In a small, easy to miss post, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has made a very exciting announcement. They’re going CC – and under an Attribution-only license, no less.

From the ABS website:

Creative Commons provides a spectrum of licensing for the use of intellectual property between full copyright and public domain – in essence ‘some rights reserved’. The ABS is poised to introduce Creative Commons licensing for the majority of its web content.

The relevant Creative Commons logo (which will link to the Attribution 2.5 Australia Licence) will be included at the bottom of every page on the ABS website.

The ABS conducts the annual Australian census and is the holder of all official Australian statistical data. CC Australia explains, “The ABS been providing all its resources for free for a number of years, but under a limited re-use license. The decision to go one step further and allow complete reuse of its material – even for commercial purposes – heralds a great opportunity for the Australian community, researchers and business, and hopefully will lead to a great leap in the use of and innovation based on this rich resource.”

Update: As reported to us on Dec. 23, all content on the ABS website (other than logos and other trade marked content) is now marked as CC BY – including all census data, economy data, fact sheets, analysis, press releases etc.