Sure to be of interest to some of you:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ant Beck <ant.beck(a)gmail.com>
Date: 7 February 2013 21:25
Subject: [open-archaeology] Open Data Licences and the Heritage
Lottery Fund (great guidance but recommend the NC clause) - lobbying
activity
To: "open-archaeology(a)lists.okfn.org" <open-archaeology(a)lists.okfn.org>
Dear All,
TL/DR: We would like to influence the Heritage Lottery Fund to change
their data licence from CC-BY-NC to CC-BY to stop data fragmentation.
Do you support this?
I've been in communication with Lorna Richardson over the past few
months about the Heritage Lottery Fund guidance entitled “Using
digital technologies in heritage projects”. This is a truly wonderful
and forwarding looking piece of work which IMHO opinion has a
substantial flaw; they mandate that any content they fund must be made
available under a CC-BY-NC licence. I'm loving it until the
Non-Commercial clause.
I believe they have done this with the best of intentions but do not
quite see the potential negative implications the NC clause this may
have over the medium to long term.
I have spoken to one of their managers and they are somewhat perplexed
as to why NC might be a problem. I said I would get in touch with a
number of organisations, get a concensus and then get back to them
(although likely to be informally through Bob Bewley in the first
instance). This is the first step in this process.
Together with Lorna we have created a document which outlines the
impact of NC as we see it and have set forward some recommendations to
try to influence HLF to change this clause (at least for the data
elements - I do have sympathy with their arguments that the data
creators should be in the best position to financially exploit the
resources they generate particularly if this is images, video or books
(but not data (I don't consider raw photos to be data per-se))). The
recommendation is to organise a workshop (under the auspices of OKF or
ADS??) with key stakeholders in place. The outputs can be used to
catalyse an immediate re-draft or inform a future re-draft (depending
on how they take the recommendations!).
You can find the document here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nw8kwSYdcLgf_QFo5sugRgrwtDtYZomeJ4Sh9T-…
It is open to edits and comments: please feel free.
Please be aware this is primarily of UK interest. However, the
implications are global.
I would like to find out if:
this document reflects the views of the members of this forum (i.e.
can I sign it off as representative of this forum).
how we can get OKF to provide support for this activity (someone with
decent debating skills at the workshop with a rounded legal knowledge
of the CC licences and their impact on the data landscape)
which other forums/stakeholders to canvas (Antiquist/ADS, etc.)
Views on stakeholders to invite
Views on funding (HLF may not fund this activity)
and obviously critique of the document itself.
I've pasted the executive summary below.
Thanks for reading this far :-)
Best
Ant
Executive Summary
The HLF have produced a guidance document entitled 'Using digital
technologies in heritage projects'. This document establishes a 21st
century agenda for funding agencies by recognising the long-term role
that project content play in science and social agendas. The Open Data
in Archaeology working group strongly endorses this document and
believes that improving long-term access to project content will have
immense impact across domains and have particular benefits for
engagement.
However, the Open Data in Archaeology working group has some concerns
about the use of the Creative Commons by attribution non-commercial
(CC-BY-NC) licence for all project content. Whilst we see the benefit
for many project resources we would question the benefit of this
licence for resources described as 'preservation technologies'. We
feel that whilst CC-BY-NC may provide some short-term benefits it has
the potential to produce license incompatibilities which may introduce
profound problems in the medium to long term. It has the potential to
fragment the data landscape creating pockets of knowledge which are
rarely used in mainstream analysis, research or policy making. This
will be further exacerbated when automated data aggregation and
analysis systems become the norm. We believe that such fragmentation
goes against the intent of the HLF document which is clearly focused
on accessibility, engagement and enjoyment by all.
We would like to engage in further discussion with the HLF on these
issues and propose that a workshop is established to bring together
the major re-use stakeholders under the umbrella of the Open Knowledge
Foundation (who will provide legal, technical and practical advice on
licence issues).
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Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
http://pigsonthewing.org.uk