[okfn-discuss] Data put under CC-BY in MashupAustralia competition

Thu Oct 1 14:21:07 BST 2009

Absolutely Cameron! Big kudos to the Australian government for opening
up so much data! Of course the main thing now is that the competition
generates compelling services and applications - that will in some way
be useful for ordinary citizens.

I was mainly curious to follow up the conversation that you started
with Mia - and to see what others thought. I figured this list, of all
lists, would be a pretty good place to continue the discussion. I am
not an expert, and would be interested to hear what lawyers and legal
experts thought about this case, for future reference.

Jonathan

On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 3:03 PM, Cameron Neylon
<cameron.neylon at stfc.ac.uk> wrote:
> Hi All
>
> Yes, there are some potential issues. I think however the important thing
> here is to make sure that people get the kudos for actually liberating this
> data at all. Getting this out of governments, and the Australian government
> in particular is tough, so some concerns about whether the logistics are
> correct, should be seen in the light of what is a really big achievement,
> both in Australia and increasingly in other governments.
>
> Its a move in the right direction but we shouldn't let our geeky obsession
> with licences overtake the support for the principles.
>
> Cheers
>
> Cameron
>
>
> On 01/10/2009 13:59, "Jonathan Gray" <jonathan.gray at okfn.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I recently blogged about the MashupAustralia competition, which was
>> announced yesterday:
>>
>>
>> http://blog.okfn.org/2009/10/01/australian-government-releases-open-data-for-m
>> ashupaustralia-competition/
>>
>> The competition is putting out lots of open data to encourage innovate
>> re-uses - which is great news!
>>
>> Lots of the data is being released under CC-BY. On the competition
>> home page, Cameron Neylon raises the question of whether this is
>> appropriate for data, sparking off debate with Mia Garlick, organiser
>> of competition and ex-Creative Commons counsel:
>>
>>
>> http://gov2.net.au/blog/2009/09/30/your-invitation-to-mashupaustralia/#comment
>> -1818
>>
>> Her basic argument seems to me to be that CC licenses are not "mere
>> (copyright) licenses" but are also contracts - in which case CC-BY
>> offers legal protection. Its seems that the rationale for doing this
>> is that government departments want attribution.
>>
>> Would be great to have thoughts and opinions of people here!
>
> --
> Scanned by iCritical.
>

-- 
Jonathan Gray

Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://www.okfn.org