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Understanding Open Data Regulation: An Analysis of the Licensing Landscape

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Open Data Exposed

Part of the book series: Information Technology and Law Series ((ITLS,volume 30))

Abstract

Open data models have been developed to improve democratic participation, transparency, and innovation. There is a growing variation in open data policies and licenses that aim to maximize dissemination and reuse of data and databases. Diverse tools have been developed, tailored to the specific field of open data licensing. However, the normative framework of open data is nuanced, and intellectual property laws differ in the treatment of data and databases. The open data regulatory system created from the existing legal framework, the adopted open data policies, and the licenses developed presents an inherent complexity that impedes data reusability. The chapter investigates legal issues stemming from that system in the current open data environment. The objective is to showcase solutions to that complexity stemming from the evolution of open data licenses, policies, and ultimately, intellectual property laws.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See the principles set out by the open definition at http://opendefinition.org/. Accessed May 2018.

  2. 2.

    See the full text of the Open Data charter at opendatacharter.net. Accessed May 2018.

  3. 3.

    Zuiderwijk and Janssen 2014.

  4. 4.

    For an overview of different open data principles: Lee 2017, pp. 212–213 and notes.

  5. 5.

    Hereinafter the PSI Directive.

  6. 6.

    Janssen and Hugelier 2013.

  7. 7.

    Even when principles of free re-use of data are added to the law in order to make licenses mostly redundant, their use is still recommended for clarity and educational purposes regarding the status of the data in question.

  8. 8.

    Ubaldi 2013, p. 37.

  9. 9.

    The Berne Convention for the protection of literary and artistic works of 9 September 1886, last amended on 28 September 1979 is an international copyright agreement and it consists of a series of provisions ensuring minimum standards of protection for works and for authors’ rights based on three founding principles: the principle of national treatment, the principle of automatic protection, and the principle of independence of protection. As of today, there are 175 contracting states adhered to the Berne Convention.

  10. 10.

    See Goldstein and Hugenholtz 2013, pp. 191–197.

  11. 11.

    “Compilations of data or other material, in any form, which by reason of the selection or arrangement of their contents constitute intellectual creations, are protected as such. This protection does not extend to the data or the material itself and is without prejudice to any copyright subsisting in the data or material contained in the compilation”.

  12. 12.

    The WIPO Copyright Treaty is a multilateral agreement expanding on aspects of protectable subject matter under the Berne Convention, which are of particular interest in the digital environment.

  13. 13.

    “Compilations of data or other material, whether in machine readable or other form, which by reason of the selection or arrangement of their contents constitute intellectual creations shall be protected as such. Such protection, which shall not extend to the data or material itself, shall be without prejudice to any copyright subsisting in the data or material itself.”

  14. 14.

    The Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights of 1994 (TRIPS) is an international agreement between members of the World Trade Organization (WTO), setting standards of intellectual property protection, dispute resolution, and enforcement in international trade between the signatory parties.

  15. 15.

    Hereinafter the Database directive.

  16. 16.

    Article 1(2) of the directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 1996 on the legal protection of databases.

  17. 17.

    According to Article 4(1) of the directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 1996 on the legal protection of databases, “the author of a database shall be the natural person or group of natural persons who created the base or, where the legislation of the Member States so permits, the legal person designated as the rightsholder by that legislation”.

  18. 18.

    Hereinafter ECJ.

  19. 19.

    ECJ Case C-5/08, Infopaq International A/S v Danske Dagblades Forening, [2009] ECDR 16.

  20. 20.

    Id. para 45.

  21. 21.

    ECJ Case C-604/10, Football Dataco Ltd et al v Yahoo! UK Ltd, [2012] GRUR 2012, p. 386.

  22. 22.

    Id. para 42.

  23. 23.

    Ensuring access to data for specific and limited purposes could be achieved through the existing exceptions in some countries. For example, data mining is a legal act in countries such as the United Kingdom for non-commercial uses (Article 29A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988) only and the United States as it is considered fair use.

  24. 24.

    Although not expressly qualified as an intellectual property right, the database right in question is considered as such because of its attributes. For example, Article 7(3) clarifies that the right “may be transferred, assigned or granted under contractual licence.”

    See Derclaye 2007, pp. 3–4; Derclaye 2014a, b, p. 320.

  25. 25.

    “A right for the maker of a database which shows that there has been qualitatively and/or quantitatively a substantial investment in either the obtaining, verification or presentation of the contents to prevent extraction and/or re-utilization of the whole or of a substantial part, evaluated qualitatively and/or quantitatively, of the contents of that database.”

  26. 26.

