On Fri, March 1, 2013 11:07 am, Tom Morris wrote: > Alexis - I appreciate Internet Archive providing an official response, > since it's an important question.
Based on recent postings I'm not certain anymore that there /is/ anyone at Internet Archive you can provide an /official/ response -- other than Brester Kahle, of course. Expecting anything more than what is already in the TOS is, IMO, a vain hope. > On Wed, Feb 27, 2013 at 1:07 AM, Alexis Rossi <ale...@archive.org> wrote: > >> The data in Open Library comes from various libraries and other sources. >> We don't know whether those other parties have asserted any rights over >> that data, or whether they are legally able to do so. As our Terms of >> Service states, we ourselves do not assert any rights over the data in OL, >> but that doesn't mean that someone else won't. I understand that you'd >> like us to put some clarifying license on the data, but we don't have the >> information that would allow us to do that. >> > > That, of course, makes it completely impossible to reuse the data in any > legal manner. Yes. What's your point? Reusing data from OL is a lot like dumpster divers scavenging food from restaurant dumpsters: it's probably nutritious, but you really never know where it's been. <!-- snip --> > Allowing anyone to contribute anything, not matter how shady the > provenance, and telling the consumer that they bear all risk of using the > data is the modus operandi of the Pirate Bay and its ilk. It shouldn't be > the way Open Library operates. Perhaps not, but that's the way OL /does/ operate, and you simply have to decide how that impacts your little corner of the world, and given that, how much time you want to spend contributing. <!-- snip --> > Depending on how many sources of data were used, it may be a lot of work, > but the only sane way forward that allows people to actually use this data > is to start the process of vetting and scrubbing what people contributed. > Otherwise, all this work is going into something that no one will ever be > able to reuse. At this point I would say that it is be virtually impossible to scrub the data that is in OL's data store; there's just too much of it. Had OL been aware of the issue at the outset, and retained both provenance information and license claims maybe it would have been possible, but they did not and now it is not. The best approach is to probably treat the current OL as a beta test, discard what's there, and start over. You probably wouldn't even need to discard the entire data store, only that part that is not simple bibliographic data. My advice for those who want to consume OL data is as follows: 1. If it's unadorned data, e.g. Book titles, author names, etc. use it without reservation (if you're in the U.S.--I understand that some European countries allow for copyrights on collections of data, but the U.S. does not). It may not be accurate, but at least it's not copyrighted. 2. Never consume cover images, as these are almost certainly under copyright and uploaded without permission. I frequently check e-books out from my public library and about half the time the cover image in the e-book is just a generic image with the book title printed on it. That's because the publisher who has rights to republish the text may not have rights to publish the cover image on anything but a paper book; two creators, two copyrights. 3. The origin of any text that displays even a modicum of creativity cannot be trusted. Feel free to read it in the OL user interface, but whether you republish it depends on your own risk tolerance. Would you eat food from a dumpster? If so, republishing OL data may be acceptable to you. For those who want to contribute to OL, I would advise: 1. Add all the unadorned data you want. A note telling people where you obtained the data from would be appreciated, but is not necessary. 2. Don't upload cover images; you are almost certainly violating someone else's copyright. 3. For everything else, do whatever you want. If OL doesn't care about rights why should you? It's the one doing the publishing, so it's the one that will get sued. If you're nervous, use a phony e-mail address and post from behind an IP anonymiser. _______________________________________________ Ol-discuss mailing list Ol-discuss@archive.org http://mail.archive.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ol-discuss To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send email to ol-discuss-unsubscr...@archive.org
