[open-government] National legal barriers to open data in Europe

Wed Jan 5 11:50:31 UTC 2011

Hi all,

I agree with Chris on two points, which I see as related:

1)	There is no need in a licence to remind people that breaking the  
law is illegal.
2)	It is not appropriate, either from an openness perspective or from  
a more general analysis of appropriate lines of responsibility, to  
make distributors of data responsible for downstream spamming.

To strain Chris' analogy below, it is a bit like making those who sell  
knives are responsible for the wrongs that those who buy the knives  
might commit. In other words, the spamming rule treats this social  
good in a different way than we treat other social goods, which  
impacts negatively on openness.

I think we must argue strongly against such rules.

Toby

On 5 Jan 2011, at 07:09, Chris Taggart wrote:

>
>
> On Wed, Jan 5, 2011 at 9:43 AM, Antti.Eskola at tem.fi <Antti.Eskola at tem.fi 
> > wrote:
> This solves the problem only if the retriever and the first user is  
> the same and remains the end user. Why can't the license text  
> mention that the data can be used only for legal purposes? Strange  
> if it is doesn't mention it yet.
>
> Cris's point may be that e.g. spam laws should target spammers  
> themselves, not those who release public sector data in good faith,  
> but that data is subsequently misused by spammers. Right?
>
> Antti Eskola
>
>
>  Yes, that's right. In fact I don't think it's necessary for the  
> licence to say it should only be used for legal purposes -- it's  
> redundant, a bit like having a sign on a shop which say 'You may  
> only enter here if you promise not to steal from us'
>
> Chris
> -- 
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___________________________________
Toby Mendel
Executive Director

Centre for Law and Democracy
toby at law-democracy.org
Tel:  +1 902 431-3688
Fax: +1 902 431-3689
www.law-democracy.org

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