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

Tue Oct 2 21:17:34 UTC 2012

Agree with all of Andrew's analysis.

Agree the effect of termination and modification of terms at any time
on use of already downloaded data not entirely clear, but I take that
to be in poor spirit, at the very least. As to whether a revocable
license is OKD compliant, I'd say no. It isn't explicit, but maybe
should be in the forthcoming OKD revision. If one likes the related
(as OKD is derived from the OSD which is derived from the DFSG)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian_Free_Software_Guidelines#debian-legal_tests_for_DFSG_compliance
revocation completely fails the desert island and tentacles of evil
tests.

Surprised anyone would conclude " This is not a CC license, but it
more closely resembles Sharealike than Noncommercial." Although it
allows use on sites with ads, no fees are allowed, and there's no
ShareAlike-like term.

Though these terms clearly aren't open, I'm fairly curious how they
came up with them.

Mike

On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 1:55 PM, Andrew Stott <andrew.stott at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 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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