[od-discuss] Last day for OGL-C feedback

Thu Jan 31 09:37:17 UTC 2013

Mike/Herb

Thanks for your work on this.  I'm happy to subscribe to this draft,
particularly given the timescale.  We should offer to expand on our
suggestions as needed and to continue to help the Government of Canada on
the drafting of the licence. 

Three thoughts though:

(1) the domain name issue is a novel one; to the extent that there needs to
be protection it is already covered by the generic statement on trademarks.

(2) the complete exclusion of "personal data" raises the issue of personal
data which is a matter of public record, for instance the names of senior
officials or the names of Directors in a company registry.  This is also an
issue in OGL-UK.  Some of these downstream uses may constitute "unfair
processing" in terms (in the UK) of the Data Protection Act (eg using the
data for a junk mailing list), but that is a matter for general law not the
licence.  At the moment the licence (like the OGL) would seem not to cover
any use of personal data such as published names. 

(3) the move of the "endorsement" from condition to exemption is clever.
However all the existing exemptions are of types of information rather than
ways of using the information.  And CC-BY 3.0 has the "endorsement"
alongside "attribution" as Restrictions.  

BTW s/abscence/absence/

Regards

Andrew

-----Original Message-----
From: od-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org
[mailto:od-discuss-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Mike Linksvayer
Sent: 31 January 2013 04:53
To: Herb Lainchbury
Cc: od-discuss at lists.okfn.org; Tracey P. Lauriault
Subject: [od-discuss] Last day for OGL-C feedback

On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 9:39 AM, Mike Linksvayer <ml at gondwanaland.com>
wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 16, 2012 at 1:06 AM, Herb Lainchbury 
> <herb at dynamic-solutions.com> wrote:
>> I think the "move to no-permission" suggestion  for OGL-C is valid.  
>> I think it satisfies both the conditions of the definition and the 
>> desire to remind folks that they aren't getting extra things like 
>> endorsement.  I really hope they can move it.
>
> It is absolutely the right thing to do, regardless of which side of 
> open the current language marginally falls on.
>
> I started a draft document for feedback from this group; just an 
> outline with some open questions 
> http://opendefinition.okfnpad.org/ogl-c-draft-feedback

Hi, apologies for not pushing this forward sooner -- tomorrow (Jan 31)
-- is the last day to provide feedback on the OGL-C draft at
http://www.data.gc.ca/default.asp?lang=En&n=0D3F42BD-1

Herb blogged
http://www.herblainchbury.com/2012/12/my-submission-open-government-license.
html

I fleshed out something potentially from the OD AC in the pad above, text
copied below my signature for convenience. Edits welcome!

If we get a consensus over the next 24hrs, I'll submit feedback in the name
of the AC. If not, perhaps others will wish to make individual comments.

Note that of the issues mentioned in December on this list, I do not discuss
the following, which is an interesting, but as far as I know, entirely open
question:

What is the best practice for ensuring that all necessary rights are granted
worldwide in a license intended for use by a specific jurisdiction that does
not itself (thankfully) have particular sui generis restrictions? Stipulate
a copyright-only grant? Would not a broader grant be less confusing
worldwide? (Another commentator had suggested not mentioning sui generis
restrictions as not relevant to the Canadian context.)

Mike

DRAFT DRAFT DRAFT

Thank you for opportunity to provide feedback on the Proposed Open
Government Licence Agreement at
http://www.data.gc.ca/default.asp?lang=En&n=0D3F42BD-1

The Open Knowledge Definition (OKD) sets out principles to define 'openness'
in relation to content and data such that the "open" in open access, data,
education, and government remains meaningful and interoperable. The OKD is
led by an international Advisory Council.

We congratulate you for your excellent work, in particular we commend the
abscence of the two most problematic items found in the OGK-UK ("ensure that
you do not mislead..." and "ensure that your use of the Information does not
breach [data protection and privacy acts]"); such terms are redundant and
harm interoperability.

A similar, further improvment we suggest is to move "ensure that you do not
use the Information in a way that suggests any  official status or that the
Information Provider endorses you or your  use of the Information" from a
license condition to an exemption. This subtle change would ensure OKD
complaince, and remove an unnecessary barrier to interoperability with other
open licenses.

Finally, we have two comments about items in the exemptions section:

1) "This Licence does not grant you any right to use: ... Information
subject to other intellectual property rights, including patents and
trademarks." This might be placed even more strongly in the exemption
category if merely stating that no patents are trademark permissions are
granted, rather than removing any right to use information subject to any of
these.

2)  It is unclear what "does not grant you any right to use...domain names
of the Licensor;" means; control of a domain name is orthogonal to data
licensing, and limitations on linking to URLs in a domain are harmful to an
open Internet.

Sincerely,
Open Definition Advisory Council
opendefinition at okfn.org

_______________________________________________
od-discuss mailing list
od-discuss at lists.okfn.org
http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/od-discuss
Unsubscribe: http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/od-discuss