[Aust-NZ] OSM Licensing - [was Fwd: RE: Aust-NZ Digest, Vol 36, Issue 8] [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

[Bruce Bannerman]

Robert,

There was a study several years ago that from memory found that a database could potentially be subject to copyright. I recall that they were particularly looking at UK Ordnance Survey data.

Sorry I haven't the time to go searching for the link at this time. Perhaps someone else has a url.

Part of the problem is that we are working in a global community with differing laws on IP in respective countries (and hence differing understanding of the issues).

Bruce


On 8/09/10 8:01 AM, "Robert Coup" <robert.coup at koordinates.com> wrote:

Hi Simon,

(CCing to the list)

On Mon, Sep 6, 2010 at 2:20 PM, Simon Cropper <scropper at botanicusaustralia.com.au> wrote:
On Monday 06 September 2010 11:38:38 am you wrote:
> Nobody is arguing with that. It's just that CC licenses and particularly
> CC-BY-SA don't mean what's "on the cover" with respect to datasets.
> Creative Commons themselves say they shouldn't be used.

Robert,

After many years of publishing books, reports and data, both in traditional
paper-based form and electronically, it has become apparent to me that most
people do not think that much about copyright or intellectual property.

I agree! in the past this would have been ignored entirely. The number of people/organisations I speak to about data where the sentiment is "just use it" and you get a blank look when asking about what license it's available under....

However, I think people are becoming more aware of the issues. There still seems to be an anti-commercial sentiment in some sectors. The problem is, commercial covers nearly anything.

Arguably a researcher working on a project partially funded by a company is commercial, as is a lone developer who builds a mashup and has some Google ads on the website.


I mention this because I recently pointed out to people publishing educational
material in OSGeo that despite stating that they release 'their' document
under creative commons the data used and images presented, and the data the
authors pointed the reader to in order to reproduce a method illustrated in a
tutorial were all covered by restrictive licenses conditions. In other words
not all elements of the published work were covered by the license specified.
So despite an author releasing work as a CC-BY-SA, derived works were
impossible to create as the rights to use, share or reproduce the underlying
data, images, etc had not been obtained.

This issue of copyright or access/usable rights associated with 'components'
of a work is particularly important and is rarely addressed.

Yep. I think that'll be next on the awareness list after the larger "work". Already you're seeing news media getting pulled up heavily around using citizen photos from twitpic/etc without attribution.


It would be valuable if groups, like Creative Commons group, created an
interactive key that (1) identified copyrightable/licensable elements of a
work, then (2) pointed the publisher to the relevant type of licenses
available.

In relation to the above mentioned license change. What remains ambiguous to
me is what is actually meant by data or databases. Not so much the full blown
relational databases (i.e. fields names, query forms, table relationships,
coupled with data) as this is obvious but rather the smaller more unusual
datasets.

For example...
1. Data stored in a table in a report.
2. Attribute data stored in shapefiles (including field names and codes)
3. Vector data or raster data
3. Aerial Photography
4. Any derived images or maps created with the this data

It's definitely designed to cover attribute data & vector data. Maps created with it aren't covered by the license - they'd be CC-BY-SA for the OSM ones, and I can't speak to the rest.


It is unclear to me whether this type of data would be covered by the Open
database License. Better explanation of what is meant by 'data' with good
examples would be invaluable in helping people understand whether this new
license is relevant to them.

To be honest, I'm not sure what level of applicability there is to other databases/projects - I haven't looked. Creative Commons/Science Commons have gone down the path of only recommending Public Domain for datasets. Which is fair enough, but does leave the share-alike space with nothing.

It would be nice to see a range of content/data licenses presented concisely, with plain-language interpretations so people can make a good decision about what is the right license for them.

Rob :)


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/aust-nz/attachments/20100908/3e29599c/attachment-0001.html