[geo-discuss] Creative Commons-style License for GIS data

Sat May 7 12:37:08 UTC 2005

Giles this is great. Comments below.

Regards,

Rufus

Giles Lane wrote:
> I mentioned during my talk on Thursday's panel that I'd recently 
> proposed a Non-Profit, Non-Commercial Creative Commons-style license 
> to the Ordnance Survey as a model they might like to consider 
> investigating for providing free public access to their GIS data.
> 
> Rufus has posted a copy of the document on the Open GeoData page for 
> people to download -- I hope this is useful in stimulating  further 
> discussion: http://www.okfn.org/geo/geodata_cc_license_draft.rtf
> 
> * I was helped in drafting this by the Programme in Comparative Law
> at the University of Oxford, who led the project to harmonise
> Creative Commons with UK Law: 
> http://www.creativecommons.org.uk/about.php

Disclosure: I am also part of the CC-UK team that led the adaptation of 
the CC licence to UK law -- though I was not primarily involved in the 
legal work.

The licence is based on CC nc-by-sa I assume. And all the real beef of 
the changes to a std are in the preamble i think (?). I have pasted the 
preamble below and will interleave my comments.

General points:

   1. the legal code is very copyright oriented. I don't know exactly how
it would work for data (which I presume you might also get from the OS).
   2. This also means you have stuff on e.g. public performance or 
fictionalization which may seem a little out of place in a licence for 
map data (but then again ... perhaps not)

Pasted version of preamble:
> National Mapping Agency: Access to GIS datasets Proposed Creative 
> Commons-style License [Draft Version: 1.1 * Date: 19/4/2005 * Author:
>  Giles Lane]
> 
> Non-Profit, Non-Commercial Public Accessible
> 
> You are free: • to use GIS data for non profit and non-commercial 
> services accessible by the public • to make derivative works that use
>  GIS data for non profit and non-commercial services

What is the distinction between non-profit and non-commercial? I think
it would be good to clarify that particularly if it is possible to have,
say, commercial non-profit use ....

> Under the following conditions:
> 
> Attribution. You must give the National Mapping Agency credit 
> wherever GIS data is used: [standard non-commercial copyright notice 
> here]
> 
> Non-commercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes.

This is obviously the crucial para. Looking in the legal code section
all there seems to bwe in further definition is:

"c. You may not exercise any of the rights granted to You in Section 3
above in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed towards
commercial advantage or monetary compensation"

This is fine for me but I don't know whether the OS would want to have a
better idea (for example what happens if you run a website with OS data
and sell advertizing space ....)

> Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you 
> may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to 
> this one.
> 
> • For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the 
> license terms of this work. • Any of these conditions can be waived 
> if you get permission from the copyright holder.

I assume these two points refer to the licence as a whole (i.e. you must
make others aware of the terms when you reuse or redistribute and you
can get a waiver for any part of the licence).

> Your fair use and other rights are in no way affected by the above.