Hello All- I wanted to chime in on the database licensing question, however
because I have never written to the list before I wanted to introduce myself
and say hello. I met Peter at BeyondThePDF and we had quite a few excellent
discussions, some of which concerned legal matters like licensing and how
can we ensure that Open things stay Open.
My worry here is not so much about copyrights, but about onerous contracts
that void any rights you may have under copyright law. While I'm not happy
with the current state of copyright law as established in the US, EU*, and
through WIPO, I think that many of the provisions in the laws actually have
a fair and reasonable balance of interests. However, whatever fairness may
exist in the law is rendered meaningless in the face of contracts that
undermine it. (*e.g. I am unhappy with the EU Database Directive that grants
sui generis rights using a "sweat of the brow" argument that was explicitly
rejected in the US Supreme Court).
I'm glad that we are talking about licenses, but licenses are merely one
kind of contract that people enter into. What we need to work on is a legal
framework where ALL the contracts that you might enter into preserve the
freedoms you have under copyright law and elsewhere, otherwise we end up
with some of the absurd situations we have now wherein a database or
collection that has an Open license or falls under the fair use provisions
in copyright law becomes Closed and the freedoms you had under the fair use
provisions are now proscribed by an overly broad, far reaching contract... a
contract which not only restricts your ability to use the collected work as
a whole, but may prevent you from even using elements of the collection that
are in the public domain because of the contract terms. This is not simply
fretful worrying about some imagined future dystopian dilemma... the
situation exists here and now because I personally know a number of people
in this very predicament who have discussed with me how their hands have
become tied!
No amount of "open licensing" is going to protect you from contracts like
these that are clearly bad bargains! I am working on a project to help
address this problem head-on. Specifically the project is about exposing
onerous contracts as bad bargains and designing well-balanced contracts and
licensing strategies* to offer as an alternative to what exists now. (*note:
i am not writing new licenses-- there are enough already; rather i am
talking about licensing *strategies*)
When it comes to licensing databases how can you ensure that it truly
remains Open from a solid (international!) legal standpoint so that if Big
Publisher X re-publishes your database under an Open license that they can't
then go speak out of the other side of their mouth with another contract
that effectively renders your database non-Open to a certain segment of
their customers (e.g. academics who publish in those journals)? I agree with
DanZ who pleads "please DONT use NC"! Using NC does not effectively solve
this problem because it needlessly prevents use in a commercial context...
where it's not the commercialization that is a problem... the real problem
is any situation (commercial or not) that robs people of the freedoms they
thought they had to use an Open system.
So, for those of you on this list who are in the process of selecting an
Open license for your databases, I would love to have a deeper dialog with
you about the subject. I'm also curious about those of you who have already
selected licenses... I would like to know what license(s) you chose and how
you arrived at your decision.
Cheers,
Aaron
On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 11:52 PM, <
[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2011 07:41:20 -0500
> From: Daniel Zaharevitz <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [BlueObelisk-discuss] Database Licensing question
> To: BlueObelisk-Discuss <[email protected]>
> Message-ID: <[email protected]>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII"; format=flowed; delsp=yes
>
>
> On Feb 25, 2011, at 3:42 AM, Peter Murray-Rust wrote:
>
> >
> > But this is the price we willingly pay for FOSS. It means that we
> > can all use each others's software without worrying wheter we can
> > use if for teaching (yes, that's a commercial activity), include it
> > in books (yes, commercial), use in in company-funded projects in
> > academia (yes, that's commercial). So please DONT use NC. It takes a
> > bit of courage but it is worth it.
> >
> > The real benefit is that we create an ecosystem which is better
> > than the commercial offerings. We are now doing that. Jmol is used
> > everywhere (who buys a commercial viewer). Avogradro will do the
> > same. OSCAR is widely used. The Quixote project intends to
> > demonstrate a radically new approach to compchem knowledgebases that
> > will give everyone Libre access to compchem.
> >
>
> Let me strongly agree with Peter. If the goal is to move science
> forward, it is essential to not only have low barriers to a wide
> variety of uses, but also a wide variety of re-uses. If you build
> something that has real utility, you will attract interest. There will
> always be many more users than contributors and how to turn users into
> contributors will always be a legitimate concern, but I think there is
> a lot of evidence that creating an ecosystem that innovates, solves
> problems, responds to questions, etc. works much better to encourage
> contributions than making people agree to detailed licenses.
>
> DanZ
>
>
> /********************************************
> * Daniel Zaharevitz
> * Chief, Information Technology Branch
> * Developmental Therapeutics Program
> * National Cancer Institute
> * [email protected]
> *
> ********************************************/
>
>
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