    According to Goldstein and Hugenholtz, “judicial decisions in the Netherlands and the United States that copyright does not protect databases that result merely from economic investment or intellectual effort helped to spur the introduction of sui generis protection.” Goldstein and Hugenholtz 2013, p. 240.

  27. 27.

    “Of its own kind”.

  28. 28.

    Hugenholtz 2016.

  29. 29.

    Derclaye 2005; Bygrave 2012.

  30. 30.

    Recital 40, Database directive.

  31. 31.

    In British Horseracing Board v William Hill, the ECJ ruled that “the expression ‘investment in (…) the obtaining (…) of the contents’ of a database must (…) be understood to refer to the resources used to seek out existing independent materials and collect them in the database, and not to the resources used for the creation as such of independent materials.”: ECJ Case C-203/02, British Horseracing Board Ltd v William Hill Organization Ltd, [2004] I-10415, para 31. See also, ECJ case C-338/02, Fixtures Marketing Ltd v Svenska Spel AB, [2005] ECDR 4.

  32. 32.

    According to an author, “this interpretation is very important because a lot of so called spin-off databases, … This includes, for example, event schedules, television or radio programs, transport timetables, telephone subscriber data, stock prices, scientific data resulting from research or experimentation and sports results. If the substantial investment in the collection, verification or presentation of the materials is inseparable from the substantial investment in their creation, the right will not subsist”: Derclaye 2007, p. 7; Derclaye 2014a, b, p. 320.

  33. 33.

    Article 7(1) of the Database Directive.

  34. 34.

    Derclaye 2014a, b, p. 326.

  35. 35.

    The content of term ‘substantial’ in order to qualify the infringement lacks clarity from both the Directive and the ECJ. See Derclaye 2014a, b, pp. 328–329; Masson 2006.

  36. 36.

    Derclaye 2008; Sappa 2011.

  37. 37.

    Derclaye 2008; Derclaye 2014a, b, p. 321; Sappa 2011.

  38. 38.

    Ubaldi 2013.

  39. 39.

    See Article L321-3 of the code des relations entre le public et l’administration.

  40. 40.

    Dodds 2010, p. 13.

  41. 41.

    According to a report published in 2016 by Creative Commons, more than one billion works are currently licensed under a Creative Commons license: State of the Commons, 2016, available online: https://stateof.creativecommons.org/. Accessed May 2018.

  42. 42.

    Lessig 2004, xiv.

  43. 43.

    See “What we do: What is Creative Commons?”, available online: https://creativecommons.org/about/. Accessed May 2018.

  44. 44.

    The innovation of the free software licenses does not only reside in the establishment of standardized licenses that provide the four essential freedoms to “run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.” Its success resulted from the creation of a veritable free movement, which consists of a community of people who share the same ideas and whose objective is to ensure access to free software and to make it evolve. Stallman 1999; Williams 2002; Shemtov and Walden 2013.

  45. 45.

    According to Leonard Dobusch and Sigrid Quack, “the free/open source software movement did not only highlight the demand for nonsoftware licenses; it also functioned as a ‘breeding ground’ for the foundation of Creative Commons.”: Dobusch and Quack 2008, p. 17.

  46. 46.

    Creative Commons is presented as the mediating solution among polarized opinions expressed in the digital copyright debate because of the variety of licenses proposed to the public.: Rimmer 2007; According to Dulong de Rosnay, “unlike tailored copyright licenses written by lawyers for specific and unique needs comparable to ‘haute couture’, Creative Commons provides six ‘prêt-à-porter’ or ‘ready-to- wear’ texts aiming at answering most needs while minimizing the number of available ‘sizes’ or ‘colors’.”: Dulong de Rosnay 2010, pp. 9–10.

  47. 47.

    Lessig 2005.

  48. 48.

    “Our web stats indicate that 97–98% of you choose Attribution, so we decided to drop Attribution as a choice from our license menu—it’s now standard.”: Brown 2004.

  49. 49.

    Giannopoulou 2014.

  50. 50.

    Such recognition “as an end itself and/or as a means to obtaining financial rewards, is the common motivator among creators who use CC licenses to share their works”. Katz 2006; According to Dulong de Rosnay, “Beyond fame and pride, it is a common feeling among creators to share their creation only in exchange of public recognition, and perhaps more visibility on their other activities”: Dulong de Rosnay 2010.

  51. 51.

    For the strategy-making process of defining the non-commercial uses element, see Dobusch and Kapeller 2017.

  52. 52.

    See Sect. 1(h) of the Creative Commons 4.0 “Attribution-Non commercial-No derivatives” and “Attribution-Non commercial-Share Alike” licenses.

  53. 53.

