[open-archaeology] Open licenses for archaeological data matter: the case of AustArch

Michael Charno michael.charno at york.ac.uk
Wed Jul 30 10:20:02 UTC 2014 

Hi List, token ADS staff member here. Just wanted to clarify (and 
defend) a few things related to all of this.

First of all in reply to Stefano's original suggestion that we don't 
allow professional archaeologists to re-use our data.  Our T&C's clearly 
state:

>     By research we mean any work undertaken for the advancement of
>     archaeological knowledge and/or the understanding of the historic
>     environment. Such work may be commercially sponsored or it may be
>     funded by academic bodies or learned societies, or it may be
>     unsupported: but it is a condition of use that the results are
>     placed in the public domain and are made freely available for
>     others to use according to the normal principles of professional
>     and academic practice.

The slight contradiction is later we use the term "non-commercial" in 
the document, which when our T&C's were drafted almost 20 years ago did 
not have the meaning it does today.  The AHRC lawyers that drafted our 
T&C's defined this as not-for-resale as opposed to the CC definition of 
non-commercial.  It is our fault for not more actively asserting this 
and making this more clear to our users and Open Data proponents such as 
yourselves. We are going to be publishing a CC style shorthand license 
to make this more human readable and easier to understand.

In reply to Ant's snippet, there is no "NC clause" in our T&C's other 
than using the term "non-commercial" (which as i said has a very 
different definitions in the two licenses).  That hardly equates to a 
very loaded implication of having an "NC clause".  An analogy would be 
the meaning of "pants" in Britain and America, there is a clear 
definition in each context what "pants" means, but it would be silly for 
British people to be upset at Americans for wearing "pants" in public.  
Most of the rest of the assertion in that snippet is FUD in my opinion 
and is only focused on a narrow and incorrect definition of one term 
rather than the whole document.

More generally it should also be emphasised that we are first and 
foremost an archive (with a web front end).  The ADS T&Cs are companions 
to the deposit license, which has to take into account the preservation 
and long-term archival activities in addition to the dissemination.  
This is something that the CC licenses don't suitably cover at all.  
This is also part of the reason that we have been hesitant to move to CC 
licenses or a mixed model.  From a management standpoint it is much 
easier to deal with one license regime rather than multiple or a mixed 
models.  We also don't see much advantage over our current license to 
the CC ones, other than a small group of people being able to take data 
we host and re-sell it.  We take on board that we don't technically fit 
the "Open Data" definition that Stefano pointed out, but in our hearts 
we will always be part of the Open Data movement...

All of this is as we at the ADS understand it, based on what the 
original AHRC lawyers told us.  And as we don't have a legal people on 
payroll or immediate access to them, we will have to assume the guidance 
and advice we originally received still holds true.

In summary, we are aware our T&Cs cause confusion and it is our 
responsibility to clarify them more, which this conversation is helping 
us to do.  We also understand the desire for standardization of licenses 
and language, but at this stage it would be very costly and 
time-consuming to make wholesale and retroactive changes.  If we were 
starting today we would have most likely drafted the deposit license to 
be a companion or compatible with the CC licenses.  We also regret 
having the term "non-commercial" being used in our license, but we will 
better highlight our definition as there is clearly misunderstanding 
amongst the community.

Hope this all makes sense and alleviates some of the issues/concerns, 
now if you don't mind i'm just going to get my flak jacket on and 
retreat to the ADS bunker...

michael

___________________________________________________________

Michael Charno
Lead Applications Developer

Archaeology Data Service
Department of Archaeology
University of York                  Tel: +44 (0)1904 323967
King's Manor                        Fax: +44 (0)1904 323939
York
YO1 7EP

Disclaimer  http://www.york.ac.uk/docs/disclaimer/email.htm
___________________________________________________________

On 30/07/14 09:19, Bevan, Andrew wrote:
> Agreed that this is an important issue. Anyone mind if we informally point a couple of people at ADS to this list discussion to get their input?
>
>   Andy
>
>
> On 30 Jul 2014, at 02:34, Ben Marwick <bmarwick at uw.edu> wrote:
>
>> I know the lead author and have raised this question with him. He's looking into it and notes that the main reason for the choice was that the ADS license was recommended by the Internet Archaeology journal. He has made the same dataset available elsewhere on the web (with no license).
>>
>> On 29/7/2014 11:53 PM, Stefano Costa wrote:
>>> Dear all,
>>> this list is admittedly not very active, however I'd like to share some
>>> observations I made about the terms of service of the Archaeology Data
>>> Service, that started from a discussion on Twitter:
>>>
>>> http://archaeology.okfn.org/2014/07/29/open-licenses-for-archaeological-data-matter-the-case-of-austarch/
>>>
>>> In short: I think custom licenses such as the ADS terms of use are
>>> archaeological remains and should be replaced by standard, open
>>> licenses. As Colleen Morgan succinctly put it:
>>>
>>> 	What about the professional archaeologists among us?
>>> 	They need media [and data] too.
>>>
>>> Perhaps we could gather more comments on this and see if there is
>>> momentum towards a wider action?
>>>
>>> All the best, ciao
>>> Stefano
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> open-archaeology mailing list
>>> open-archaeology at lists.okfn.org
>>> https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-archaeology
>>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/open-archaeology
>>>
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