Budget papers are free to share, thanks to Creative Commons

"Amid the intense discussion surrounding the release of the Australian government’s budget 2014-2015 one notable feature of the budget documents has seemingly gone unremarked by most commentators. The budget papers (1-4), budget overview, portfolio budget statements and Treasurer’s budget speech have all been published under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia (CC BY) licence, as indeed has the entire budget 2014-2015 website. While the budget documents have been published under a CC BY licence each year since the 2010-2011 budget, this year for the first time tables and data from the budget papers and portfolio budget statements were also made available in the form of Excel (xlsx) and machine readable CSV files on the Australian government’s data.gov.au portal (and again, these tables and data have been provided under a CC BY licence). So what does the CC BY licence mean – and why has the Australian government adopted it so widely in recent years? ..."