[open-government] Quirky licencing issue

Sun Apr 24 08:27:18 UTC 2011

Hello,

  I know the fellows here in Canada have been having a lot of discussions
about this.  The issues that come to mind are
1) liability problems arising from unintentional inaccuracies in the data
2) governments being willing to give data away free for non-commercial
purposes but wanting to charge for it for commercial uses
3) some government agencies needing to charge for the data in order to do
"cost recovery" i.e. help pay for the cost of collecting the data in the
first place (that is, agencies not completely funded by taxes)
  The fellows here have identified various public license types.  I think
they generally prefer "PDDL" or "CC0".  We've also developed a rating system
- draft is at
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vqv3SBup4gHvINTd7sUP-8R5J4cBSrq41lcmqzzfQlw/edit?hl=en&authkey=CL6LwaUK#.
 Contact Herb Lainchbury for more info.

  In Herb's own words:

Hi Lisa,

Thanks for including me in this.  I would say our main concerns are:

1) Am I going to get in trouble? - developers are reluctant to spend their
time creating innovative uses for government data if there is a chance that
they might get into some sort of trouble.  it's just not worth it.  What we
look for is clear and explicit declaration from the government that we are
free to use our public data.  This would be recognized if it came in the
form of a license like PDDL or CC0 being cited with the data.

2) Governments giving access to our data to companies and special interests
but not us.  For example, our transit services here in BC gives our data to
Google but not to us.  Some of our police forces give our crime data to a
company called CrimeReports but not to us.  These US companies are now
enjoying a monopoly on our data.

3) The cost recovery model - government organizations routinely provide
access to data for a fee citing that the fee covers the cost of producing
the data.  Since the data is being sold to the public we know there are no
privacy concerns, and we know that the infrastructure for distribution
already exists.  This data is produced to manage a program or resource so
valuable that it justified collecting the data in the first place, so, in
fact, the data has already been paid for with tax dollars.  Innovation is
inherently risky.  Innovation often requires many experiments and the vast
majority of projects will fail.  Developers know this so they will avoid the
expense by directing their attention to problems  with a lower cost of
entry.  Ultimately, the citizens and governments lose.

My 2 cents.

Hope that helps.
Herb

2011/4/20 Vítor Baptista <vitor at vitorbaptista.com>

> Tim,
>
> Thanks for the explanation, I wasn't aware of the notion of Crown
> copyright. It still looks weird to a public body to restrict usage of its
> data (be it with copyright or contract), but whatever. Hope you find a way
> to solve your problem.
>
> Best regards,
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 5:00 PM, Tim McNamara <paperless at timmcnamara.co.nz
> > wrote:
>
>> New Zealand, along with many Commonwealth countries, has the notion of
>> Crown copyright[1]. In general, departments provide their works for any
>> purpose for no fee, so long as it is not used in a misleading way. However,
>> each department differs in its willingness to provide its content under an
>> open licence.
>>
>> In this specific case, I think that copyright does not apply, contract law
>> does. It's very difficult for the Crown to claim that it owns copyright of
>> business names that it holds. The other data, such as addresses, seem like
>> pure facts to me. However, because I am using their service, I am bound by
>> their terms of use under contract law. Those terms of use prohibit what I
>> mentioned in my last email.
>>
>>
>> Tim McNamara  |  @timClicks <http://twitter.com/timClicks>  |
>> timmcnamara.co.nz
>>
>> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_copyright#New_Zealand
>>
>>
>> On 21 April 2011 05:55, Vítor Baptista <vitor at vitorbaptista.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Tim,
>>>
>>> I can't help you with your issue, but I'm curious: isn't the data made by
>>> a public body also public? I mean, does the Ministry of Economic Development
>>> owns the copyright of what it produces?
>>>
>>> Sometimes here in Brazil I face the same problem, but I simply ignore it.
>>> In fact, I hope whatever public body claims to own the copyright to sue me,
>>> so we can test this interpretation (that the data is public) in court and
>>> clear up this doubt.
>>>
>>> I would like to know if this isn't the case in New Zealand too.
>>>
>>> Best Regards,
>>>
>>> 2011/4/20 Tim McNamara <paperless at timmcnamara.co.nz>
>>>
>>>> I've been attempting to get data from on New Zealand's Ministry of
>>>> Economic Development. They have a web API for their registries of
>>>> companies, charities, intellectual property, banned directors and so forth.
>>>> Their licence for a web API key prohibits a few things. 1) I can't disclose
>>>> any of the API calls or XML schema details and 2) the use of their data must
>>>> not be used for direct marketing purposes.
>>>>
>>>> I am thinking about making denormalised data publicly available.
>>>> Probably through a repository such as Infochimps or Tallis's
>>>> dataincubator.org. However, I may be held liable if someone downstream
>>>> from me uses it for direct marketing purposes.
>>>>
>>>> What do people suggest? At this stage, I am thinking of providing
>>>> information less addresses, e.g. just company names and maybe a city. Does
>>>> this seem sensible?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Tim McNamara  |  @timClicks <http://twitter.com/timClicks>  |
>>>> timmcnamara.co.nz
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> open-government mailing list
>>>> open-government at lists.okfn.org
>>>> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-government
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Vítor Baptista
>>>
>>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Vítor Baptista
>
>
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