[euopendata] Government Open data Licenses - reasons for rolling your own?

Thu Jan 13 14:46:57 GMT 2011

As I have understood it the core of the matter is that regular CC licenses
are not well suited for use with databases and datasets. A great deal of the
public data relevant for opening would be in just such shapes, so another
license is needed. The CC-Zero and PDDL could be used for these datasets,
but they do not offer a data-owner the possibility to apply practical
limitations in the license, such as the aforementioned accessibility and
delivery limitations.

A accessibility limitation that might be wanted could for instance be a that
while the data is provided free and open for use from an open public
webservice, this is only for low traffic use. If you are a commercial
service that get very popular and put a high load on the service you might
be required to mirror the data yourself or pay for usage to the data host,
or just be required to cache any data you fetch for a minimum time interval.
A delivery limitation could be that while the data is open and free the
organization that provides it has certain obligations about the data that it
must ensure is followed. Such obligations could entail an accessibility
limitation that the data must be within a level of freshness when provided
through a third-party service. An example could be that a service providing
information that could have health-effects (for instance mussels toxicity
warnings) might be required to always provide fresh data, last updated
within for instance the past 10 minutes or the past hour from the open
service, as stale outdated information could lead to disease or even death.

Another important issue is the topic of accreditation (BY clause). How does
one reasonably give credit to thousands of contributors to a database? This
also is a reason that a license for databases might have some custom
provisions to allow practical reuse of the data without getting bogged down
in such trivial matters. Next we also have issues on who carries the
responsibility for third party usage of the data, i.e. if something goes
wrong can the data-owner avoid being held accountable? What if the data was
changed by the third party, who is then responsible? Will any corrections be
given back to the community?

 A related topic is non-anonymity, where the data provider can demand
registration by anyone wanting to use their data and for what purpose.

The suggestion from the Ministry of Government Administration is to develop
a clause-buffet, like the CC BY-NC-SA system, but specifically suited for
datasets and databases and tailored to fit Norwegian law while including
provisions for the above limitations. 

Also a custom license for Norwegian data-sets provided by a Norwegian
ministry might mitigate some of the perceive risk in opening data for other
government branches, and through this make it simpler for them to open their
data since they with an officially sanctioned licenses can’t so easily be
held responsible if the chosen license isn’t up to snuff when it becomes the
topic of a court-matter. This is important because most of the hesitation in
opening Norwegian public sector data is not because of an unwillingness to
open the data in itself, but rather due to fears of the consequences and
administration that such an opening could entail.

Regards

Svein-Magnus Sørensen

( +47 913 04 810  ~  sveins at tihlde.org  

 www.menneske.org <http://www.menneske.org/>   ~  twitter.com/sveinmagnus

From: Prodromos Tsiavos [mailto:prodromos.tsiavos at gmail.com] 
Sent: 12. januar 2011 16:49
To: Svein-Magnus Sørensen
Cc: Peter Krantz; euopendata
Subject: Re: [euopendata] Government Open data Licenses - reasons for
rolling your own?

This is a very interesting point Svein-Magnus. Can you please elaborate on
the issues of accessibility and delivery as well as on the specific
Norwegian Law provisions you are referring to? Couldn't these be covered by
standard public licences or other legal instruments, e.g. Terms of Service/
licenses that make reference to them (e.g. the UK OGL allows relicensing
under CCBY 3.0 or ODC BY)

All the best,
pRo

On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 2:55 PM, Svein-Magnus Sørensen <sveins at tihlde.org>
wrote:

The rationale for a Norwegian license is partly explained in this blog post
and its comments:
http://data.norge.no/blogg/2010/08/en-klausulbuffet-av-vilkar/ (in
Norwegian)

In summary the CC and PDDL licenses lack provisions for accessibility and
delivery, and the licenses must also be in line with current Norwegian law
which is somewhat different from that in other countries.

mvh.
Svein-Magnus Sørensen

S +47 913 04 810  ~  sveins at tihlde.org 
 www.menneske.org  ~  twitter.com/sveinmagnus

-----Original Message-----
From: euopendata-bounces at lists.okfn.org
[mailto:euopendata-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Peter Krantz
Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2011 3:24 PM
To: euopendata
Subject: [euopendata] Government Open data Licenses - reasons for rolling
your own?

Hi!

At least two countries (UK nad Norway) have, or are in the process of,
creating a national license for open government data re-use [1][2].
This contributes to license proliferation considering that there seem
to be many similar existing licenses (e.g. CC or Open Database
License). Does anyone have any pointers to background material that
explains the rationale for creating your own license instead of using
existing licenses?

Also, it is likely that existing legislation already covers re-use of
government data in many scenarios. How do these licenses fit into
existing legal frameworks?

Regards,

Peter

[1]: UK:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/open-governme
<http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/open-governm
e%0Ant-licence.htm> 
nt-licence.htm
[2]: Norway:
http://data.norge.no/blogg/2010/11/oppdrag-2-norsk-standardlisens-for-tilgan
<http://data.norge.no/blogg/2010/11/oppdrag-2-norsk-standardlisens-for-tilga
n%0Ag-til-offentlige-data/> 
g-til-offentlige-data/

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