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Avatar of Lucy Chambers

by Lucy Chambers

Public Data Consultations: Making Open Data a Reality

August 9, 2011 in Legal, News, Open Government Data, Open Knowledge Definition, Policy

This post is from Lucy Chambers, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation.

Earlier this month, the UK Government published the ‘Open Data Consultation Paper’. Its aim is to establish a “culture of openness and transparency in public services” and the Government is turning to the general public for their preferences on how this should be achieved.

This is an incredibly important opportunity to influence government policy on open data. So if you care about open data – make sure to make your voice heard!

From the Cabinet Office’s Website

> “We want to hear from everyone – citizens, businesses, public services themselves, > and other interest groups – on how we can best embed a culture of openness and > transparency in our public services.”

 

Francis Maude, quoted from the paper

> Our proposed approach is, fundamentally, about creating both „pull‟ (a right to data) and > „push‟ (a presumption of publication). With these forces, we will begin to embed openness > and transparency in how we run government. This consultation seeks your views on these > ideas.

 

 Participants from the general public are invited to voice their opinions on the following topics:

  • how we might enhance a ‘right to data’, establishing stronger rights for individuals, businesses and other actors to obtain data from public service providers
  • how to set transparency standards that enforce this right to data
  • how public service providers might be held to account for delivering open data
  • how we might ensure collection and publication of the most useful data
  • how we might make the internal workings of government and the public sector more open
  • how far there is a role for government to stimulate enterprise and market making in the use of open data.

More details on how to respond can be found below:

Send a written response to:

Open Data Consultation,
Transparency Team,
Efficiency and Reform Group,
Cabinet Office,
1 Horse Guards Road,
London SW1A 2HQ

Closing date for submissions is 27th October 2011

See also

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Avatar of Jonathan Gray

by Jonathan Gray

Open content film blocked by YouTube in Germany

July 17, 2011 in Legal, Open Content, Open/Closed

The following post is from Jonathan Gray, Community Coordinator at the Open Knowledge Foundation.

Cartoonist, animator and activist Nina Paley recently got in touch with me after her talk at OKCon 2011, saying that her openly licensed film Sita Sings the Blues has been blocked by YouTube in Germany:

GEMA has blocked Sita Sings the Blues from German YouTube for over a year, maybe over 2 years – I can’t be certain because I have only anecdotal reports. I came up with this idea while I was at OKCon in Berlin, and saw the takedown message with my own eyes. Better than using lawyers! Please share!


You can see the video clip she created about this here:

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Avatar of Theodora Middleton

by Theodora Middleton

Free! Music! Contest – fewer choices, more freedom

July 13, 2011 in External, Free Culture, Legal, Open Standards, WG Open Licensing, WG Public Domain

The following guest post is by Christian Hufgard, chairman of Musikpiraten, and member of the OKF’s Working Group on the Public Domain.

The Free! Music! Contest is a contest for bands and artists releasing their songs under a creative commons license. In its third year the focus is set on enabling remixes – and freeness. Unlike the last two times, this year only cc-by and cc-by-sa licenses are allowed to be used. Why did the organizers decided to reduce the choices? Most of the songs that won the last two years used nc- or nd-licenses, so it is pretty likely that the change will mean fewer participants.

What is wrong with nc (non-commercial) and nd (no drivatives)? Users are allowed to distribute the music and, if a song is not nd-licensed, to create derivative works. But due to the nature of music, the derivatives are mainly fan-made videos. Creating a remix based on a fully mixed song is much more complex and reduces the possibilities. There are some great artists out there like Girl Talk that mash up songs, but this is not what “derivative work” means: these mashups are in most countries covered by fair use rules. On the other hand commercial websites can get in trouble for license violations if they promote nc music. To sum up: nc- and nd-license are free as in “free beer”. You are allowed to consume and share art, but that’s it. In this way, the contest was more a “Shareable Music Contest”. Not a very sexy name…

One option could have been to ban nc- and nd-licenses. But this would not have solved the problem of creating derivative works. To solve this, an additional rule was introduced: A single track from every song has to be released through the creative commons remix portal ccmixter.org. This way the contest is truly a “Free! Music! Contest”. The art is not only shareable but also remixable and free for all uses – as long as the author and the license are mentioned.

