[euopendata] Moral clauses in data terms & conditions?

Wed May 28 06:37:24 UTC 2014

hi Michael,

I have seen those clauses in many government cases, but legally they are
unnecessary and even void (risking voiding the entire license) I'd say:

What is illegal is illegal regardless of what a data license says.
Copyright or creative commons licenses normally also don't explicitly say
that you cannot copy something to use it for illegal purposes. Illegality
is covered by definition by other laws, as that is what makes something
illegal ('outside the law') in the first place. Also if I do something
illegal with some data are you or the state going to sue me for license
infringement? I think not.

Second, immoral is not a legal term and highly ambiguous and subjective.
Unless it is written down in law (which makes it illegal, not immoral).

Third, open government data has its own legal basis, usually in freedom of
information acts (FOIA) and EU PSI Directive (in any case it builds on what
is already public data, and then adresses reuse of that public data). In
none of those, is 'illegal reuse of data' a ground to deny making data
public. The reason (next to illegal already being illegal anyway) is that
under FOIA gov data providers are not allowed to demand me to state my
interest. Asking me 'what are you going to use it for', which you
implicitly try to do with a 'no illegal' clause, is simply not allowed.
Something is public by the nature of a gov decision, and then reuse can be
allowed, again by nature of a gov decision. (And by mid 2015, it is only a
decision on making something public or not. Reuse is no longer a decision
factor) The potential reader or user of that data is not an allowed general
factor in deciding on publication.

What triggers your interest in these type of useless licenses and
specifically in connection with open data? And what would you want to teach
in that regard?
Because in general using data for less than legit or not so moral purposes
is not tied to 'open' in any relevant way I'd say.

Of course data can be used for all kinds of nefarious reasons. That is
generally true for any technology such as kitchen knives.
And it does happen, but if I would hazard a guess I would guess it happens
mostly with data that wasn't acquired legally (such as collecting personal
information against privacy law stipulations), sometimes in combination
with public information. Or acting on made up/false information (banks,
insurers). And by other entities other than the public such as NSA, Chinese
army, etc.

I would be interested in clearly abusive reuse examples (I have seen ironic
prototypes of 'burglar apps' matching the '500 richest people in the
country' list with real estate prizes and geo-locations) that you come
across.
Interestingly enough in the past decades of growing reuse of government
data I haven't come across any scandals concerning open data. You?

best,
Ton

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Interdependent Thoughts
Ton Zijlstra

ton at tonzijlstra.eu
+31-6-34489360

http://zylstra.org/blog

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On Tue, May 27, 2014 at 11:44 PM, Michael Hörz <hoerz at michael-hoerz.de>wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I'm presently teaching computer science students in Berlin on the subject
> of open data.
>
> We will be looking at the "far side" of open data (i.e. using open data
> for not so good things).
>
> In this context I'm interested in examples of moral clauses in terms &
> conditions for using data.
>
> Such as "not use any of the Information for an illegal or immoral purpose"
> (http://dashboard.glasgow.gov.uk/ckansupport/open.glasgow.
> gov.uk_Licence_version%201.0.htm)
>
> So if you know of such terms, especially with interesting wording, please
> share them.
>
> Thanks a lot,
> Michael
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