[open-government] Quirky licencing issue

Wed Apr 20 20:00:13 UTC 2011

New Zealand, along with many Commonwealth countries, has the notion of Crown
copyright[1]. In general, departments provide their works for any purpose
for no fee, so long as it is not used in a misleading way. However, each
department differs in its willingness to provide its content under an open
licence.

In this specific case, I think that copyright does not apply, contract law
does. It's very difficult for the Crown to claim that it owns copyright of
business names that it holds. The other data, such as addresses, seem like
pure facts to me. However, because I am using their service, I am bound by
their terms of use under contract law. Those terms of use prohibit what I
mentioned in my last email.

Tim McNamara  |  @timClicks <http://twitter.com/timClicks>  |
timmcnamara.co.nz

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_copyright#New_Zealand

On 21 April 2011 05:55, Vítor Baptista <vitor at vitorbaptista.com> wrote:

> Hi Tim,
>
> I can't help you with your issue, but I'm curious: isn't the data made by a
> public body also public? I mean, does the Ministry of Economic Development
> owns the copyright of what it produces?
>
> Sometimes here in Brazil I face the same problem, but I simply ignore it.
> In fact, I hope whatever public body claims to own the copyright to sue me,
> so we can test this interpretation (that the data is public) in court and
> clear up this doubt.
>
> I would like to know if this isn't the case in New Zealand too.
>
> Best Regards,
>
> 2011/4/20 Tim McNamara <paperless at timmcnamara.co.nz>
>
>> I've been attempting to get data from on New Zealand's Ministry of
>> Economic Development. They have a web API for their registries of
>> companies, charities, intellectual property, banned directors and so forth.
>> Their licence for a web API key prohibits a few things. 1) I can't disclose
>> any of the API calls or XML schema details and 2) the use of their data must
>> not be used for direct marketing purposes.
>>
>> I am thinking about making denormalised data publicly available. Probably
>> through a repository such as Infochimps or Tallis's dataincubator.org.
>> However, I may be held liable if someone downstream from me uses it for
>> direct marketing purposes.
>>
>> What do people suggest? At this stage, I am thinking of providing
>> information less addresses, e.g. just company names and maybe a city. Does
>> this seem sensible?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Tim McNamara  |  @timClicks <http://twitter.com/timClicks>  |
>> timmcnamara.co.nz
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> open-government mailing list
>> open-government at lists.okfn.org
>> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-government
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Vítor Baptista
>
>
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