But artists releasing their work under creative commons are pretty afraid of freedom. They fear that others might profit from their work without getting something in return. To work around that fear, the registered song does not have to be licensed cc-by or cc-by-sa: the rule only applies if a song is chosen for publication on the CD, which is to say that it is one of the contest’s winners.

Reducing the artists’ choice of the license, the contest achieves more freedom for everybody else.

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Avatar of Jonathan Gray

by Jonathan Gray

An International Standard for Open (Source) Hardware

June 15, 2011 in External, Legal, OKCon

The following guest post is by Jürgen Neumann, from the Open Source Hardware and Design Alliance. Jürgen will be joining us at OKCon 2011 as part of a panel on Open Hardware and Open Standards

As the free open source paradigm is shifting towards open everything, there are still a few obstacles to completely shift it into the physical world. Most importantly, the sustainable sharing of the design through a resilient copy-left like license such as GPL or CC can not be transfered towards the devices as such, as those licenses are based on copyright, which can not be applied to things. The equivalent would be patents, but until today there is no clear path for a patent for the public domain. And besides that, the process of patenting can be very time consuming and expensive.

Invention patents supposedly appeared in Venice in the seventeenth century. Their present form stems from the exception to inventors granted by the Statute of Monopolies 1624 (England) to curb arbitrary royal letter patent granting. Back then an invention patent was a significant contribution to economic freedom and it did reward creativity.

But today’s practice of patents has almost turned this notion completely upside down. In particular the abuse of the scope of patents has led to many problems that above all create legal uncertainty especially for the weakest economic players. Huge corporates claim a patent on almost everything, even the most obvious things or just slightly modified blueprints of nature. Only the laws of nature and scientific discovery still remain excluded from patentability. The patent system has become key to investment protection and regulation. Outside big corporates it is preventing innovation rather than boosting it.

On the other hand, as a current UK study underlines, in aggregate, consumers’ annual product development expenditures are 2.3 times larger than the annual consumer product R&D expenditures of all firms in the UK combined.

This growing spreading of so called “consumer” driven innovation is often connected to the ideas and spirit of the free software or open everything movement. There is a great potential for a turning point, especially when we think about the great need for accessible knowledge, green technologies and smarter products to solve many of the world’s most urgent problems.

To unleash this potential and raise people’s awareness we have started with a label at the Open Source Hardware and Design Alliance (OHANDA). Now we want to shift it towards an international private standard.

A private standard for hardware would give open source hardware the necessary protection by making the specifications part of the public domain through a standardized publication procedure. In addition, fabrication standards and code of ethics could be guaranteed through a label which could take the form of a registered collective trademark or private label (such as FSC or bio).

You are very welcome to join!

See the OKCon programme here

You can register for OKCon here

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Avatar of Jonathan Gray

by Jonathan Gray

OCLC, WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities, and Open Data Licensing

June 6, 2011 in Bibliographic, External, Legal, Metadata, OKF, OKF Projects, Open Data, Open Data Commons, Open/Closed, Policy, WG Open Bibliographic Data, Working Groups

The following guest post is from Jim Michalko, VP in charge of the OCLC Research Library Partnership. Karen Calhoun, former VP of Metadata Applications, who has previously been working on these issues, has recently left OCLC to relocate and begin the first phase of her retirement. She has transitioned her role as OCLC’s spokesperson for record use policy issues to Jim Michalko.

In a recent presentation to OCLC Global Council, OCLC provided some preliminary thoughts on open data licensing of member library catalog data. A number of OCLC members and groups have contacted OCLC staff in recent months asking for OCLC’s views on open data licensing of WorldCat metadata. These tend not to be casual inquiries; many libraries around the world have substantial amounts of metadata derived from WorldCat in their local or group catalogs.

