[OSGeo-Discuss] final call for "Law and the GeoWeb"

[Puneet Kishor]

Hi all, because of larger than expected space available for the 
workshop, we can accommodate a few more folks to the "Law and the 
GeoWeb" workshop. If you are attending the AAG conference in Seattle 
next April, and are interested in IP issues related to geographic data, 
I invite you to sign up at [http://punkish.org/geoweb/index.html]. The 
workshop is free, and will be held on the campus of Microsoft Research, 
but registration for the main conference is required.

We will accept folks until our space limit is reached or until a week 
before the main conference, whichever comes first. So, apply soon if you 
want to ensure a spot.

The original announcement is below.

Puneet.


----
Law and the GeoWeb
==================

Announcing "Law and the GeoWeb," a workshop on intellectual property and 
geographic data in the internet era sponsored by Creative Commons and 
the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in conjunction with the 2011 
annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers (AAG). The 
workshop will be held on Monday, April 11, 2011 on the campus of 
Microsoft Research, and will be streamed live on the Internet.

This workshop will focus on intellectual property issues with geographic 
data, exploring situations when users and creators ranging from 
individuals to local, state and federal agencies as well as private 
companies and non-profits create, share and reuse geographic information 
from different sources over the Internet in their projects.

For more information, please see http://punkish.org/geoweb/index.html or 
search on Twitter for #lawandgeoweb

Rationale
=========

U.S Copyright Law protects tangible original works with creative content 
but the law also ensures that facts, that is, data that are discovered 
rather than invented, remain free for everyone's benefit. This 
ideas/expression dichotomy creates a lot of issues in the Internet age 
when information is very easily created, shared, used and reused.

With inexpensive computing and networking power available to everyone, 
geographic datasets are increasingly being created, shared and used by 
individuals, grassroots organizations, and private corporations. These 
data come with different expectations with regards to how they may be 
used resulting in a hodgepodge of licensing and contractual obligations 
that hinders data interoperability. Mixing data of different provenance 
creates new data with typically more restrictive licensing conditions. 
Public agencies may be unable to mix licensed data with government data 
due to restrictive licensing terms of the resultant dataset, and thus, 
may be unable to capitalize on and benefit from user-generated content.

Workshop Structure
==================

The current line-up of speakers from federal, state and local agencies, 
Creative Commons, grassroots agencies, intellectual property lawyers, 
the geospatial industry, and research and academia includes:

* Ed Arabas, National States Geographic Information Council
* Greg Babinski, King County, State of Washington
* Michael Brick, Microsoft Legal, Bing Maps
* Steve Coast, Founder, OpenStreetMap
* Kari Craun, Director, National Geospatial Technical Operations, USGS
* Ed Parsons, Chief Technologist, Google Maps, Google
* Diane Peters, General Counsel, Creative Commons
* Tim Trainor, Bureau Chief, Geography Division, US Census Bureau
* Paul Uhlir, Director, Board on Research Data and Information, National 
Research Council

The format of the workshop will encourage discussion and participation.

Participate
===========

To ensure those directly involved in the topic get a chance to attend 
the workshop, attendance is based on a short application form accessible 
at http://punkish.org/geoweb/participate/in_person/index.html.

Attendees will also be able to submit longer papers for publication in a 
special issue of the peer-reviewed, completely free and open access 
online journal "International Journal of Spatial Data Infrastructure 
Research" published by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission.

Logistics
=========

The workshop is organized in conjunction with the AAG annual meeting. 
The workshop will be held on the campus of Microsoft Research, and run 
from 1 PM to 5 PM on Monday, April 11, 2011.

There is no fee for this workshop but participants do have to register 
for the AAG Annual Meeting (This is an AAG requirement). The workshop is 
limited to 50 participants to facilitate discussion.

Contact
=======

Please contact either Puneet Kishor, Creative Commons 
[punkish at creativecommons.org] or Barbara Poore, USGS [bspoore at usgs.gov] 
if you have any questions.