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Open Source License For Databases?
Myddrin asks: "Recently there has been lot of discussion of databases, and who owns them. The US either is considering or passed a law saying a Database(and info contained there-in) is owned by the creating person/company. [I honestly can't remember.] At anyrate, this got me thinking of a the (possible) need for Database GPL (DGPL). Basically the same as the LGPL, but adding that the database host (i.e. the owner of the server hosting the specific instance of the db) can put restrictions on access allowing them to offset the cost of hosting the machine (administration, i'net connection, etc)." Any data in a database is content, just like information on a web page. Maybe an Open Content License might be a better idea? Thoughts? (More)
"...Examples of acceptable restrictions would be:
- any program accessing this database must display the advert. provided,
- a cost of $.000000001 per record returned
- a nominal monthly subscription fee...
Is there a license that allows this kind of thing, or should I be working on one? "
With all the crap we've seen on NSI's Whois database, I'd say this is damn good idea - why shouldn't something created by the public (yes, all of our registrations created this database!) be owned by the public?
Or more like a restriction. Our personal information that is already floating around can not be resold but merely modified with changes? :)
Ok.. but at least a legal way to prevent us from being in public or sellable databases. I'm so tired of getting calls from phone-spammers.
"And how can this be? For he is the
They can't have it both ways.
If such a law is passed, this means that anybody who creates a database of song lyrics owns it!
If copyright law interferes with this, then I'm going to copyright my personal information.
Another license?
Is it needed? Isn't that what
copyright is for?
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120
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Hand me that airplane glue and I'll tell you another story.
I cannot imagine the FSF would sanction a license (at least I'm assuming you would want DGPL to be sanctioned by the FSF, based on the suggested name) that would require advertisement. Although, in the web-context, I suppose advertisements are the closest thing to a common currency. I still think that'd be the real sticking point, though.
Christopher A. Bohn
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
IMHO, it would be great to have a generic "copyleft" scheme, which covered everything, but for now, something for each of the significant special cases (eg: code, documentation, art, databases, etc.) is a good start.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
--
The Free Software Foundation (http://www.gnu.org/) has been working up a license to cover documentation. Not exactly the same as what's being discussed here, but maybe close, if you think that information is information is information. Perhaps with some minor changes it would do the job, or a similar variant could be derived.
This is a work in progress (correct me if I'm wrong). At least I don't yet see it on the Free Software Foundation's license list (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html)
I'm sure the authors would have more appropriate input than myself. Just my two cents.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
In my experience (as someone who has setup databases and interfaces for commercial ventures), the major concern of for-profit database owners is not that they won't be able to make money off the database (even if it's just ad revenues) but that someone will be able to grab all their information and resell it better than they can. I'd imagine that the major concern of not-for-profit database owners/creators is that someone will fragment the database through irregular mirroring.
The concerns of for-profit database owners is not paramount to a DGPL but the copying/mirroring of data should still be the focus. Towards this, it should be ensured that the DGPL addresses both dynamic and static databases and gives owners as much reason to use this license as the LGPL.
A few comments:
I would like to see licenses concentrating on the data (content) rather than the whole database (the collection of data) - that would let you modify, it resell it etc -- much like the US census data or USGS geographic datasets.
This question is very interesting, especially for geographic data (for GIS -- Geographic Information Systems). The situation in the US is like a dream, where all the USGS data is distributed without any tough restrictions (a BSD-ish license for data). The datasets are very expensive to create and a valuable asset.
In comparison, the situation in most of Europe (for example UK or Sweden, where Im from) is that the mapping agencies are recovering most of the costs associated in creating digital geographic datasets. They are incredibly expensive!!! Thus the use of GIS is much more restricted (as well as development in the field) in this part of the world.
Another interesting point, the license which NASA licenses the new Landsat 7 digital imagery. They are a lot cheaper than before (a few hundred $$$) and the license is 100% non-restricted (even here a BSD-ish license). In comparison, earlier Landsats, and the current competitors are a magnitude more expensive, and in most cases they require you to license the USE of the data, not the 'ownership' of the data. That way you had to buy one license to use a satellite image for education/classes and another license to use the same image for an analysis... Landsat is run by the US government, so it is you tax payers that are paying for this give-away (they are not obviously recovering all the costs for the operation)
Nowadays there are people that have bought (and used) the new Landsat images and are making them available for download (for free!). Of course this is under great debate (imagine the competitors to Landsat).
So... More talk about data and databases!
// Fraxinus
>If copyright law interferes with this, then I'm
>going to copyright my personal information.
Hmm, that's actually a fairly interesting idea. Could this be done to thwart having your phone number resold etc? Copyright your name, phone number, and address and then sue people who sell it for infringement? Hmm. It seems to me that there is already established the idea that personal information has value, it seems logical that the person whose information it is should be considered the owner. If companies have to pay ME for my phone number/mailing address, I can set the price high so it's not worth the effort for them to spam me with advertisements
The problem is that it can be hard work to research and compile these facts even if the result has no originality. I think we believe that people should be able to obtain benefit from their work. Database protection schemes try to create a copyright-like right against the substantial extraction and reuse of facts from a database. Thus, someone who contributes to a publicly licensed database wants to be sure he can access the additions of others in the future in payment for his work (rather than the corporate-generate-cashflow model for benefit.)
