[open-government] Share-alike

Javier Ruiz javier at openrightsgroup.org
Mon Sep 19 19:53:43 UTC 2011


Hi

I hope the other message didn't come across as an attack on anyone.

Back to the original question, I agree the key is to understand why Montreal
have made that decision and deal with their concerns one by one with
arguments such as those brought forward by Tim, rather than taking a
maximalist position.

The situation with the Public Data Corporation in UK is lot harder, as we
have to argue against selling data and we have been told the Treasury seems
to rubbish the arguments for marginal cost pricing in Rufus Pollock's paper
and the value promises of open data.

This means no open data in UK for meteorology, land registry, postcode
lookup and high resolution geodata.

The public consultation proposes a Freemium model, but I don't think they
are receptive to arguments about double taxation, if anything is probably an
argument in favour!

Ultimately we are reduced to argue for or against business paying taxes if
they benefit from public data, and roads, and trains, and schools.

Any ideas to get out of this hole?

javier


On 19 September 2011 20:10, Tim McNamara <tim.mcnamara at okfn.org> wrote:

> I'm quite wary of entering this discussion. I wanted to make a few
> comments around civility before doing so.
>
> Copyleft is an extremely difficult issue to discuss. Views are often
> entrenched and tend reflect long-standing prior beliefs regarding the
> nature of personal property rights, the nature of a community and what
> it means for something to be a public good. Therefore, we are highly
> likely to find people opposing each other in a very deep manner. This
> makes it extremely important that any discussion reflects common
> courtesy.
>
> Returning to the original question: what are some of the reasons
> against copyleft in data? Here are some:
>
> Simpler administration: copyleft in the public sector often means also
> including a channel for buying the right to be constrained from
> sharing. The cost of implementing and maintaining these billing can
> outweigh any potential revenue.
>
> Monitoring is difficult: how will you as a public sector body know
> that some third party is not sharing their data? If it is not being
> shared, then it is not publicly available knowledge.
>
> Enforcement is extremely difficult & expensive: how would you, as a
> public sector body, go about the process of enforcement of the
> copyright licence? Do you have a litigation budget allocated for your
> open data programme?
>
> Fewer obligations: under copyleft, agencies retain control. They are
> therefore responsible for approving any corrections, etc. They may
> therefore be liable for negligent errors or omissions. Under a
> non-copyleft system, esp. public domain, it's much easier to claim
> that there is no control.
>
> Bias against double-taxation: (Assuming a market segmentation/two
> tier/freemium model) much government data is produced either a) out of
> core revenue, b) industry levies, c) user fees or d) under contract.
> The funds gathered for the project should themselves cover the cost of
> data delivery.
>
> If there is any interest, I could spend some time adding to and
> expanding these points.
>
>
>
> Tim McNamara
> Open Knowledge Foundation
>
>
>
> On 17 September 2011 22:10, Brendan Morley <morb at beagle.com.au> wrote:
> > Stef,
> >
> > I feel limited in my reply because I'm not clear what your "criteria for
> > success" are here.  I expect they are different to mine.
> >
> >> i beg to disagree you can in fact be an innovator and honor the SA.
> >>
> >>
> >
> > Agreed, you *can* be an innovator under SA.  But not insisting on SA is a
> > greater incentive for innovators / entrepreneurs.
> >
> > With SA, innovations tend to only happen as a result of people scratching
> > their own itches.
> > Without SA, innovations also tend to happen as a result of people seeing
> the
> > opportunity to make some cash.
> >
> > As a consumer, I'd prefer to have innovations come thicker and faster,
> even
> > if it means spending more cash to get it earlier.
> >
> >
> >> nope, [SA] only keeps the data free and prohibits the privatization of
> the
> >> commons. which i'd say that's not innovation but robbery.
> >>
> >>
> >
> > Making a copy of something is not robbery, we worked that out long ago in
> > the debates about music piracy.  A commercial operator can produce a
> value
> > added work without withdrawing CC By material from the commons.
> >
> >>> (After all, the
> >>> author itself doesn't *have* to SA, only the downstream users!)
> >>>
> >>
> >> so the one creating value should not have privileges?
> >>
> >
> > They can if they want, but the original question here was around the
> default
> > licence a *city* (i.e. government) should release under.  I don't know
> why a
> > city should keep privileges from its citizens, including the option for
> > those citizens to commercialise and seek a business opportunity from that
> > commercialisation.
> >>>
> >>> depends on liberally licensed works as contributions (i.e. CC By and
> >>> public domain), but in turn it also allows full geodata
> >>> roundtripping between government-crowd-commercial.
> >>>
> >>
> >> how can you ensure roundripping back from commercial to crowd and gov
> >> without
> >> an SA licence? or do you mean with roundtripping
> >> gov-crowd-corporatelockin?
> >>
> >
> > I used the word "allows", not "ensure".  No, I can't ensure the trip back
> > from commercial.  But it is not lockin either.  Commercial operators
> cannot
> > lock-in any IP greater than their own IP.
> >
> >>> Other references: http://www.ausgoal.gov.au/the-ausgoal-licence-suite-
> >>> "Among those, the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY) [...]
> >>> provides the greatest opportunities for re-use of information"
> >>>
> >>
> >> i'd like to see the study that is the foundation for this statement.
> >>
> >
> > I hope some of my statements above give some illumination.  But others on
> > this list may have ready access to chapter and verse.  To me it's simple.
> >  The less additional clauses there are to a licence, the less people will
> be
> > scared off by it.
> >
> > A more practical example:  Many western governments (at least .au, .us,
> > .ca., .uk) cannot re-use contributions into OpenStreetMap (strong SA
> > geodata).  Dropping SA allows re-use in this scenario.
> >
> >
> > Brendan
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > open-government mailing list
> > open-government at lists.okfn.org
> > http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-government
> >
>
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