    “To be free means to be open to commercial appropriation, since freedom is defined as the nonrestrictive circulation of information rather than as freedom from exploitation.”: Nimus 2006; “Prohibiting commercial use except by special permission, on the other hand, puts you on the fringes of the free content movement, where the beer is free, but the philosophy is shallow.”: Möller 2007; Mako-Hill 2005; Chen 2009; Grassmuck 2011.

  54. 54.

    The interpretation of the non-commercial restriction varies but is subject to standardization from the relevant case law in different countries as well as from the norms created from users and authors. Giannopoulou 2016.

  55. 55.

    Dulong de Rosnay 2010.

  56. 56.

    According to the license, “if you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.” See Sect. 3(b) of the Creative Commons 4.0 “Attribution-Non commercial-Share Alike” and “Attribution-Share Alike” licenses.

  57. 57.

    Richard and Euan 2005.

  58. 58.

    This form of the license distinguished Creative Commons from other open content licenses because it was an effective expression of rights into code. See Dulong de Rosnay 2016.

  59. 59.

    Giannopoulou 2016; Dulong de Rosnay 2010.

  60. 60.

    Maracke 2010.

  61. 61.

    Ibidem., p. 70.

  62. 62.

    Creative Commons goals and objectives. https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/4.0#Goals_and_objectives. Accessed May 2018.

  63. 63.

    Maracke 2010, p. 79.

  64. 64.

    Ibidem.

  65. 65.

    Dulong de Rosnay 2010, p. 95.

  66. 66.

    Giannopoulou 2016; Artusio and Morando 2014.

  67. 67.

    Melanie Dulong de Rosnay points out for example how “works under (Non Attribution) Share Alike (version 1.0) licenses may only breed derivatives under similar (Non-Attribution) Share Alike licenses” because of that difference in the share alike clause between version 1.0 and later versions of the licenses.: Dulong de Rosnay 2010, p. 66.

  68. 68.

    These changes in the share alike conditions combined with the evolution of the subject matter and of the licensed rights touches upon the issue of compatibility between different licenses, which will be discussed Sect. 4.1 of this chapter.

  69. 69.

    Vollmer and Peters 2011; The regulation of the public domain varies according to jurisdiction and lacks clarity. Dusollier 2010; Guadamuz 2014.

  70. 70.

    Dusollier 2010.

  71. 71.

    Aliprandi 2012, p. 11.

  72. 72.

    “This is important since when a dataset is shared on the web, an American reuser, for instance, might wonder if he or she has to comply with an European right that he or she is not familiar with”. See Leucci 2014.

  73. 73.

    Artusio and Morando 2014.

  74. 74.

    The precursor was the Talis Community Licence created in April 2006 by the Talis firm, which specializes in developing Semantic Web solutions. See Miller et al. 2008.

  75. 75.

    Hereinafter PDDL.

  76. 76.

    De Filippi and Maurel 2015, p. 20.

  77. 77.

    Nguyen 2009.

  78. 78.

    Hatcher 2008.

  79. 79.

    See Sections 3.1 and 3.2 of the license.

  80. 80.

    See Section 3.3 of the license.

  81. 81.

    See Section 4 of the license.

  82. 82.

    Ibidem.

  83. 83.

    See Section 4.1 on compatibility issues between licenses.

  84. 84.

    Hereinafter UKGLF.

  85. 85.

    National archives 2016.

  86. 86.

    Hereinafter OGL.

  87. 87.

    Open Government Licence, Version 3.0.

  88. 88.

    According to Section 163 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, Crown copyright is attributed to works made by officers or servants of the Crown in the course of their duties.

  89. 89.

    “The Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office (HMSO) has developed this license as a tool to enable Information Providers in the public sector to license the use and re-use of their Information under a common open licence.” Open Government License, Version 3.0.

  90. 90.

    Non-Commercial Open Government Licence.

  91. 91.

    Directive 2013/37/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 June 2013, 2013, O.J. (L 175) 1, 1 Amending Directive 2003/98/EC on the Re-Use of Public Sector Information, 2003 O.J. (L 345), Article 6, at 2.

  92. 92.

    The license is created in accordance with the Re-use of Public Sector Information (PSI) Regulations 2015: The Re-Use of Public Sector Information Regulations 2015, SI 2015/1415, (UK), available at legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2015/1415/contents/made. Accessed May 2018.

  93. 93.

    The charges in question are not to be construed as means of opening data in order to finance the public sector.: Corbin 2010; Lee 2017.

  94. 94.

    See Sect. 4.1.

  95. 95.

