celebrated by roughly 200 teams from more than 60 
countries, "Document Freedom Day" is aimed at increasing awareness of 
the value of open document standards. apc.au, an open standards 
advocate, is proud to support "Document Freedom Day 2008."

Open standards allow any conforming application to work with the data 
they encode, preventing vendor lock-in and providing an open playing 
ground for competition. Open standards are public domain and do not 
require legal forms or commercial agreements to use them, allowing 
anyone to produce an application that meets the standard. Open document 
standards help drive competition and bring freedom of choice to the 
creators and consumers of information. By using open document standards 
we can ensure that our information is accessible as required, now and in 
the future, regardless of the applications in use.

"Many have experienced the pain of trying to convert from one 
proprietary format to another when exchanging documents (eg: from MS 
Word to Lotus)," says Grant McHerron, apc.au Technical Director. 
"Formatting is lost or broken and re-work is often required. This 
extends even to different versions of the same product, as those using 
Office 2000 are unable to read information created by MS Word 2007. 
Storing information in open document standards facilitates the flow of 
information and prevents its loss when older applications become obsolete."

In addition to the value of open standards for storing information, 
apc.au is also a champion of open licensing. Andrew Garton, apc.au's 
Managing Director, says "The author may choose to reserve some or all 
rights through open licenses, providing consumers with immediate access 
to how content may be used, re-used and / or attributed without having 
to communicate with neither the author nor any 3rd party. Open licenses 
puts rights management directly into the hands of authors of any form 
and medium."

With support from the Free Software Foundation, Google, IBM, Red Hat 
Linux, Sun Microsystems and many other organisations, Document Freedom 
Day is a volunteer, grass roots effort to ensure people and 
organisations realise the importance of open document standards.

apc.au is a digital media communications organisation founded in 1997. 
We produce computer mediated collaborative "events" for public space, 
providing production, performance, research and design expertise drawn 
from the information technology and cultural development sectors.

For more information contact Grant McHerron on grant at apc.org.au / 0422 
914 949, or go to:

http://wiki.apc.org.au/
http://wiki.apc.org.au/index.php?title=Document_Freedom_Day_2008

-- 

andrew garton
apc.au
http://apc.org.au/

ag at apc.org.au / +61 (0)409 948 280 / +27 (0)728 796 972
Skype. freq_ghost / Jabber. freq_ghost at jabber.org