[open-bibliography] Orphan data

Fri Mar 2 09:24:09 UTC 2012

I think similar issues may well come up again. As long as the question of whether the data in question is subject to copyright or not, it seems to me that there is uncertainty on the part of any publishing organisation as to whether they have the right to license the data (my understanding for CC, and presumably ODC licenses, is that you can only apply the license if you are the copyright holder?)

This is always going to come down to some assessment of risks - and I always try to frame discussions about the release and use of bibliographic data in this way. To assert CC0 when you aren't sure you have the copyright is a risk to the licensor. To use the data even though there is no explicit license for reuse is a risk to the user. I'd say the level of risk is probably about the same (I'm with Peter in terms of his assessment of it - very very low), but in the case of the risk being realised, the potential impact of being the 'publisher' as opposed to 'consumer' is probably higher - so the risk assessment is subtly different.

While I would certainly encourage this organisation to take the risk as Peter suggests (and at the very least, do a risk assessment to ensure they understand the issues), I wonder if publishing with a 'no known restrictions' type statement might be another way of doing this. The Flickr Commons use the statement "No known copyright restrictions"  http://www.flickr.com/commons/usage/. I realise this is not the ideal, and I guess some will be very much against the idea, but where copyright is unclear it is difficult to know what other statement can be made where organizations or individuals assess the risk of asserting rights to be too high.

Owen

Owen Stephens
Owen Stephens Consulting
Web: http://www.ostephens.com
Email: owen at ostephens.com
Telephone: 0121 288 6936

On 2 Mar 2012, at 07:39, Peter Murray-Rust wrote:

> 
> 
> On Fri, Mar 2, 2012 at 3:16 AM, Karen Coyle <kcoyle at kcoyle.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> On 3/1/12 6:43 PM, Mark MacGillivray wrote:
> 
> 
> don't think so. It's either yours or not yours,
> 
> If this is true, then it is not an orphaned work.
> 
> No, orphan works are those for whom the owner cannot be identified: the work is *potentially* owned but the fact cannot be established.
> 
> That said, "orphan works" are assumed to under copyright -- otherwise they would be in the public domain. I'm not saying that this database is copyrightable by called it 'orphaned.' I'm saying that the ownership of the data cannot be established.
> 
> 
> This is absurd. That's an obvious statement but there are limits.
> 
> We have stated that bibliographic data (of certain sorts) are de facto in the public domain. No one has challenged this. So go ahead and release it. 
> 
> There are organizations who delight in making thing complicated and then asserting that they can't do anything.
> 
> There is a risk associated with anything. Anyone can sue anyone (certainly in the US) for anything. That doesn't mean that they will win. The ACS sued Google for using the word "Scholar" in "Google Scholar". They "lost".
> 
> The ACS could probably sue me for what I have just written. I hope they would lose
> 
> This is a question of risk. Without a clear owner the risk is minimal. What, anyway, is being copyrighted? the collection? some added non-bibliographic data?
> 
> The risk is less than being hit by an asteroid. Go ahead
> 
> 
> -- 
> Peter Murray-Rust
> Reader in Molecular Informatics
> Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
> University of Cambridge
> CB2 1EW, UK
> +44-1223-763069
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