[od-discuss] Schema for open licenses

[Kent Mewhort]

Herb, the text to which you refer in the PDDL is in the preamble; the
text with respect to CC0 is only on the "about" page.  Neither of these
are likely to have the effect of shifting legal liability or
responsibility, especially given the use of the soft modal "should".

I think, as Mike mentioned, the obsolete CC-*-1.0 licenses are the only
common open licenses to take this approach, so it probably wouldn't be
too beneficial to include this categorization in a schema.

I also doubt we'll see new licenses take this approach.  I agree that
the publishers of data are almost always in the best position to analyze
whether they actually hold the rights; however, I still don't think it's
feasible to shift the legal responsibility to them.  This is essentially
asking the publisher to offer a warranty or copyright indemnity of
almost limitless scope (given that an open license offers the data to
users for ANY use whatsoever, including in business contexts which could
involve numerous copies with very high damages for an accounting of
profits or statutory infringements where a work turns out to be
infringing).

It's simply too much unknown risk and would deter publication (or, more
likely, would deter use of such a license).  Keep in mind that
copyrighted content could easily creep into a dataset without the
publisher being aware of it.  For example, photographs could
inadvertently include substantial amounts of other works that turn out
to infringe copyright.

Kent

-- 
Kent Mewhort
Staff Lawyer
CIPPIC, the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic
University of Ottawa, Faculty of Law
57 Louis Pasteur St.
Ottawa, Ontario  K1N 6N5

Ph:  (613)562-5800 (ext.2556)
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On 20/06/12 02:12 PM, Herb Lainchbury wrote:
> Apologies, in trying to express the concept, perhaps "put
> responsibility on the publisher" is wrong on my part.  The section I
> was referring to is at the bottom of "THE LICENSE" section of PDDL
> where it states:
> "This document permanently and irrevocably makes the Work available to
> the public for any use of any kind, and it should not be used unless
> the rightsholder is prepared for this to happen."
>
> On review I see CC0 has a somewhat similar (but perhaps less ominous?)
> clause: 
> "You should only apply CC0 to your own work, unless you have the
> necessary rights to apply CC0 to another person’s work."
>
> I don't know if these are equivalent or if in fact PDDL is shifting
> responsibility.
>
> I was not aware of this aspect of the CC-*-1.0.  That's exactly what I
> am talking about.
>
> As a consumer of data I think it's valuable and would like to see the
> concept captured in the metadata, with CC-*-1.0 being one that is
> explicitly satisfying the condition and I am not sure which others
> would, but I assume there would be a process by which that could be
> determined.
>
> H
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 10:28 AM, Mike Linksvayer <ml at gondwanaland.com
> <mailto:ml at gondwanaland.com>> wrote:
>
>     On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 10:33 AM, Herb Lainchbury
>     <herb at dynamic-solutions.com <mailto:herb at dynamic-solutions.com>>
>     wrote:
>     > For this reason, I feel that licenses that put the
>     responsibility on the
>     > publisher ( such as PDDL ) are superior to licenses that
>     > simply relinquish rights ( such as CC0 and CC-by ) for the
>     purposes of
>     > publishing open data.
>
>     Could you point out where PDDL puts responsibility on the publisher
>     for clearing rights? AFAICT it is just less explicit than CC0 (but not
>     CC-BY* > 1.0) about disclaiming responsibility. They all disclaim
>     warranty of title. CC0 adds an explicit disclaimer of responsibility
>     for clearing third party rights.
>
>     CC-*-1.0 are the only licenses I know of that actually put
>     responsibility on the licensor, see
>     https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/1.0/legalcode 5(a)(i). This
>     was dropped in subsequent versions as people didn't want to incur
>     additional risk when sharing, see discussion at
>     http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/4216 and
>     http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/3681
>
>     Mike
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Herb Lainchbury
> Dynamic Solutions Inc.
> www.dynamic-solutions.com <http://www.dynamic-solutions.com>
> http://twitter.com/herblainchbury