[Rdap] licensing data

[Koshoffer, Amy (koshofae)]

Dear Eugene and Joe,

Thank you for the response.  I have been exploring the site http://dvn.library.ubc.ca/dvn/.  So this dataverse database is a part of the Dataverse network http://dataverse.org/about/. 

We are considering offering only the open data commons for datasets.  Other works will still have access to the creative commons licenses.  Our repository is a self-submission repository.  The goal is to provide the best options without complicating the process.  I am trying to see what is the best approach.  We started off with CC licenses, but my impression was that they did not seem appropriate.  So I recommended including the ODC licenses.  The repository team would like to eliminate the CC for databases and not allow a re-use option for fear that people would not be able to write the re-use so that it would hold up.  They are worried that it would complicate the process.  But I have little experience and really a lawyer or copyright specialist would better judge the choices.  Can you direct me to a specific data set in your repository with a CC license that is more restrictive and give the context for the choices made?  Is it still necessary for us to offer the CC licenses?  And I think the open data commons licenses do not have an all rights reserved option.  Would we want that choice as well?

Thank you,
Amy

-----Original Message-----
From: Joe Hourcle [mailto:oneiros at grace.nascom.nasa.gov] 
Sent: Monday, March 16, 2015 8:32 PM
To: Research Data, Access and Preservation
Cc: Koshoffer, Amy (koshofae)
Subject: Re: [Rdap] licensing data



On Mon, 16 Mar 2015, Koshoffer, Amy (koshofae) wrote:

> I would like to post this to the listserve.  I subscribe, but one post 
> I attempted was rejected.  Can you advise me how to post to the list 
> serve?

I think it went through.


> I was wondering if there are good examples for using creative commons 
> licenses with data sets.  We are working on rolling out our 
> Institutional repository and are trying to see how to provide adequate 
> licenses for data sets, but we feel that there is much to be learned.
> We have reviewed the DCC how to license data 
> http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/how-guides/license-research-data and 
> watched the ACRL webinar "Can I copyright my data".  I am interested 
> in cases that use the CC licenses or have used re-use statements (the 
> language of those re-use statements would be of great interest to us).


Version 4.0 of the CC licenses specifically assert rights over databases, 
not just normal copyright (which doesn't apply to most data in the US).

Prior to v4, John Wilbanks (at the time, working for Creative Commons) had 
recommended CC0 for data, due to some of the issues that other CC licenses 
caused for data re-use, like attribution stacking.  (when you end up with 
needing to attribute dozens or hundreds of different entities, because 
they all used various 'BY' clauses)

You might also want to consider the Open Data Commons licenses, which are 
specifically written for data:

 	http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/

There have been some questions about what qualifies as 'attribution'. 
When OCLC released the WorldCat data as ODC-BY, there were questions about 
how that would work in practice.  They seem to have changed the language 
on their website to try to get an explicit mention of OCLC on any 
application made using their data, but the original guidance was closer to 
the advice under the 'Can attribution be a burden?' section, where they 
mention just maintaining their identifiers:

 	http://www.oclc.org/data/attribution.en.html

-Joe


ps.  There are also a number of licensing related questions on
      the Open Data StackExchange site:

 	http://opendata.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/licensing

      Note that some of the questions are from before CC released  the
      version 4 licenses, such as the 'Benefits of using CC0 over CC-BY
      for data'

 	http://opendata.stackexchange.com/q/26/263

pps. Disclaimer :  I'm one of the moderators of the Open Data
      StackExchange website.