At the latest FISHEN meeting the issue of copyright on wordlists issued
by FISHEN as part of the INSCRIPTION standard was raised, and I was
asked to draft a note to address these concerns. What follows is a
draft, and I would welcome list members comments. Paragraph numbers are
included to assist with comments...

"1. FISHEN has developed INSCRIPTION as a framework for standard
wordlists to be agreed and disseminated. The use of shared standard
wordlists for indexing will facilitate the creation of networked
inventories, data exchange etc i.e. furthering the vision of 'sharing
the knowledge of England's past. Descriptions of each wordlist, and
details of how to obtain a copy, will be made available on the World
Wide Web in the next few weeks.

2. Concern have been expressed that the descriptions identify the
copyright situation and 'Owner' of each list in the standard. The
concerns seem to be specifically that this would be used as a back-door
means of FISHEN charging users, or more generally that it was
symptomatic of a 'Big Brother' attitude that ran contrary to the ideal
of sharing data.  

3. This note seeks to answer these concerns.

4. The wordlists included in INSCRIPTION are written works, and as such
are covered by copyright in exactly the same way as any other report or
publication. Copyright can only be held by a legal 'entity', either an
individual or an organisation. In the case of FISHEN it is the
organisation that has produced a wordlist that generally holds
copyright. Needless to say, a lot of the work of producing the lists is
collaborative (that is a crucial function of the Forum). However, as
part of the acceptance of a list into INSCRIPTION, the issue of the
copyright holder will be decided. Once decided, it is then up to the
copyright holding organisation exactly what conditions (if any) are
imposed on future use of the list. A final point is that it may well be
appropriate for FISHEN to recommend in INSCRIPTION the use of wordlists
produced by organisations not represented on FISHEN (e.g. the Getty
Information Institute or the British Standards Institute). In these
cases, copyright would have to be acknowledged.

5. FISHEN itself is not at present constituted as a legal 'entity' and
will not hold copyright.

6. It makes sense for the INSCRIPTION descriptions to make the situation
clear for each list. The purpose is to remove doubt, not to restrict
access or appropriate use. On the specific concern about profit making,
note  that FISHEN has adopted a policy that its member organisations
will not seek to make a profit out of the dissemination of the wordlists
included in INSCRIPTION.

7. On the general point of  concern over FISHEN's attitude, it is worth
bearing in mind that copyright also serves to help users of the lists.
Knowing who the owner and copyright holder of a list is helps to provide
assurance to users that they are using a current standard.  This in turn
will benefit all heritage information providers in constructing a
network of inventories using the agreed standardised terminology."

Edmund Lee, e-mail [log in to unmask] 


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