opencontentlawyer.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WLA@V%26A

Wikipedia Loves Art at the Victoria and Albert Museum is a free content photography contest organised by the Victoria and Albert Museum, Wikimedia UK and other Wikipedians. It is due to take place in February 2009 and is part of the wider Wikipedia Loves Art project that month.

The objective for the V&A is to compile a public digital collection of the major art pieces held at the museum. For Wikipedians, the objective is to collect images and use them to illustrate articles throughout Wikipedia.

The goal is to create open content or public domain images of either public domain works or works whose copyright is owned by/held by the Victoria and Albert museum. Essentially, this is crowdsourcing digitisation.

As I mentioned in my last post, this is an appendix I wrote for a report looking at the use of Creative Commons licenses for (mostly) public sector organisations in the UK from back in 2005. It outlines some of the issues present with the use of the term in the CC licences. As this is taken from an earlier word processor draft that I had, there may be some minor errors or formatting difficulties with using this draft and pasting it into a WP post (and of course it’s from 2005).

Commercial versus Non-commercial Use

Defining the difference between “commercial” and “non-commercial” can be extremely difficult. Parliament considered and ultimately rejected a proposal to add “non-commercial” to a fair dealing exception during the 1988 revision because of this difficulty. [Footnote 1.] One American court, in relation to a fair use analysis, has stated that the problem with this distinction is that it “somewhat unrealistically paints the world into two corners.” [Footnote 2].

Creative Commons-style licenses, with their attendant restrictions on non-commercial use, are too new to have developed any case law construing the meaning of the term as used in the license. The question of construction of “non-commercial” in relation to Creative Commons (CC) and similar licenses may need to be focused on what the licensor (the author) intends when she uses the term “non-commercial” and what the users think when they read the restriction. When users, both as licensors and as licensees, use the term, do they refer to:

• The use of the work or the status (as a non-profit) of the organisation using it?
• Direct or indirect compensation?
• Monetary or non-monetary compensation?
• A Continental-style private copying exception?

Commercial/non-commercial issues in relation to fair dealing and fair use may not be the best place to start because they have different public policy concerns. Fair dealing and fair use as a policy balances the property rights of the copyright holder with the general public interest. The point of a Creative Commons-style license is not to grant users rights that they already have, but to grant additional rights. Fair dealing and fair use do, however, help to illustrate some of the problems with the term “non-commercial” in relation to the four areas above. [Read more →]

Creative Commons is doing a survey on the term “non-commercial” that ends on the 14th.

http://ur1.ca/y41

This survey is very important as people have a difference of opinion on some of the boundaries of what non-commercial means. For a public licence, such as Creative Commons licences, having community input on the meaning of more ambiguous terms such as this is key to building a common understanding: It keeps the “Commons” part a common understanding and not a difference in law for people to argue over.

I have some background research on the non-commercial termm that I’ll try to post over the next few days.

The website for the conference is now up:

The Centre for Geospatial Science of University of Nottingham, Open Source Geospatial Foundation (UK Chapter), ICA Working Group on Open Source Geospatial Technologies, SOSoRNET and Open Knowledge Foundation are organizing the First Open Source GIS UK Conference on 22nd June (Monday), 2009 at the University of Nottingham.

http://www.opensourcegis.org.uk/ for more information.

I am on the committee through my work on open data but likely unable to attend the actual event as it conflicts with a conference I’ve committed to in the US. Looking forward to participating though and seeing the submissions.

The JISC project on Preservation of Web Resources (JISC-PoWR) project, of which I’ve contributed some of the legal work, has just released v1.0 of the Handbook at: http://jiscpowr.jiscinvolve.org/handbook/. A DOI or URI will likely be on its way, but until then you can always get the latest version at that URL.

I’m really pleased with the way the JISC-PoWR Handbook has turned out and had a great time participating in the project. Thanks to Marieke, Ed, Richard, Brian, and Kevin for all their hard work and for including me in the project team. There are lots of plans for continuing the work started here, so be sure and stay tuned to the JISC-PoWR blog for more information.

Quick note to say that you can have a look at the draft PoWR handbook, for which I contributed on the legal materials, at the PoWR blog site:

http://jiscpowr.jiscinvolve.org/handbook/

It includes sections and information on open content and open data, as well as some of the general legal issues around preservation on the web.

Any comments on the legal section warmly welcomed.

Via the Creative Commons blog, Diane Peters CC’s General Counsel has introduced the latest draft of their public domain licensing / dedication tool CC0:

We are pleased to release for public comment the next beta draft of CC0 Waiver, which comes several months after the last draft of CC0 was published in April. You can view the beta draft 3 at ccLabs.

While this draft is being released later than planned (more on that, below), we are very excited about the progress we’ve made on CC0 in the interim. We look forward to receiving your comments and suggestions for improving CC0 still further. Read on to hear more about what has changed and our plans for finalizing CC0 this fall.

Full draft here.

The JISC-sponsored Preservation of Web Resources project (JISC-PoWR) will be running its third and final workshop in Manchester. The series of workshops is aimed at the UK HE/FE records management and Web management communities.

The workshop, entitled ‘Embedding Web Preservation Strategies Within Your Institution’, will be held from 10.30 am - 4pm on Friday 12th September 2008 at the Flexible Learning Space, University of Manchester.

It is free to attend and open to all members of HE/FE Institutions and related HE and FE agencies although we may need to restrict the numbers per institution if we are over-subscribed.

The aim of the workshop is to gain and share feedback from institutional Web, information and records managers on the proposed JISC-PoWR handbook, to address ways of embedding the proposed recommendations into institutional working practices and to solicit ideas for further work which may be needed.

Further details and the booking form are available from the JISC-PoWR blog:
http://jiscpowr.jiscinvolve.org/workshops/workshop-3/

The booking deadline is Friday 5th September 2008 and places are limited.

A quick note to say that the University of Amsterdam’s Institute for Information Law (IViR) is hiring for a junior researcher on open content licensing:

The Institute has a position available for a (junior) researcher to work on an ongoing research project on Open Content licensing. IViR is legal partner of Creative Commons NL, which has received substantial funding from the Dutch Ministry of Culture for a variety of Open Content related activities, including legal research.

Full details are available here: Jobs.ac.uk | University of Amsterdam

As part of a trend for opening up publicly funded data, the Cabinet Office’s Power of Information Taskforce has set up a competition to fund projects using public data: Show us a better way. From the site:

The Power of Information Taskforce is helping government become more open, transparent and effective through better use of published information.

This competition is asking for your help in developing better ways to publish the vast swathes of non-personal information that the government collects & creates on your behalf

Public data is your data. Tell us what you’d build with it and you could win £20k to develop your idea to the next level.

The main licence for the government data (non-Ordnance Survey) is the Click Use PSI licence by the Office of Public Sector Information, which is quite liberal in its terms. It meets the terms of the Open Definition by the Open Knowledge Foundation as an open licence.