A few libraries, like the University of Michigan, have begun providing MARC21 and/or MARCXML original cataloging records under a Creative Commons CC0 license. OCLC is, of course, paying close attention to these developments. These developments are of particular interest in the context of the recent implementation of a new OCLC record use policy, called WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities for the OCLC Cooperative. The policy covers not only WorldCat itself, but also the metadata stored in library catalogs whose source was the WorldCat bibliographic database.

The policy is a “code of good practice” founded on the premise that OCLC members value WorldCat as a comprehensive, timely, and accurate reflection of the consolidated holdings of those members. The policy’s intent is to encourage the widespread use and reuse of WorldCat bibliographic data while also supporting the ongoing and long-term viability and utility of WorldCat and of WorldCat-based services such as resource sharing, cataloging, and discovery. To that end, the policy sets out a framework of self-governing behaviors intended to sustain WorldCat, the services based on it, the outcomes those services produce, and the cooperative itself over time.

Essentially, the OCLC policy confers broad rights for members and others to use, reuse, and transfer WorldCat metadata, while asking OCLC members to exercise these rights in the context of some responsibilities. Notably, the policy asks members to abide by the policy, assure awareness of it, make reasonable efforts to attribute the OCLC cooperative when appropriate, and make reasonable efforts to assure that reuse is consistent with the policy’s intent, OCLC member community norms and OCLC’s chartered public purposes.

When a number of inquiries about open data licensing began to arrive some months ago, OCLC closely investigated the open data licenses and best practice guidelines that were available at that time. After looking at many sources, OCLC has gravitated to the Open Data Commons Attribution (ODC-BY) license. The ODC-BY approach in general seems to be a better fit for the type of data in library catalogs than other open licenses. ODC-BY provides for attribution and is compatible with the obligation in section 3.B of WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities asking OCLC members to ensure awareness of the policy. Further, the ODC framework permits a set of Community Norms (in this case, WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities) to be linked with the ODC-BY license. OCLC thinks it is possible to draft an implementable ODC-BY license notice and suggest it to OCLC members wanting to release their library catalogs under an open data license structure that is consistent with WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities.

By contrast, OCLC is concerned about the release of substantive amounts of WorldCat-derived bibliographic data under CC0 and ODC-PDDL licenses. These two licenses are inconsistent with WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities, the community norms it articulates, and the policy’s intent. Specifically, WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities asks OCLC members to exercise their rights with respect to WorldCat-derived bibliographic data in the context of certain responsibilities, such as appropriate attribution and ensuring that subsequent re-use is (a) consistent with OCLC’s public purposes and the policy and (b) supportive of WorldCat’s long-term viability The CC0 and PDDL licenses do not require attribution and place no limits on subsequent re-use of any kind. The CCO and PDDL licenses also explicitly purport to waive all other relevant rights or claims in or to the WorldCat-derived bibliographic data.

OCLC has a preference for ODC-BY and major reservations about PDDL and CC0. This is where OCLC’s thinking is at the moment. OCLC intends to formulate a proposed course of action based on real world requests and then seek additional input from OCLC members and the community of stakeholders around open data licensing and Linked Open Data. Because open data licensing is relatively new and there isn’t a long tradition of best practice to rely on, OCLC has engaged Jordan Hatcher, an attorney with considerable expertise in this area, to consult with OCLC on the broad issues as well as particular use cases.

As many may know, OCLC has been gaining experience with Linked Data. Two examples already in production are VIAF and dewey.info. We are also providing for experimentation with Linked Open Data with a subset of records from WorldCat. As a result, OCLC is part of the community with a keen interest in developing best practices around low-effort/low-barrier implementations of open data licenses (from the point of view of both developers and re-users of the data).

As we continue our work, your comments on this blog post and your messages sent to recorduse@oclc.org are invited and most welcome.

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Avatar of Jonathan Gray

by Jonathan Gray

What do you think about Norway’s new open data license?