    Loi n° 2015-1779 du 28 décembre 2015 relative à la gratuité et aux modalités de la réutilisation des informations du secteur public, JORF n°0301 du 29 décembre 2015, p 24319.; Loi n° 2016-1321 du 7 octobre 2016 pour une République numérique, JORF n°0235 du 8 octobre 2016.

  96. 96.

    See Article L.323-2 al. 4 of the code des relations entre le public et l’administration, as modified according to Article 11, Loi n° 2016-1321 du 7 octobre 2016 pour une République numérique.

  97. 97.

    In order to signify the change, the added provision clarifies that the license conforms to the n° 78-17 of 6 January 1978 regarding the protection of personal data.

  98. 98.

    The decree (Décret n° 2016-1922 du 28 décembre 2016 relatif à la publication en ligne des documents administratifs) published in accordance to Article 6 of the law n° 2016-1321 of 7 October 2016 specifies that all French administrations with more than 50 agents have to make their data open.

  99. 99.

    See article D323-2-1 created by decree n°2017-638 du 27 avril 2017—Article 1.

  100. 100.

    The justification for not including the Creative Commons in the decree of open data licenses could be found on the fact that version 4.0 has not yet been translated in French thus risking user confusion if applied.

  101. 101.

    Benjamin Jean uses examples from set theory to demonstrate the complexities of license compatibility. Jean 2006.

  102. 102.

    Dulong de Rosnay 2010, p. 60; Giannopoulou 2016, pp. 118–126.

  103. 103.

    See “What does one-way or two-way compatibility mean?” in ShareAlike compatibility. Available on: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/ShareAlike_compatibility. Accessed May 2018.

  104. 104.

    Dulong de Rosnay 2010.

  105. 105.

    See Sect. 4.4(a) of the ODbL.

  106. 106.

    See Sect. “Compatibilité de la présente licence”: “La présente licence a été conçue pour être compatible avec toute licence libre qui exige au moins la mention de paternité et notamment avec la version antérieure de la présente licence”.: Licence ouverte, version 2.0.

  107. 107.

    The lack of clarity in compatibility issues concerning the licensing of the sui generis rights between different versions has been pointed out by Dulong de Rosnay: Dulong de Rosnay 2010, pp. 94–96.

  108. 108.

    Ibidem., p. 279.

  109. 109.

    On this issue regarding geodata: Van Loenen et al. 2012.

  110. 110.

    Dulong de Rosnay 2010, p. 81.

  111. 111.

    The European Data Portal is developed by the European Commission in order to harvest “the metadata of public data made available across Europe”. There are more than 30 available licenses listed. See https://www.europeandataportal.eu/en/content/show-license. Accessed May 2018.

  112. 112.

    “[O]pen data policies . . . encourage the wide availability and re-use of public sector information for private or commercial purposes, with minimal or no legal, technical, or financial constraints.” Directive 2013/37/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 June 2013, 2013 O.J. (L 175) 1, 1 Amending Directive 2003/98/EC on the Re-Use of Public Sector Information, 2003 O.J. (L 345).

  113. 113.

    The UK government created an exception to the freedom to use open data with the Charged license, justified on the “costs that arise from the reuse of information”. The restriction of commercial uses of open data is also susceptible to create extra charges that may go beyond the initial policy justification of covering the necessary costs. What’s more, the transposition of the PSI Directive in France brought a nuance to the principle of free access in applied open data policies. Namely, Article 5 of the loi no2015-1779 relative à la gratuité et aux modalities de la réutilisation des informations du secteur public du 28 décembre 2015 introduces charges that can be imposed by institutions to cover the costs of collection, production and the making available of data.

  114. 114.

    Lee 2017, pp. 236–237.

  115. 115.

    Ibidem., pp. 235–239.

  116. 116.

    See for example the European Data Portal overview of different licenses applied to open data presenting different types of licenses, most of which include the obligation of attribution.

  117. 117.

    De Filippi and Maurel 2015, p. 14.

  118. 118.

    “[I]n countries where official texts are not protected by copyright, the issue of the need for access through licenses does not even arise”: Derclaye 2014b.

  119. 119.

    De Filippi and Maurel 2015, p. 17; Lee 2017, p. 232; This issue was raised in France when new legislation made open data the default rule for most public sector data. It was however decided to continue the application of licenses for educational purposes and to avoid user confusion.

  120. 120.

    See, for example, Van Loenen et al. 2012.

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Correspondence to Alexandra Giannopoulou .

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Giannopoulou, A. (2018). Understanding Open Data Regulation: An Analysis of the Licensing Landscape. In: van Loenen, B., Vancauwenberghe, G., Crompvoets, J. (eds) Open Data Exposed. Information Technology and Law Series, vol 30. T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6265-261-3_6

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