An extremely interesting question, Nick, coming as it does a few days after Commissioner Neelie Kroes proposed to an amendment [1] to the 2003 PSI directive [2] that, if adopted by the EC and implemented by member states would appear to make the DEA a matter of indifference - at least, by my reading of the two documents (and subject to various possible exemptions).
I'm not great with legal stuff but as far as I can tell the effect of the proposed amendment would be to
a) explicitly bring in museums, libraries and archives, which were explicitly excluded from the 2003 directive
b) include all "data" - documents and metadata, but not software - that is in the public realm (but excluding all assets in which third-party copyright or IP are implied, or personal data)
c) require all such data to be available for reuse in machine-readable form, without discrimination between different parties for the same kind of reuse. Re-use was outside the scope of the 2003 directive
d) require that charges for use/reuse did not exceed marginal costs. This is a significant change from 2003 which allowed for the recovery of digitisation costs, a return on investment, and an allowance for the financial needs of the public sector body. All charges would have to be justified by "objective, transparent and verifiable criteria".
e) allow for possible exemptions to these requirements, albeit in seemingly narrow circumstances. It would be possible to argue that a digital resource was an important revenue-generating source, for instance, and that it was important to be able to continue to charge for certain uses
f) "licences for the re-use of public sector information should in any case place as few restrictions on re-use as possible...Member States should encourage the use of open government licences." Note that whilst this does not require a public domain dedication, "as few restrictions ...as possible" taken literally would imply exactly that

Since there are few if any examples of GLAMs making money from the metadata describing their collections (as opposed to the digitised objects themselves, which clearly can be profitable), it seems unlikely that any museum could make a good case for exempting catalogue data from the requirements of the amended directive. In other words, it would effectively become obligatory to release one's data under an open licence, and it's unlikely that any marginal cost argument would carry weight either. Like it or not, any museum metadata that's in the public realm and is not subject to 3rd party copyright, would be covered. I expect that there may be many more cases where some form of charging for digital images etc would be acceptable.

If all of our collections metadata had to be available under an open licence already then the requirements of the DEA itself would become a matter of indifference or irrelevance, given that it covers only metadata and not the digital objects that the metadata describes. And given that museums, libraries and archives are singled out (and organisations like operas and ballets explicitly excluded) it certainly looks like this may be very intentional. A CC0 licence is what will finally enable both Culture Grid and Europeana to deliver on their potential and carry cultural content to a far wider audience, so what would be the point of not signing up to the DEA and opting out of these just at the point where they should start to pay off? Especially if a revised PSI directive would oblige you to license your data freely soon afterwards, but without the reward.

I may be misunderstanding the proposed amendment, and of course it may be modified before it is adopted, but that's my take anyway. 

Happy Christmas everyone.

Cheers, Jeremy 


1 http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/policy/psi/index_en.htm
2 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2003:345:0090:0096:EN:PDF


________________________________________
From: Museums Computer Group [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Nick Poole [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 21 December 2011 10:19
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [MCG] Europeana Data Exchange Agreement

Good morning MCG'ers,



A question has arisen in another forum about how UK museums are
responding to the new Europeana Data Exchange Agreement, and I thought
it would be interesting to open it up for general comment.



For those of you not intimately involved in Europeana, the DEA is
essentially a license permitting Europeana to make metadata about museum
collections available as Linked Open Data. You can view the Agreement,
and read more of the background here
<http://www.europeana-libraries.eu/web/europeana-project/newagreement> .



Discussion of the Agreement, which has taken place largely over the past
18 months, has raised an interesting distinction between bibliographic
metadata and museum object records. Some museums have observed that an
object record is not an objective set of facts about the object, but
rather a subjective/interpretive assertion about it. There has also been
the comment that object metadata is more of a created work than a
bibliographic record, and hence that it is harder to license openly for
distributed reuse (including commercial reuse).



The Collections Trust will shortly be signing the DEA for the 1.7m
object records currently in the Culture Grid
<http://www.culturegrid.org.uk/> , and I would welcome views on this, as
well as comments on how other colleagues are approaching the Agreement.



Finally, we are looking into a funding proposal for the forthcoming
Framework Programme call on Public/Private Partnerships for
Digitisation. We would love to hear from anyone either already involved
in a PPP or interested in getting involved in one who might be
interested in participating in a proposal next June.



With thanks, and best regards,



Nick



Nick Poole

CEO

Collections Trust



020 7942 6080



Correspondence: Collections Trust, WC2 09 Natural History Museum,
Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD







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