April 12, 2011 in Legal, OKF Projects, Open Data, Open Data Commons, Open Definition, Open Government Data, WG EU Open Data, WG Open Government Data, Working Groups

The following guest post is from Sverre Andreas Lunde-Danbolt who works for the Department for ICT and renewal in the Norwegian Ministry of Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs, and who is a member of the OKF’s Working Group on Open Government Data

The Norwegian Ministry of Government Administration and Reform have just sent a draft version of a new Norwegian Licence for Open Data (NLOD) on a formal hearing here in Norway (the hearing documents (in Norwegian), and a blog post about the licence and the hearing (also in Norwegian)). After the hearing, we intend to recommend all government agencies in Norway to use this licence when they publish data.

Government agencies publishing data are not always very good at specifying the terms under which the information can be reused. In Norway, at least, the introduction of a new sui generis licence for each new data set has become a predictable exercise. This is confusing to the reuser, adding an uneccessary layer of uncertainty, and, in some cases, even impeding legitimate reuse.

The Ministry has therefore decided to establish one common licence. This will reduce the number of open data licences in Norway (one licence to rule them all). The licence is a rather straightforward attribution licence under Norwegian law. Its main purpose is to enable reuse in Norway, but to make sure data under NLOD can be combined with other data as well as reused internationally, the licence states clearly that it is compatible with Open Government Licence (v1.0), Creative Commons Attribution Licence (generic v1.0, v2.0, v2.5 and unported v3.0), and Open Data Commons Attribution Licence (v 1.0).

The most important details in the licence are the following:

  • Personal data is not covered by the licence. This is the same as in Open Government Licence.
  • The reuser cannot distort the information or use the information to mislead. The NLOD definition of this seems to be less restrictive than the definition used in Open Government Licence.
  • NLOD specifies that the licencor can provide more information on the quality or delivery of data, but that this kind of information is outside the scope of the licence. NLOD only covers the rights to use the information.
  • Information licenced under NLOD will also be licenced under future versions of the licence, provided that the licensor has not explicitly licenced information under v1.0. This gives the Norwegian Government more sway over public sector information, and reduces the chances of data ending up as a kind of orphan works in the future.

What do you think?

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Avatar of Jonathan Gray

by Jonathan Gray

Richard Poynder interviews Jordan Hatcher

October 19, 2010 in Interviews, Legal, OKF, Open Data, Open Data Commons, Open Definition, Open Government Data, Open Knowledge Definition, Public Domain, WG Open Licensing

Open Acccess journalist extraordinaire Richard Poynder recently interviewed the Open Knowledge Foundation’s Jordan Hatcher about data licensing, the public domain, and lots more. An excerpt is reproduced below. The full version is available on Richard’s website.

Over the past twenty years or so we have seen a rising tide of alternative copyright licences emerge — for software, music and most types of content. These include the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) licence, the General Public Licence (GPL), and the range of licences devised by Creative Commons (CC). More recently a number of open licences and “dedications” have also been developed to assist people make data more freely available.

The various new licences have given rise to terms like “copyleft” and “libre” licensing, and to a growing social and political movement whose ultimate end-point remains to be established.

Why have these licences been developed? How do they differ from traditional copyright licences? And can we expect them to help or hinder reform of the traditional copyright system — which many now believe has got out of control? I discussed these and other questions in a recent email interview with Jordan Hatcher.

A UK-based Texas lawyer specialising in IT and intellectual property law, Jordan Hatcher is co-founder of OpenDataCommons.org, a board member of the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF), and blogs under the name opencontentlawyer.

clip_image002

Jordan Hatcher

Big question

RP: Can you begin by saying something about yourself and your experience in the IP/copyright field?

JH: I’m a Texas lawyer living in the UK and focusing on IP and IT law. I concentrate on practical solutions and legal issues centred on the intersection of law and technology. While I like the entire field of IP, international IP and copyright are my most favourite areas.

As to more formal qualifications, I have a BA in Radio/TV/Film, a JD in Law, and an LLM in Innovation, Technology and the Law. I’ve been on the team that helped bring Creative Commons licences to Scotland and have led, or been a team member on, a number of studies looking at open content licences and their use within universities and the cultural heritage sector.

I was formerly a researcher at the University of Edinburgh in IP/IT, and for the past 2.5 years have been providing IP strategy and IP due diligence services with a leading IP strategy consultancy in London.

