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

Wed Jul 30 11:42:38 UTC 2014

So this is a complete tangent off of the main conversation but something michael said got me thinking- 
"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."
So I have a general question for everyone- Are there individuals or organisations that take archaeology data and re-sell it?
I have heard of sellers of consumer data e.g. Facebook selling user info etc. but I have never heard of people taking excel sheets of pot sherds and reselling it. I was thinking maybe some geological data, LiDAR, or aerial photography might be of use in other disciplines. Has anyone had any experience or heard of anyone re-selling archaeological data or data collected for the purpose of archaeology to third parties or I guess other archaeologists?
I know some HERs charge to access their data but that is the only example I can think of.
In my experience we tend to buy in outside data and not produce much that could be re-sold but I might just live a sheltered life.
Would love to hear about anyone's experiences with this.
Doug

Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2014 11:20:02 +0100
From: michael.charno at york.ac.uk
To: open-archaeology at lists.okfn.org
Subject: Re: [open-archaeology] Open licenses for archaeological data matter: the case of AustArch

    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
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