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19 Murdoch U. L. Rev. 1 (2012)

handle is hein.journals/elajrnl19 and id is 1 raw text is: Anne Fitzgerald, Neale Hooper, Cheryl Foong and Brian Fitzgerald Open Access to Judgments: Creative Commons Licences and the Australian Courts Anne Fitzgerald, Neale Hooper, Cheryl Foong and Brian Fitzgerald* Open Access to Judgments: Creative Commons Licences and the Australian Courts Internet technologies have fundamentally changed the way we obtain access to legal documents and information about the law. However, for judgments of courts and tribunals, copyright management and licensing practices have not kept pace with the digital and online technologies which are now ubiquitous in the web 2.0 era. Under the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968 and the licensing statements on the Australian courts' websites, judgments may generally be read online, downloaded, reproduced and printed out for personal, non-commercial use or 'in house' use by an organisation. However, beyond these permitted acts, the extent to which judgments can be copied and distributed in digital form online remains unclear. Open content licences (in particular, the Creative Commons (CC) licences) offer an effective mechanism for managing copyright in judgments in a manner that supports their wide public dissemination and reuse while also protecting their integrity and accuracy. 1. Introduction Internet technologies and the development of digital repositories of legal materials' have fundamentally changed the way we obtain access to legal documents and information about the law. Web-accessible and freely searchable databases which aggregate legal materials, often from numerous jurisdictions, enable users to readily locate and retrieve a comprehensive range of legal documents. No longer do we need to have access to a law library or pay hefty subscription fees in order to be able to consult and read the legal documents that set out the laws governing our activities. In the interactive, networked web 2.0 era members of the community have an expectation that they will be able to legally use and reuse documents retrieved through these free, online, publicly available legal portals in a range of ways. As well as being able to read, copy, print and download legal documents located through the websites, users of these websites expect to be permitted to further distribute a digital copy of a legal document they have retrieved through an online repository. This electronic dissemination may be done by attaching a digital file to an email message sent to an individual or members of an email mailing list or it may involve posting a copy of a downloaded judgment on a website (for example, a law blog which provides comments or updates on specific areas of law) where it can be accessed by the public. Anne Fitzgerald arn.fitzgeraldqut.edu.au; Neale Hooper nj.hooperTqgut.edu.au; Cheryl Foong cherv1.foongpgmail.com; Brian Fitzgerald brian.fitzgeraldPacu.edu.au. 1 Such as the Australasian Legal Information Law Institute web portal (AustLII), established by the Faculties of Law at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and the University of New South Wales (UNSW) (http://www.austlii.edu.au) and Jade (Judgments and Decisions Enhanced), a current awareness service run by Bar Net, a specialist communications management company (http://jade.barnet.com.au/Jade.htmil). Murdoch University Law Review (2012) 19(1) 1

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