In the context of Nick's message, and deviating from the original
topic somewhat, it's worth noting that the Common Information
Environment (CIE) is doing some work at the moment to look at exactly
how well the Creative Commons licences align with UK public sector
requirements.

With funding from the British Library, Becta, DfES, JISC and MLA,
we've commissioned a piece of work to tell us how well the Creative
Commons licences (in their localised form) fit the needs of (mainly)
public sector organisations who wish to make data/content/etc
available for some form of predominantly non-commercial use.

You can see what we asked them to do at http://www.common-info.org.uk/
news/archives/2005/05/funding_for_cre.html and the project team have
some initial information on their work at http://www.intrallect.com/
cie-study/.

We're due to get a report from the team by the end of August, and
will be working to act upon their recommendations thereafter.

If anyone wants more info, please get in touch...

Paul

On Tue 24 May, at 11:25, Nick Poole wrote:

> Jane,
>
> Not an answer to your main question, which is probably for others
> to address, but a
> comment on the licensing model.
>
> The licensing model you describe sounds very similar to the
> Attribution Non-
> commercial-Sharealike license under the Creative Commons framework
> (see
> http://www.creativecommons.org/license/ for further information).
>
> Essentially, what this licence says is that people can make use of
> your data subject
> to the following restrictions:
>
> 1. That they acknowledge 24HM as the source (which helps to
> maintain the
> contextual authority of your data)
>
> 2. That they can create derivative works from it, but that these
> must inherit the same
> licensing provisions as the core dataset
>
> 3. That they cannot commercialise these derivative works
>
> Creative Commons is most commonly applied to music and images, but
> I believe it is
> equally applicable to a dataset as a piece of Intellectual Property.
>
> The great thing about the CC licenses is that they facilitate and
> promote the sharing
> of information in the way Paul describes, but with a greater degree
> of control than
> simply releasing the data into the Public Domain. 24HM would also
> retain the right to
> assign a commercial license with selected partners if this became
> important to your
> business.
>
> Finally, CC has released versions of the licenses that are tailored
> to the UK (England
> and Wales) and UK (Scotland) jurisdictions. Although I know of very
> little case law
> that shows them in action, there is a sense in which they are just
> another way of
> looking at licensing terms & conditions, for which there is plenty
> of supporting
> evidence.
>
> Well, you did ask....
>
> Nick
>
>
> Nick Poole
> Director
> MDA
>
>
>
>
> On 24 May 2005 at 11:04, Jane Finnis wrote:
>
>
>> Dear MCG,
>>
>> It seems that what Paul is suggesting might be the 24HM licensing its
>> data to other users, thus making the dissemination of all the
>> information that individual museums put into our system via DDE, much
>> more widely available to other data sources?
>>
>> This is an interesting idea and one that we have been exploring. In
>> fact, we have recently been approached by Ordnance Survey to do just
>> this. If we say yes to OS, then all our data will be imported into
>> the
>> OS 'points of interest' dataset and would as a result mean that all
>> our 3,400 institutions would then appear on all the OS printed maps
>> and in all their associated offline and online products that use the
>> 'points of interest' data. Sounds pretty good and I might be a good
>> way to incentivise DDE. My concerns are about the terms of such a
>> licence.
>>
>> What do list members think? Should the 24HM be supplying data to
>> OS in
>> this fashion? Of course they want it for free but is it good business
>> to give it to them? Does anyone have examples of data sharing
>> licences
>> that they could share with us or of similar dealing with OS?
>>
>> Also, if we give it to OS what about others? Should it be freely
>> available to all sector partners? Where do you draw a line?
>>
>> I see our data as one of our key assets as a business, in a way
>> rather
>> like one of our collections so I am mindful about safeguarding its
>> value and don' want to see it exploited for commercial gain but at
>> the
>> same time I share the belief that making this data as widely
>> available
>> as possible is one of the principle strategies for securing a better
>> profile for our sector to online audiences.
>>
>> Thought please?
>>
>> Jane
>>
>>
>>
>> Jane Finnis
>> Director
>> 24 Hour Museum
>>
>> Main Number: 01273 820044
>> Direct Number: 01273 820470
>> Mobile: 078 66 77 0818
>>
>
>
>
> Nick Poole
> Director
> MDA
>
> The Spectrum Building
> The Michael Young Centre
> Purbeck Road
> Cambridge
> CB2 2PD
>
> Telephone: 01223 415 760
> Email: [log in to unmask]
> Website: http://www.mda.org.uk
>


---
Dr Paul Miller
Director, Common Information Environment

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