[open-science] Big and open data – who should bear data transfer costs?

Sat May 17 15:53:48 UTC 2014

On 05/17/2014 05:36 PM, P Kishor wrote:
> I am missing something. "Open" has nothing to do with Amazon. Whether or
> not something is open (the way we think of open here) is decided by the
> person who has the rights to do so. Remember, you can only relinquish
> the rights you have, so if you create something, and you have rights in
> it, you can give those rights away, thereby making that thing open. You
> can't just divine something made by someone else to be open.

Dear Puneet,

Let me clarify my concerns.  Let's say I'm publishing a data set on 
CC-0, but the only way in which I am willing to distribute it is through 
a for-profit company which may or may not charge way too much for 
downloads, but nobody outside the company has means of verifying that. 
Is the data set open?

In some sense, the data set is open (openness, as you wrote, may be 
understood as a property of a data set, not of the conduit).

However, according to the definition shown by Peter 
(http://opendefinition.org/od/), which puts the requirement of 
"reasonable reproduction cost", the data set will not be open *if* the 
hypothetical company charges too much for the transfers.

I think our misunderstanding stemmed from the fact that we don't, in 
fact, have a commonly accepted definition of openness.  Would you agree?

Best regards,

Lukasz

-- 
Dr. Łukasz Bolikowski, Assistant Professor
Centre for Open Science, ICM, University of Warsaw
Contact details: http://www.icm.edu.pl/~bolo/