Open DataLicensing, Lawand Best Practice

Ian HenshawRegistered ODI Trainer

ian.henshaw@gmail.com@ihenshaw

Outcome

● Explain open data licenses

● Know two different certification processes for open data best practice

How to minimize risks by understanding licensing and certificates

Please note, I am not a lawyer and this should not be treated as legal advice.

Law and licensing

Key US laws affecting data

● Intellectual Property - copyright and database rights

● Federal– 17 U.S.C. § 105

– Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)

– Executive Order 13642

– Digital Accountability and Transparency Act (DATA)

● State– Public Records Law - NCGA General Statute § 132

What are intellectual property rights?

Rights which are given which allow ownership of creations● Patents● Trade marks● Design rights● Copyright● Database rights● Many creations are a bundle of rights – protected by

more than one or all of the above

US Copyright Law

The US Constitution explicitly grants Congress the power to create copyright law.

● Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8, (the Copyright Clause)

– To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

US Copyright law is governed by the federal Copyright Act of 1976.

US Copyright

● Protects "original works of authorship" (published and unpublished)

● Gives exclusive rights to the author of the work allowing the author to control the copying and exploitation of it

● Arises automatically

● Protects the expression of an idea, not the idea itself.

● Beware “public domain” assumption and myth

● Fair Use exemptions

Database definition

“A collection of independent works, data or other materials which are arranged in a systematic or methodical way and are individually accessible by electronic or other means”

Database definition

“A collection of independent works, data or other materials which are arranged in a systematic or methodical way and are individually accessible by electronic or other means”

● Facts are considered "ideas" or "discoveries", they are not copyrightable

● The Copyright Act, allows copyright protection for "compilations", limited to the selection and arrangement of facts, not to the facts themselves.

No License?

● If no license is mentioned (even public domain) then like most other websites it becomes a case for the courts.

● Most curated content is not specifically licensed and this is why copyright (all rights reserved) automatically applies to creative works.

● This means without a license then it could be assumed that what is meant to be open data, in fact isn’t.

Information from Dr David Tarrant, Senior Trainer for the Open Data Institute UK. @davetaz

Open Data Licenses

● Creative Commons

● Open Data Commons

Creative Commons

A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted work. A CC license is used when an author wants to give people the right to share, use and build upon a work that they have created.

Information in this section is from Creative Commons: http://creativecommons.org/

Creative Commons

Public Domain Mark

●Using the Public Domain Mark, you can mark a work that is free of known copyright restrictions and clearly convey that status. When applied properly, the PDM allows the work to be easily discovered, and provides valuable information about the work.

Creative Commons

Attribution (BY)

●Licensees may copy, distribute, display and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only if they give the author or licensor the credits in the manner specified by these.

Creative Commons

Share-alike (SA)

●Licensees may distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs the original work.

Creative Commons

Non-commercial (NC)

●Licensees may copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only for noncommercial purposes.

●No Derivative Works (ND)

●Licensees may copy, distribute, display and perform only verbatim copies of the work, not derivative works based on it.

Creative Commons

CC0 - “No rights reserved”

●In contrast to CC’s licenses that allow copyright holders to choose from a range of permissions while retaining their copyright, CC0 empowers yet another choice altogether – the choice to opt out of copyright and database protection, and the exclusive rights automatically granted to creators – the “no rights reserved” alternative to our licenses.●CC0 waives any and all domestic and foreign copyright protections and related rights over a work to whatever extent that they can be waived.

Creative Commons for Open Data

Only CC-BY and CC-BY-SA can be used for Open Data.

The best Open Data license remains CC zero. Very hard to enforce all others.

Information from Pieter Colpaert, researcher in linked open data at Multimedia Lab (MMLab) research group within Ghent University. @pietercolpaert

Review: Open Data?https://data.baltimorecity.gov/Financial/City-property-tax-data/axxk-zyb9

Open Data Commons

● Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL)

– “Public Domain for data/databases”

● Attribution License (ODC-By)

– “Attribution for data/databases”

● Open Database License (ODC-ODbL)

– “Attribution Share-Alike for data/databases”

Information in this section is from Open Data Commons: http://opendatacommons.org

Open Data Commons

● Distinguish Between the “Database” and its “Contents”?

– They may have separate rights

– For example, consider a database of photographs. Here there are the rights in the database and quite separate individual copyrights in the photographs.

– Or consider the example of Freebase which contains textual material and images from Wikipedia as well as user contributed material. While Freebase controls the database the individual items of contents need to have their own separate license

Foreign Copyright?

“Foreign copyright may apply to any government data. A waiver of foreign copyright protections is suggested, especially if foreign use of the data is

important.”

Best-Practices Language for Making Data “License-Free”

http://theunitedstates.io/licensing/

Open Data Certifications

● 5 Star Open Data Scheme

● ODI Open Data Certificates

http://info.cern.ch/Proposal.html

Semantic Web / Linked Data

http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html

● The Semantic Web isn't just about putting data on the web.

● It is about making links, so that a person or machine can explore the web of data.

● With linked data, when you have some of it, you can find other, related, data.

- 2006

Expectations to Make the Web Grow:

1.Use URIs as names for things

2.Use HTTP URIs so that people can look up those names.

3.When someone looks up a URI, provide useful information, using the standards (RDF*, SPARQL)

4.Include links to other URIs. so that they can discover more things.

Is your Linked Open Data 5 Star?

- 2010http://5stardata.info/

5 Star Data Schema

★ Available on the web (whatever format) but with an open license, to be Open Data

★★ Available as machine-readable structured data (e.g. excel instead of image scan of a table)

★★★ as (2) plus non-proprietary format (e.g. CSV instead of excel)

★★★★ All the above plus, Use open standards from W3C (RDF and SPARQL) to identify things, so that people can point at your stuff

★★★★★ All the above, plus: Link your data to other people’s data to provide context

5 Star Data Schema

● Legal and Technical aspects only

● No Context

Badge Certificate Level

Raw: A great start at the basics of publishing open data.

Pilot: Data users receive extra support from, and can provide feedback to the publisher.

Standard: Regularly published open data with robust support that people can rely on.

Expert: An exceptional example of information infrastructure.

Open Data Certificates

Open Data Certificates

● Adds Context

● Not just Legal and Technical

● General, Practical and Social

General

Raw Pilot Standard Expert

Legal

Raw Pilot Standard Expert

Practical

Raw Pilot Standard Expert

Technical

Raw Pilot Standard Expert

Social

Raw Pilot Standard Expert

Open Data Certificate

https://certificates.theodi.org/

One Objective

● Minimum Requirement

– 3-Star Data

– Standard Level Open Data Certificate

★★★

Review

● Explain open data licenses

● Know two different certification processes for open data best practice

How to minimize risks by understanding licensing and certificates

Questions?