[okfn-discuss] Re: Open data licensing

Mon May 28 16:09:10 UTC 2007

Paul Miller wrote:
> Nate, all
> 
> In a previous role, I funded some research to look at the applicability of
> CC to (UK) public sector resources.
> 
> The report, from 2005, is here - http://www.intrallect.com/cie-study/

Thanks for the pointer Paul -- I remember taking a look at this when it 
first came out. What really hits me on a re-read is the excellence of 
its basic recommendations (included below) which are simple, clear and 
very much in line with the philosophy of the Open Knowledge Definition.

~rufus

## From Page 5 of the CIE Study

Recommendation (pg 25): CIE organisations adopting a policy for 
encouraging reuse should consider basing it on the following principles

  1. Resources should be made available for reuse unless there is a 
justifiable reason why they should not.

  2. The reuse of resources should be as unconstrained as possible. For 
example,
  resources should be made available for commercial reuse as well as 
non- commercial reuse wherever possible.

  3. The range of permitted uses of resources should be as wide as 
possible, for example, including the right to modify the resource and 
produce derivative works from it.

  4. Reuse should be encouraged by permitting others to redistribute 
resources on a world-wide basis.

  5. Resources should be made directly available and discoverable 
electronically whenever possible.

  6. The conditions of use for each resource should be linked directly 
to the resource so that they are reusable at the point of discovery.

Recommendation (pg 27): Creative Commons licences are suitable for the 
publication of many resources produced by public sector organisations, 
including those produced by organisations in the Common Information 
Environment, because the baseline conditions and choices can meet many 
situations. CIE Organisations adopting a policy of making resources 
available for reuse should use the following set of Creative Commons 
licences to meet their licensing principles unless there is a clear 
reason for not doing so:

   * Attribution-only (BY) licence meets the most general conditions of
   principle 2
   * Attribution-Non-commercial-Share-alike (BY-NC-SA) licence meets the
   more specific conditions of principle 3
   * Attribution-Non-commercial-No-derivates (BY-NC-ND) licence can be 
used if modification is to be prevented

Recommendation (pg 30): CIE organisations that are publishing materials 
for reuse should use Creative Commons wherever possible but when 
resources cannot be licensed under Creative Commons the first choice 
should be another commonly used licence such as Creative Archive or 
Click-Use, in order to minimise the number of licences used.  However 
some resources may exist under conditions which would not allow a 
standard licence to be used and these resources could be made available 
under a customised licence. Customised licences should be based on 
Creative Commons baseline rights as much as possible.