I’m also the co-founder and principal legal drafter behind Open Data Commons, a project to provide legal tools for open data, and the Chair of the Advisory Council for the Open Definition. I sit on the board for the Open Knowledge Foundation.

More detail than you can ask for is available on my web site here, and on my LinkedIn page here.

RP: It might also help if you reminded us what role copyright is supposed to play in society, how that role has changed over time (assuming that you feel it has) and whether you think it plays the role that society assigned to it successfully today.

JH: Wow that’s a big question and one that has changed quite a bit since the origin of copyright. As with most law, I take a utilitarian / legal realist view that the law is there to encourage a set of behaviours.

Copyright law is often described as being created to encourage more production and dissemination of works, and like any law, its imperfect in its execution.

I think what’s most interesting about copyright history is the technology side (without trying to sound like a technological determinist!). As new and potentially disruptive technologies have come along and changed the balance — from the printing press all the way to digital technology — the way we have reacted has been fairly consistent: some try to hang on to the old model as others eagerly adopt the new model.

For those interested in learning more about copyright’s history, I highly recommend the work of Ronan Deazley, and suggest people look at the first sections in Patry on Copyright. They could also usefully read Patry’s Moral Panics and the Copyright Wars. Additionally, there are many historical materials on copyright available at the homepage for a specific research project on the topic here.

Three tranches

RP: In the past twenty years or so we have seen a number of alternative approaches to licensing content develop — most notably through the General Public Licence and the set of licences developed by the Creative Commons. Why do you think these licences have emerged, and what are the implications of their emergence in your view?

JH: I see free and open licence development as happening within three tranches, all related to a specific area of use.

1. FOSS for software. Alongside the GPL, there have been a number of licences developed since the birth of the movement (and continuing to today), all aimed at software. These licences work best for software and tend to fall over when applied to other areas.

2. Open licences and Public licences for content. These are aimed at content, such as video, images, music, and so on. Creative Commons is certainly the most popular, but definitely not the first. The birth of CC does however represent a watershed moment in thinking about open licensing for content.

I distinguish open licences from public licences here, mostly because Creative Commons is so popular. Open has so many meanings to people (as do “free”) that it is critical to define from a legal perspective what is meant when one says “open”. The Open Knowledge Definition does this, and states that “open” means users have the right to use, reuse, and redistribute the content with very few restrictions — only attribution and share-alike are allowed restrictions, and commercial use must specifically be allowed.

The Open Definition means that only two out of the main six CC licences are open content licences — CC-BY and CC-BY-SA. The other four involve the No Derivatives (ND) restriction (thus prohibiting reuse) or have Non Commercial (NC) restrictions. The other four are what I refer to as “public licences”; in other words they are licences provided for use by the general public.

Of course CC’s public domain tools, such as CC0, all meet the Open Definition as well because they have no restrictions on use, reuse, and redistribution.

I wrote about this in a bit more detail recently on my blog.

3. Open Data Licences. Databases are different from content and software — they are a little like both in what users want to do with them and how licensors want to protect them, but are different from software and content in both the legal rights that apply and how database creators want to use open data licences.

As a result, there’s a need for specific open data licences, which is why we founded Open Data Commons. Today we have three tools available. It’s a new area of open licensing and we’re all still trying to work out all the questions and implications.

Open data

RP: As you say, data needs to be treated differently from other types of content, and for this reason a number of specific licences have been developed — including the Public Domain Dedication Licence (PDDL), the Public Doman Dedication Certificate (PDDC) and Creative Commons Zero. Can you explain how these licences approach the issue of licensing data in an open way?

JH: The three you’ve mentioned are all aimed at placing work into the public domain. The public domain has a very specific meaning in a legal context: It means that there are no copyright or other IP rights over the work. This is the most open/free approach as the aim is to eliminate any restrictions from an IP perspective.

There are some rights that can be hard to eliminate, and so of course patents may still be an issue depending on the context, (but perhaps that’s conversation for another time).

In addition to these tools, we’ve created two additional specific tools for openly licensing databases — the ODbL and the ODC-Attribution licences.

RP: Can you say something about these tools, and what they bring to the party?

