On Fri, Mar 1, 2013 at 9:04 PM, Lee Passey <l...@passkeysoft.com> wrote:
> On Fri, March 1, 2013 11:07 am, Tom Morris wrote: > > 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? > Sorry I wasn't clearer, Lee. I take it as implicit given that reuse of the data is an important goal for Open Library and the current state of affairs doesn't make this possible. > > 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. > I guess our analyses differ, although I admit I've only given it a cursory look. There *is* a lot of data, but much it was imported in big chunks and the analysis only needs to be done once per source/import. There's also a lot of provenance information -- you've probably seen the page edit histories and the links to the original MARC records at the bottom of pages. In the worst case, starting from scratch is an option. In either case though, the longer we delay, the worse the problem becomes. My advice for those who want to ... I wouldn't consider giving legal advice to people who aren't clients, but I do invite anyone who's interested in helping to solve the problem to work with me. Tom
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