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

[Giles Lane]

Hi Rufus,

Non-profit and non-commercial relate to two separate situations which 
I'll try to elucidate below:

Non-profit (in UK terms) suggests that the business or organisation is 
registered at Companies House as being a company 'limited by 
guarantee', i.e. a company that has no shareholders and the directors 
of which are barred from taking profits. Such a company/organisation is 
able to trade/act commercially in exactly the same way as any other 
company, and profits (surpluses) it makes must however be reinvested in 
the operations of the company and not disbursed to shareholders or 
employees. Non-profit can also refer to charities and charitable trusts 
as well as voluntary organisations.

Non-commercial means that the activity must not be a 'trade' and no 
financial transaction must pass between the parties involved.

Therefore non-profit, non-commercial use would be limited to an 
organisation or group (such as a one composed of volunteers) that does 
not seek to make profits from the activity, which itself will not 
involve any kind of financial transaction. This would not restrict the 
group from receiving donations/grant funding or sponsorship etc to do 
the activity, but probably would restrict them from running a website 
with advertising as that would be deemed a commercial activity.

NB. these descriptions are presented as i understand them so should not 
be taken as legally correct advice in any way -- if in doubt seek 
clarification (in the UK) from the DTI, Companies House or the 
Charities Commission.

best,
Giles

On 7 May 2005, at 13:37, Rufus Pollock wrote:

> 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.
>
>
>
>
>
>
----------
Giles Lane
Proboscis

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