[od-discuss] MapLight Launches New US Money and Politics Data Set

Tue Oct 2 20:55:37 UTC 2012

To see the discussion on another list about MapLight below.

The licence is at
http://maplight.org/data/get/federal-money-and-politics-dataset/license

>From the point of view of the Open Definition the licence seems to fall on
several grounds:

(1) the free use *only* for uses that are freely available to the public is
contrary to the "redistribution" requirement

(2) the restriction on non-public uses seems contrary to "no discrimination
against fields of endeavour"

(3) the potential requirement to supply traffic statistics seems like a form
of non-financial consideration - would we regard this as a type of "other
fee" in terms of the "redistribution" requirement? (If not, is this a
problem in the Open Definition itself?)

(4) the provision for an iframe with embeddable code that delivers an
advertisement "If you are using data from the MapLight tables "U.S. Federal:
All Contributions" AND if you are displaying such data on a website with
average site traffic of more than 10,000 visits per month" is surely
problematical.  It is hard to defend as a kind of attribution (especially as
there is a separate provision for attribution), but if it is then would we
consider it "onerous" (it is beyond the forms of attribution required in
CC-BY 3.0 clause 4(b) for instance)?  It seems more like another kind of
non-financial consideration for the use of the data.

(5) in the penultimate clause the import of use restrictions set by the
Federal Election Commission requires some test of whether those restrictions
themselves lead to a non-open conclusion.

(6) it's not clear whether the licence modification clause would affect data
already downloaded.  (Although does the Open Definition actually prevent
open licence revocation?)

Regards

Andrew

From: openspending-bounces at lists.okfn.org
[mailto:openspending-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Jonathan Gray
Sent: 02 October 2012 20:18
To: Heather Morrison
Cc: open-government; OpenSpending Discussion List; civicaccess discuss
Subject: Re: [OpenSpending] [CivicAccess-discuss] Fwd: Fwd: [sunlightlabs]
MapLight Launches New US Money and Politics Data Set

My mistake, Heather!

I was under this impression from the press release, which says: "The
MapLight Money and Politics Data Set can also be downloaded or accessed via
API by citizens and journalists for free *non-commercial* use in websites,
widgets, and apps." (my emphasis).

I will forward the data license to the Open Definition Advisory Council [1],
to see if they think this is compliant with the Open Definition [2]:

http://maplight.org/data/get/federal-money-and-politics-dataset/license

J.

[1] http://opendefinition.org/advisory-council/

[2] http://opendefinition.org/

On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 9:13 PM, Heather Morrison <hgmorris at sfu.ca> wrote:

Cool resource - thanks for sharing this, Michael!

The Open Knowledge Foundation's Jonathan Gray's comment misportrays the
license for this resource.

Here is what it actually says: "free of charge for all uses that are freely
available to the public. For example, you may use the MapLight Data on free
public websites (including ad-supported websites); in news reporting
available to the public; in academic research; in blog posts; and in mobile
apps offered free of charge".
http://maplight.org/data/get/federal-money-and-politics-dataset/license

This is not a CC license, but it more closely resembles Sharealike than
Noncommercial.

best,

Heather Morrison

On 2012-10-02, at 11:57 AM, Michael Lenczner wrote:

> fyi
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Jonathan Gray <jonathan.gray at okfn.org>
> Date: Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 2:50 PM
> Subject: [OpenSpending] Fwd: [sunlightlabs] MapLight Launches New US
> Money and Politics Data Set
> To: open-government at lists.okfn.org, openspending at lists.okfn.org
>
>
> Might be of interest. Shame it is all under a non-commercial license!
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Daniel Newman <dan at maplight.org>
> Date: Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 8:23 PM
> Subject: [sunlightlabs] MapLight Launches New US Money and Politics Data
Set
> To: sunlightlabs <sunlightlabs at googlegroups.com>
>
>
> Free, Public MapLight Money and Politics Data Set Launches Today,
> Includes All Federal Campaign Contributions
>
> Hosted on Google Fusion Tables for Easy Searching and Bulk Download
> Accessible by API
>
> Oct. 2, 2012-MapLight, a nonpartisan research organization that
> reveals money's influence on politics, announces the launch of the
> MapLight Money and Politics Data Set, an easy-to-access, downloadable
> database of MapLight-enhanced Federal Elections Commission (FEC)
> campaign finance data for free public use. The data set includes all
> federal contributions, independent expenditures (including super
> PACs), and candidate and committee totals and will update regularly
> with the most current data from the FEC.
>
> "MapLight is excited to offer this critical civic data in a way that
> is more timely and accessible than ever before, said Daniel G. Newman,
> MapLights co-founder and president. "It will be wonderful to see what
> the web community builds with this continually-updated free public
> data, using the latest tools from Google Fusion Tables."
>
> Citizens, journalists, and programmers can now view, search, sort,
> filter, and visualize (with charts, line graphs, bar graphs, scatter
> plots, and timelines) federal campaign contributions using Google
> Fusion Tables. Data can also be merged with outside databases, and
> visualizations can be easily embedded into blogs, media sites, and
> more.
>
> The MapLight Money and Politics Data Set can also be downloaded or
> accessed via API by citizens and journalists for free non-commercial
> use in websites, widgets, and apps. The data set includes continually
> updated information on all current candidates for the House, Senate,
> and U.S. Presidentincluding how much each has raised and spentmaking
> it easy for election-related websites to integrate this newsworthy
> information.
>
> Read more:
http://maplight.org/maplight-launches-fec-money-and-politics-data-set
>
> -----
> Daniel Newman
> President & Co-Founder
> MapLight
>
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>
> --
> Jonathan Gray
>
> Head of Community
> The Open Knowledge Foundation
> http://www.okfn.org
>
> http://twitter.com/jwyg
>
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-- 
Jonathan Gray

Head of Community
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://www.okfn.org

http://twitter.com/jwyg

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