[od-discuss] Up and Coming: Open Government Licence in Canada (OGL-C)

Fri Dec 7 00:28:14 GMT 2012

On Thu, Dec 6, 2012 at 11:31 AM, Tracey P. Lauriault <tlauriau at gmail.com> wrote:
> Greetings all;
>
> Canada is proposing to adopt this new licence OGL-C licence in 2013
> and on Rufus's request, I am forwarding information about it to this
> list to solicit your thoughts.
>
> The following link is to Teresa Scassa's blog post on it.  She is
> Canada's Research Chair in Information Law, Faculty of Law, Ottawa
> University (http://www.commonlaw.uottawa.ca/en/teresa-scassa.html).
> Her post will take you to the relevant documents.
>
> http://www.teresascassa.ca/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=113:canadas-new-draft-open-government-licence&Itemid=83

The OGL-C draft http://www.data.gc.ca/default.asp?lang=En&n=0D3F42BD-1
doesn't contain the two sentences in UK OGL (and very similar in BC
OGL) identified as problematic in previous discussions here:

* ensure that you do not mislead others or misrepresent the
Information or its source;
* ensure that your use of the Information does not breach the Data
Protection Act 1998 or the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC
Directive) Regulations 2003.

That's great! I don't think the existing license agreement
http://www.data.gc.ca/default.asp?lang=En&n=46D15882-1 contains
similar either.

I hope others take a close look, but my initial guess is that both the
draft and existing agreement might be Open Definition conformant.

A few other thoughts, more like wild speculations:

First, something about the UK OGL that I hadn't noticed before, and is
contained in the OGL-C draft as well:

    "This Licence does not grant you any right to use: ... Information
subject to other intellectual property rights, including patents and
trademarks."

Is this effectively granting narrower permissions than an instrument
which merely does not grant any patent or trademark rights? Compare
with, for example, http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/by/1.0/ which
"does not cover ... patents ... trademarks"; but it doesn't say does
not grant you any rights if these exist.

In the same "does not grant you any right to use" section, only in the
OGL-C draft:

    "the name, crest, logos, other official symbols or domain names of
the Licensor;"

I don't know what "domain names" could mean. Or rather, seems
technically irrelevant, or an unintended restriction on linking.

Regarding Teresa Scassa's comment:

    "Since there is no database right in Canada, it makes no sense for
this term to be included"

May there never be a database restriction in Canada. It may well make
sense to not mention "database right", but if I were thinking about
the maximum use of Canadian open government data, I don't know if I'd
explicitly only grant a copyright license either -- my guess is the
result will be some small number of people pulling their hair out
trying to discern whether the Canadian government holds database
rights in their jurisdiction, or worry about situations where OGL-C
databases are combined with other databases in places where database
rights exists, and the like -- these may be crazy questions, but
people who collaborate internationally must be excused for
entertaining them.

That brings me to a final observation -- the existing agreement is not
specific about copyright or other regime rights are granted under, and
further does not say there is no grant if patents and trademarks
apply. It only says other permission needed to use official symbols
and such. I wonder if in this way the existing agreement might be more
generous and more clear (less need to wonder about whether no
permission granted due to other rights) than the OGL-C draft, even
though the latter's language is an obvious readability improvement.

> I am new to this list, and in the event that you may not be aware, I
> am providing you with the link to the Canadian Internet Public Policy
> Clinic (CIPPIC) at Ottawa University, which does many wonderful things
> in the public interest, one of which is examining open licenses -
> http://www.cippic.ca/en/open-licensing.
>
> I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

I encourage others to look closely at this.

Mike