JH: All three are tools to help increase the public domain and make it more known and accessible.

There’s some really exciting stuff going on with the public domain right now, including with PD calculators — tools to automatically determine whether a work is in the public domain. The great thing about work in the public domain is that it is completely legally interoperable, as it eliminates copyright restrictions.

See the rest of the interview on Open and Shut…

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Avatar of Jonathan Gray

by Jonathan Gray

Open Licenses vs Public Licenses

October 15, 2010 in Legal, OKF, OKF Projects, Open Data, Open Data Commons, Open Definition, Open Knowledge Definition, Open Standards, Open/Closed

The following post is from Jordan Hatcher, a Director at the Open Knowledge Foundation and founder of the Open Data Commons project. It was originally posted on his blog.

Let’s face it, we often have a definition problem.

It’s critical to distinguish “open licenses” from “public licenses” when discussing IP licensing, especially online — mostly because Creative Commons is so popular and as a result has muddied the waters a bit.

Open has so many meanings to people (same of course as with “free software” or free cultural works) that it is critical to define from a legal perspective what is meant when one says “open”. The Open Knowledge Definition does this, and states that “open” means users have the right to use, reuse, and redistribute the content with very few restrictions — only attribution and share-alike restrictions are ok, and commercial use must specifically be allowed.

Which CC licenses are Open?

The Open Definition means that only two out of the main six CC licenses are open content licenses — CC-BY and CC-BY-SA. The other four involve the two non-open license elements the No Derivatives (ND) restriction (thus prohibiting reuse) or have Non Commercial (NC) restrictions. The other four are “public licenses”, in other words they are licenses provided for use by the general public.

Of course CC’s public domain tools, such as CC0, all meet the Open Definition as well because they have no restrictions on use, reuse, and redistribution.

The Open Data Commons legal tools, including the PDDL, the ODbL and the ODC Attribution License, all comply with the Open Definition, and so are all open public licenses.

I haven’t done a full survey, but the majority of open licenses (in terms of popularity) probably also fit the definition of public licenses, as open license authors tend to draft licenses for public consumption (and these tend to be the most used ones, naturally) . Many open licenses aren’t public licenses though — mainly those drafted for specific use by a specific licensor, such as a government or business. So the UK government’s new Open Government License isn’t a public license because it’s not meant to be used without alteration by other governments, but provided it meets the definition of the Open Definition, would be an Open License.

A simple Venn Diagram might be:

2 Comments »

Avatar of Jonathan Gray

by Jonathan Gray

New report on access to information and open government data

September 10, 2010 in Legal, OKF, Open Data, Open Government Data, Policy, WG Open Government Data

We’re pleased to announce that a new report on access to information and open government data is open for consultation! From the announcement:

Access Info Europe and the Open Knowledge Foundation, in collaboration with the Open Society Institute Information Program, are holding a public consultation on open government data and the right of access to information.

This consultation is based on a new report “Beyond Access: Open Government Data and the ‘Right to Reuse’” produced as a result of research into the open government data and access to information movements. The report identifies the practical, technical and legal challenges facing these movements. The report is based on discussions with activists about the main issues to be address in the next couple of years, questions such as whether a right of access is linked to a “right to reuse” the data received.

You can download the full report here:

Consultation: we would like to hear your comments on the “Beyond Access” report.

  • Did we miss any important initiatives?
  • Are there issues we should include?
  • Are you doing something you’d like us to capture in the report?
  • Do you agree with our findings and recommendations?

There are three ways to make comments:

  1. Fill in our questionnaire on the report by clicking here.
  2. Make comments on the individual paragraphs at WritetoReply.org/beyondaccess
  3. Write to us at

Consultation closes on Monday 11 October 2010

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Avatar of Rufus Pollock

by Rufus Pollock

Jordan Hatcher talk on Open Data Licensing at iSemantics

September 6, 2010 in Legal, News, Open Data, Talks

Last week, the Foundation’s legal expert Jordan Hatcher, was at iSemantic conference in Graz to give a session on open data licensing (especially for linked data). Here are the slides:

Linked Data Licensing: Introduction – I-Semantics 2010

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