[okfn-discuss] Data that service users consider private, but want to publish from the service

[Iain Emsley]

>
> How broad is as "personal in nature" for the purposes of part 1. of
> the Open Software Services Definition? It seems to only include secret
> data - for example personal emails, or my private calendar.
>
> There seems to me a category of data which is personal/private, but
> where the data is not secret. It is just the user only wants it
> using in ways they control. For example:
>
> 1) My own blogs posts are data that I'm happy to be publically viewable,
> but could be sufficiently personal I don't want to give them away as
> open data (e.g. I might want to tell a personal anecdote in context on
> my website, but not want it to appear as lines in a broadway musical)
>   

Sure in that case you wouldn't be using an 'open' license (or even a 
'non-commercial' type license for that matter).


> 2) I might want to share photos of myself on a photo sharing site for
> my friends and anybody in the world to look at there, but for privacy
> reasons not want them to be taken and used as the next face of
> l'Oreal.
>   

Sure and again you'd then want to steer clear of an open license.


> Which leads to the more general question - if the users of a service 
> want to manage their own data with the service, but they want that
> data to be neither open nor secret (but somewhere inbetween), can the
> service still be OSSD?
>   

>Hmmm. My first instinct is to say yes. However, i'm concerned this might 
>allow end-runs around the intent of the definition. For example, what 
>about YouTube. If I remember the ToS there basically give YT the right 
>to redistribute but no-one else.

>Nevertheless, this an example where the material is user's material and 
>so I think we should stick to the line that has been drawn. It is only 
>if it data used as part of the service and *not* supplied by users that 
>one has an obligation to make it openly available (remember that user 
>data must be made available for users to extract in an automatable and 
>complete manner though).

To my mind, the original data source would need to deal with the user opt-in and opt-out in terms of any data passed on. They would need to make any choice on *personal* data explicit and also let the user know that data will be shared, machine readable, and open. This was partly what was in my mind in an earlier post regarding the OSSD. I've just started some research for work in the area of personal/professional data but I just wonder if the Open Definitions need to have a stricter definition on this to ensure legal compliance and grey areas which Rufus points out might be exploited in terms of first entry and subsequent use? 

If the user were to explicitly opt-in to openness, then add them to the data set that is reshared. However if it is a split, then the service is not truly open under the terms of  data sharing since not all data can be read under the terms of the OSSD or OKD. 


Iain

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