OGC needs to learn about Creative Commons

2007-03-15 13:00 | Permanent Link | LBS, Locative, Standards

This is a rant. I've been trying very hard to keep things positive on my blog. It's too easy to take potshots and sound whiny. But I think I have to say something here...

Some of you may know that I've been hammering on OGC for a long time about their document licensing. Nearly three years ago I presented the results of a study of spec and other spec-like documents on the OGC site. There were 70 documents with 17 different copyright statements. There were 3 variations of "OK to copy", 7 variations of "Don't copy", 7 miscellaneous, and 3 self-conflicting copyright statements/licenses on the documents.

I spent about two more years emailing OGC staff about this, being told all the while "we're fixing it". OGC, after all, is a standards organization that wants its standards to be widely adopted. So I would think that they would want to make sure people could legally download their documents, and that people should not then have to keep the documents in a locked room to comply with any licensing terms.

Eventually, OGC did start to put reasonable language on their documents but some of them are still encumbered with a click-through license that you encounter before you can download the document. Today on the GeoJSON mailing list, Geoff Hendry of decarta suggested we use the OpenLS information model.

I figured I should take a quick look at it but encountered this click-through license (here's the bit I'm muttering about):

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge and subject to the terms set forth below, to any person obtaining a copy of this Intellectual Property and any associated documentation, to deal in the Intellectual Property without restriction (except as set forth below), including without limitation the rights to implement, use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, and/or sublicense copies of the Intellectual Property, and to permit persons to whom the Intellectual Property is furnished to do so, provided that all copyright notices on the intellectual property are retained intact and that each person to whom the Intellectual Property is furnished agrees to the terms of this Agreement.

Note the last phrase - "and that each person to whom the Intellectual Property is furnished agrees to the terms of this Agreement."

What's the point of that? Why should I be given all the other rights to provide copies if I still have to make sure anyone who gets if from me reads and agrees to the click-through agreement which is not included in the document itself? (Or at least I have to assume is not in the document since I'm not going to download it.) Why am I put in a position of having to enforce their license? It would seem to me that the document itself has a license that OGC could enforce. But I'm not going to get in the middle of any enforcement.

This situation is tailor made for a Creative Commons license. Might I go so far as to suggest the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.The beauty of Creative Commons is that they've already spent money on the lawyers so you don't have to.

Plug: Remember to donate to Creative Commons. I picked up some great T-Shirts for Science Commons at SXSW...

Comments

2007-03-15 14:45 | Posted by Andrew Turner | http://highearthorbit.com

I bit the bullet for you and download the 3.6MB zipped spec (with Word, PDF versions, and 12 XSD files).

In the 174 page document, the only license mentioned is on the frontpage:

Copyright Notice
Copyright © Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc (2005)

I imagine it would have been tough for them to fit in an actual license agreement somewhere in the 174 pages. :)

The XSD files themselves are more verbose:

Copyright (c) 2003 OGC, All Rights Reserved - This OGC document is a draft and is copyright-protected by OGC. While the reproduction of drafts in any form for use by participants in the OGC Interoperability Program is permitted without prior permission from OGC, neither this document nor any extract from it may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form for any other purpose without prior written permission from OGC.

Now, with any license or document/software you download, the people you pass the license onto are still required to abide by the original license the material was released under. You're not the 'policing force' just because you gave it to them. It is still an agreement between the final party and the original party. however, IANAL, so perhaps I am wrong.

2007-03-15 15:00 | Posted by adoyle

Yes, but the part that quite explicitly says "and that each person to whom the Intellectual Property is furnished agrees to the terms of this Agreement." goes beyond the bit that says "provided that all copyright notices on the intellectual property are retained intact".

Another argument for Creative Commons - you only have to parse and understand a few pretty basic things.

Now, on to the other bit you quoted:

"While the reproduction of drafts in any form for use by participants in the OGC Interoperability Program is permitted without prior permission from OGC, neither this document nor any extract from it may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form for any other purpose without prior written permission from OGC."

This was one of the original things I was railing against. You, by virtue of having downloaded it and read it, have already violated the following: You have transmitted it to your computer. You have reproduced it on your computer, and you have stored it on your computer. You are not a participant in the OGC Interoperability Program, and you do not have prior written permission from OGC unless you are willing to count the click-through as written permission.

Caveat downloader.

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