[open-government] Advice on Open Dataset Terms & Conditions in Hong Kong

Tue Jul 23 10:39:32 UTC 2013

Bill

Thanks for drawing these Terms and Conditions for the Hong Kong Data.One
site to our attention.  We regularly discuss whether licences for government
data conform to the Open Definition (http://opendefinition.org/) on the
od-discuss list.  Of course, Data is not Open Data unless it is Open.

I agree with you that the Terms and Conditions for the Hong Kong Data.One
site do not seem to conform with the Open Definition, and so the data could
not be considered “open data”. Particularly problematical are:

(1) the requirement for any re-distribution of the data to be “in its
original format” and “reproduced … accurately”.  This looks like a “no
derivatives” provision, which would prevent the data from being Open.

(2) the ban on the sale of the data - “sale of any Data by you is
absolutely prohibited in all circumstances”.  This conflicts with the Open
Definition, and there are a number of use cases  and business models (eg
Data Curation, service-level guaranteed APIs, information-giving
applications, Value-Added processing) where charges may well be made even
though the downstream customer could still obtain the raw data directly and
free of charge from the government.

(3) the clauses limiting “unpleasant” uses of the data - this means that
that data cannot be freely reused, and these matters should be handled
through the normal law and its enforcement rather than through licensing

The provision for the indemnity by the user to the government for the use of
data supplied by the government is also problematical.

More widely, the problem here seems to be that the terms and conditions do
not seem to envisage the sort of use cases which have been proven in other
jurisdictions to give economic and social value and to generate business
innovation.  Open Data is about reuse of data, not just access to it.  The
no-derivatives requirement and the ban on the sale of the data together
would make the development of a vibrant applications market practically
impossible.  So what are the Hong Kong Government’s other policy objectives
here?!

Regards

Andrew Stott

From: open-government-bounces at lists.okfn.org
[mailto:open-government-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of Bill Proudfit
Sent: 23 July 2013 01:42
To: open-government at lists.okfn.org; od-discuss at lists.okfn.org; Mart van de
Ven
Subject: [open-government] Advice on Open Dataset Terms & Conditions in Hong
Kong

The HK Government has the Data.One site with about 1,500 or so datasets.
I'm interested to know if the terms & conditions covering these datasets are
within the range of variation of the terms and conditions of other
governmental open dataset sites.

Here is the link to the HK terms & conditions.

http://www.gov.hk/en/theme/psi/terms_conditions/

The Open Data Handbook has this guidance on licenses.  I'm taking licenses
to mean the same as terms & conditions.   It seems to me that the HK
Data.One site's terms & conditions are not in step with these guidelines.

Is it common for locations to have opendata sites which do not meet these
guidelines?

What steps could be taken to get governments to follow these guidelines?

<http://opendatahandbook.org/en/how-to-open-up-data/apply-an-open-license.ht
ml>
http://opendatahandbook.org/en/how-to-open-up-data/apply-an-open-license.htm
l

Any guidance or suggestion would be great.

Many thanks,

Bill

--
Bill Proudfit
鮑偉霖
Hong Kong
baoman.wordpress.com
www.linkedin.com/in/proudfit
twitter ~ baoman

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/open-government/attachments/20130723/66a675cb/attachment-0001.html>