[okfn-discuss] what are the arguments against open data

Wed Oct 9 13:09:09 UTC 2013

The public domain issues are complex. The public domain is defined in 
U.S. law, but is not necessarily recognized in other legal 
jurisdictions. The U.S. government can theoretically claim copyright 
in other legal jurisdictions, but in my experience refrains from any 
effort to label US government data as copyrightable in deference to 
the data's public domain status under U.S. law. As I understand it, a 
non-US entity could claim copyright to US government data, and sue 
anyone who tried to use that data outside of U.S. territory. For 
example, this could apply to data obtained through the direct 
broadcast feature of some U.S. Earth observation satellites. The owner 
of a receiving station could copyright the data received from the 
satellite, even if the processing algorithms were identical to those 
used by the U.S. government.

Of course, given that users would generally go to a free and open 
source if available rather than use a restricted source, this seems 
unlikely to happen. But it certainly has happened with commercial 
media and web streaming...

Cheers, Bob

*****
Dr. Robert S. Chen
Director, Center for International Earth Science Information Network
  (CIESIN), The Earth Institute, Columbia University
Manager, NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC)
P.O. Box 1000, 61 Route 9W, Palisades, NY 10964 USA
tel. +1 845-365-8952; fax +1 845-365-8922
e-mail: bchen at ciesin.columbia.edu
CIESIN web site: http://www.ciesin.columbia.edu
SEDAC web site: http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu

On Tue, 8 Oct 2013, Gene Shackman wrote:

  2. US govt data. Well, the US copyright office does say that works 
of the US govt are not subject to US copyright laws. But they also 
say, and now I can't find it, that when US govt works are used outside 
of the US, the US govt may claim copyright. Not exactly public domain.