Comments on: Remembering Babel: Open Data Sharing & Integration

By: Puneet Kishor

Puneet Kishor — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:01:11 +0000

CC0 is not a license. That is one crucial point to keep in mind when thinking about CC0 along with other CC licenses. The latter are true licenses while CC0 is a waiver. It is an absence of any license. Think of CC0 as a mark of quality. It proclaims that the data it is applied to has no known restrictions. To the extent that there were any copyrightable elements, the rights are waived, and with regards to the elements that are not copyrightable, well, there was nothing there to be waived in the first place.

Hope that helps.

By: Hungover Guy

Hungover Guy — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:13:12 +0000

As much as I can understand right now, I think you’re right!

By: RAHale

RAHale — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:27:46 +0000

It is incorrect to assume that because data is appropriate to the public domain it inherently ranks lower in value than “proprietary” data. For example, how valuable would you say it would be to have access to information about the public water supply for the watershed you live in ? Does that gain or lose value, depending on transparency? Who are stakeholders that define value ?

“…Further, they argue that some extremely valuable data sets might fall into this category, because the more valuable the data, the less likely it is that someone would consider simply releasing it into the public domain.”

By: Jim

Jim — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 14:43:24 +0000

Everything should be public domain after 5 years. Jim

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 12:25:36 +0000

What license might work best for scientific unit schemas, I wonder. They’re like a database with pieces of code. Review the files and contact me to discuss if interested.

The stated issue is “whether more data would be made available [shy of] public domain.” My gut says yes. Attribution issues are peanuts.

A healthy “commons,” almost by definition, needs Affero-style network licensing clauses. Companies monetizing the commons then have incentive to pool data work with competitors and volunteers. No company benefits from duplicating the database work of another. Market competition moves away from databases to company service, hardware/software computational prowess, site entertainment value, educational merit, staff expertise, and other factors.

By: Mike Linksvayer

Mike Linksvayer — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 04:00:11 +0000

Bob, CC0 applies to the extent it can to neighboring rights as well. The leading paragraph on http://creativecommons.org/choose/zero is pretty long, but worth reading again (emphasis added):

Using CC0, you can waive all copyrights and related or neighboring rights that you have over your work, such as your moral rights (to the extent waivable), your publicity or privacy rights, rights you have protecting against unfair competition, and database rights and rights protecting the extraction, dissemination and reuse of data.

Also spelled out in more detail in http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode

By: Bob Morris

Bob Morris — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:20:28 +0000

Where talking about “facts, ideas, and concepts that are not copyrightable by themselves.” this blog entry seems to contradict the CC0 commentary about http://creativecommons.org/choose/zero which I understand to mean that, like all CC licenses, CC0 can only apply to copyrightable material. How is this reconciled with advocacy of application of CC0 to something that is not copyrightable?

By: Bob Morris

Bob Morris — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:14:59 +0000

See also http://hdl.handle.net/10199/19092
Agosti, D., Egloff, W., 2009. Taxonomic information exchange and copyright: the Plazi approach. BMC Research Notes 2009, 2:53

for related solutions, especially for treatment of the case of non-copywritable material expressed for the first time in, and extracted from, copyrightable material.