[okfn-discuss] Data put under CC-BY in MashupAustralia competition

[Jonathan Gray]

Absolutely Cameron! Big kudos to the Australian government for opening
up so much data! Of course the main thing now is that the competition
generates compelling services and applications - that will in some way
be useful for ordinary citizens.

I was mainly curious to follow up the conversation that you started
with Mia - and to see what others thought. I figured this list, of all
lists, would be a pretty good place to continue the discussion. I am
not an expert, and would be interested to hear what lawyers and legal
experts thought about this case, for future reference.

Jonathan

On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 3:03 PM, Cameron Neylon
<cameron.neylon at stfc.ac.uk> wrote:
> Hi All
>
> Yes, there are some potential issues. I think however the important thing
> here is to make sure that people get the kudos for actually liberating this
> data at all. Getting this out of governments, and the Australian government
> in particular is tough, so some concerns about whether the logistics are
> correct, should be seen in the light of what is a really big achievement,
> both in Australia and increasingly in other governments.
>
> Its a move in the right direction but we shouldn't let our geeky obsession
> with licences overtake the support for the principles.
>
> Cheers
>
> Cameron
>
>
> On 01/10/2009 13:59, "Jonathan Gray" <jonathan.gray at okfn.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I recently blogged about the MashupAustralia competition, which was
>> announced yesterday:
>>
>>
>> http://blog.okfn.org/2009/10/01/australian-government-releases-open-data-for-m
>> ashupaustralia-competition/
>>
>> The competition is putting out lots of open data to encourage innovate
>> re-uses - which is great news!
>>
>> Lots of the data is being released under CC-BY. On the competition
>> home page, Cameron Neylon raises the question of whether this is
>> appropriate for data, sparking off debate with Mia Garlick, organiser
>> of competition and ex-Creative Commons counsel:
>>
>>
>> http://gov2.net.au/blog/2009/09/30/your-invitation-to-mashupaustralia/#comment
>> -1818
>>
>> Her basic argument seems to me to be that CC licenses are not "mere
>> (copyright) licenses" but are also contracts - in which case CC-BY
>> offers legal protection. Its seems that the rationale for doing this
>> is that government departments want attribution.
>>
>> Would be great to have thoughts and opinions of people here!
>
> --
> Scanned by iCritical.
>



-- 
Jonathan Gray

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