[open-linguistics] Fwd: Re: [Helpdesk-legal.meta-share.eu] Legal question regarding bibliographies

Mon Mar 19 13:23:06 UTC 2012

Dear all,

in a recent article or ours, the reviewers pointed out that legal service  
(one of the points we identified as being central for LLOD) can be  
obtained from METASHARE. I launched a test without much hope and was  
pleased to see that it was answered within one week (see below) ;)

Still, they argue that my bibliographical inquiry is "not really within  
the scope of meta-share", but if one has questions more central to their  
scope, this might prove an interesting point to turn to

Best wishes

Sebastian

------- Forwarded message -------
From: "Khalid CHOUKRI" <choukri at elda.org>
To: sebastian_nordhoff at eva.mpg.de
Cc: helpdesk-legal.meta-share.eu at dfki.de
Subject: Re: [Helpdesk-legal.meta-share.eu] Legal question regarding  
bibliographies
Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2012 13:28:26 +0100

Dear Sebastian,
your questions are not really  within the scope of meta-share  but let us  
try to help;
  The following statements are interpretations considering the info you  
provided; for a real legal advise you need to check with a law  
practitioner.

  In your email you did not explain the purpose of your work, I assume you  
will be using these within your institution, but also sharing this with  
the community (under CC-BY) but the  access to outsiders would be just  
browsing ? downloading?
see my comments below

  Sebastian Nordhoff wrote, On 13/03/2012 14:29:
> Dear Helpdesk,
> I was told that you provide assistance about legal questions arising in  
> the context of publishing linguistic data. I therefore address the  
> following question to you. Please let me know if this is the appropriate  
> venue, or otherwise direct me to another, better suited venue.
>
> We have collected 180,000 bibliographic records from 20 different source  
> bibliographies. We have subsequently enriched them with machine learning  
> techniques. The original bibliographies come from the US, Finland,  
> Sweden, Australia, Hong Kong. We are based in Germany, and our server is  
> in Germany as well. Our legal questions are the following:
>
> - is an individual bibliographical record copyrightable?

  if you mean something like :
>>>> @InProceedings{FRITZINGER10.267,
>>>>   author = {Fabienne Fritzinger and Frank Richter and Marion Weller},
>>>>   title = {Pattern-Based Extraction of Negative Polarity Items from  
>>>> Dependency-Parsed Text},
>>>>   booktitle = {Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on  
>>>> Language Resources and Evaluation >>>>(LREC'10)},
>>>>   year = {2010},
>>>>   month = {may},
>>>>   date = {19-21},
>>>>   address = {Valletta, Malta},
>>>>   editor = {Nicoletta Calzolari (Conference Chair) and Khalid Choukri  
>>>> and Bente Maegaard and Joseph Mariani and Jan >>>>Odijk and Stelios  
>>>> Piperidis and Mike Rosner and Daniel Tapias},
>>>>   publisher = {European Language Resources Association (ELRA)},
>>>>   isbn = {2-9517408-6-7},
>>>>   language = {english}
>>>>  }
  that can be done by any of us, no, but if you collect a large number of  
these and then "organize them" , it may fall under the EC Directive on  
databases (Directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council  
of 11 March 1996 on the legal protection of databases, this "right" is  
referred to as "sui generis" right)
  this is a different type of right (from the know "copyright") but has the  
same implications for you;
  if you design the single "record" is a special and original way,  there  
is copyright even over the single record as there is some originality in  
the arrangement of the fields. The copyright is both on the underlying  
schema and the actual data. This is the reason why European chooses to  
license under CC Zero: otherwise any extraction of bibliographical records  
would constitute copyright violation.

> - are the initial databases copyrighted?
  no but certainly  fall under the Directive mentioned above if people  
compiled and structured the data. You have to check each source (some may  
have adopted a "public domain" approach (no copyright) other may have  
adopted a license that allows you to download and manipulate the data as  
you wish, for instance some of the Creative Commons licenses), You need to  
check source by source the licensing terms.

> - does the initial copyright (if any) extend to the aggregation?
  I guess you mean combining several sources into one , this is what  
usually is referred to as "collective work"  , this depends on the sources  
but the directive above applies (Ownership/Copyright in each separate  
contribution remains).
  The original copyright of the record is unrelated to the compilation  
copyright/ sui generis right: you may have copyright over the compilation  
of a multitude of records irrespectively of whether each one of them is  
copyrighted or not.

> - does the initial copyright extend to the aggregation if we add  
> additional value by enriching the database?
  The enrichment is unrelated to the infringement. If you copy a  
copyrighted database or extract qualitatively or quantitatively  
substantial parts of a database protected by the sui generis right  
(database directive) you commit an act of infringement. Now, if you  
substantially enrich it so as to acquire a copyright over the new  
derivative is a question to be resolved case by case. However, the new  
copyrighted work does not lift the earlier infringement and thus you may  
end up owning copyright over a work that is itself an infringement of  
another work and thus there is not much you can do with it.
> - if a work has a record in more that one original bibliography, which  
> underly different IPR regimes, which one does apply?
  one bib record can hardly be "copyrighted" but the way things have been  
compiled by the different authors   (database/XML structure, nb of  
records, etc.) may bring you back to the database directive.
  Copyright disputes are normally (rule of thumb) governed by the laws of  
the country where the infringement takes place, so the relevant laws would  
be those of the place where the servers reside (which could be a number of  
places).

> - would it be possible to release our collection as CC-BY under the  
> assumption that we have absolutely no information about the license  
> status of the initial bibliographies?
  You can not do that if some pieces are owned by third parties who did not  
grant you implicit rights (data not licensed under CC or similar license)  
or an explicit consent through a bilateral agreement.
  Now in practice, an approach followed mainly in the UK (and certainly not  
in the US) is to assess the risk of infringement, to have proper notices  
and then if the levels of risk are low to publish under the desired  
license.

  Hope this helps

  Khalid  Choukri
  On behalf of the meta-share help desk.

  Sebastian Nordhoff wrote, On 13/03/2012 14:29:
> Dear Helpdesk,
> I was told that you provide assistance about legal questions arising in  
> the context of publishing linguistic data. I therefore address the  
> following question to you. Please let me know if this is the appropriate  
> venue, or otherwise direct me to another, better suited venue.
>
> We have collected 180,000 bibliographic records from 20 different source  
> bibliographies. We have subsequently enriched them with machine learning  
> techniques. The original bibliographies come from the US, Finland,  
> Sweden, Australia, Hong Kong. We are based in Germany, and our server is  
> in Germany as well. Our legal questions are the following:
>
> - is an individual bibliographical record copyrightable?
> - are the initial databases copyrighted?
> - does the initial copyright (if any) extend to the aggregation?
> - does the initial copyright extend to the aggregation if we add  
> additional value by enriching the database?
> - if a work has a record in more that one original bibliography, which  
> underly different IPR regimes, which one does apply?
> - would it be possible to release our collection as CC-BY under the  
> assumption that we have absolutely no information about the license  
> status of the initial bibliographies?
>
> Thanks for answering
> Sebastian Nordhoff
> http://glottolog.livingsource.org
> _______________________________________________
> Helpdesk-legal.meta-share.eu mailing list
> Helpdesk-legal.meta-share.eu at dfki.de
> http://www.dfki.de/mailman/cgi-bin/listinfo/helpdesk-legal.meta-share.eu

-- 
  Khalid Choukri
  ELRA General secretary & ELDA CEO
  email: choukri at elda.org;
  Web: www.elra.info www.elda.org
  Tel. +33 1 43 13 33 33 - Fax. +33 1 43 13 33 30

  ***************************************************
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