Licenses are important to accomplish that right to later access because they can work even where you don't have a 'right' to copyright. Thus, if I license a CD to you with all the phone numbers in the U.S., I can license it to you as long as you don't put it where multiple people can use it. After all, fair is fair, we have a contract, and I am just making sure I can sell my work to other people, and not have you, my customer, becoming my competitor just for having bought my product once.
A public license on a database would really only be useful if databases DERIVED from the original had to be made available for copying. Consider a list of all the music CDs ever made. It has to be updated, since new product comes out all the time. Can someone go into the business of providing these databases by taking the old, updating it, and calling the new database proprietary? Not if you have a public license. (All of this assumes that shrinkwrap or clickwrap licenses are good. They aren't in many countries.)
As long as the resultant database is available to be copied, in whole, then the charge for accessing the server, whether to take the whole thing at once, or one record at a time ought to just fall under a reasonable distribution charge. Heck, the record-by-record access might as well be charged at any rate the provider wants since they are providing interface as well as content. If someone wants to roll their own, let them download the database.
I think a public database license would be a good thing because it will allow public databases to grow and be distributed in a fair way when database protection laws are passed.
I recently did a report for a tech-english class last semester. It ended up being about ownership and the Internet, most specificly who it is that owns the whole shebang. Not an easy project, and I did not end up finding what I thought I would find when I first started. The paper overall ended up being one on copyrights. So I'll say the same thing that I ended up saying in that paper.
You cannot treat the digital world the same as the print world.
It just cannot be done. Everybody that reads slashdot with any frequency knows the lunacy of walking down that path. So let me take that argument and apply it here.
You cannot treat an online database the same as one you might have as hardcopy database (read:propritary, closed, or rolerdex on a desk) in an office. You cannot charge access to it in the same manner. You cannot oversee the users in the same manner. And most importantly, you cannot expect people to value the data that is stored therein the same.
With that said how can anybody expect to make a profit by putting such a beast online. I have two thoughts.
#1: Do as the search engines do. Find some other way to profit. I have no idea what product Yahoo makes, but for some reason people invest in it, and somebody, somewhere is making money. It has been done once, and it can be done again.
#2: Do it ebay style. Auction the info off. Highest bidder gets the ability to negotiate a use license. No cost to find out if it exists, just a cost to read it. The more people demand rare info, the higher the price goes up.
Any body else go a suggestion?
Plagiarism has a long history, and I saw several students get the boot from the University where I went to school for violating University guidelines.
:-)
If you are going to do new work on a previously examined topic, you must cite your sources, have a variety of sources cited, and NOT provide a sense that the owners of the cited work have been plagarized.
For example, I can write a book about "Snoop Doggy Dogg", provide about 100 citations (books, webpages, mag. articles, TV/Radio programs), provide my condensed "personal take" on the rapper, and publish. That's legal; it's the foundation of all new work -- deriving from the old.
But when I cross the line (doing a rehash of an existing SDD book), and call that work my own with no citations, or with a "sense" of plagiarism, I open myself up to legal trouble.
I think the "fair use" rules, as they apply to books, will eventually dominate this issue. People using data from webpages WILL have to cite their sources, use a variety of sources, and verbatim copiers will be penalized/threatened, etc.
What am I missing here? This just sounds like another failure of the legislative process to provide sane solutions to a fairly simple, well-known problem. Is this just a scheme to provide incompetent lawyers with phat salaries for years to come?
I see no fundamental difference between pages on the web and pages in the library. They both convey information to the observer in virtually the same manner. The earliest animations were just flipping paper pages anyway.
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There allready is a license for open content. Check out www.opencontent.org.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
I hope RMS updates the GPL to deal with this issue more specifically soon....
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I don't think the implicaions of this law are understood completely. Current copyright law through various legal precedents grants copyright protection to the format of a collection of data. the classic example is a phone book. It also only applies to the exact organization if that organization is not obvious.
The classic example is a phonebook. A phonebook is a collection of data i.e. names, phone numbers, and addresses. Organized in alphabetical order. As it turns out under current copyright law this has minimal protection. Alphabetical ordering is obvious, and the rest of the directory is information which by law is publlic domain and not protected by copyright.
A law protecting databases and their content could easily extend to a copyright on information. Basically, a database should be covered just like a phone book. Any content in the database would be owned by the creator of that content, but any information would have to continue to be public domain.
Basically, this means that the databases of internet search engines can be extracted and reorganized into a new database, simply because URL and page titles are information and therefore are not and should not be protected.
Dastardly
P.S. Arguably a page title could be considered the property of the creator of the original, but the URL is really public domain information and not protected by copyright.
This has a lot to do with who does own a database... If I go out, messure the rainfall over a period of a year at 10 different places, and then put that into a database, its mine. I don't think anyone but mother nature can contest that (unless I put it in an Access database, then MS might contend ;)).
But if I go and put all the information I know about everyone I know into a database, who does the database belong to? Can I go and sell the information? The 1991 Privacy Act in New Zealand says that if I am a company, and I collect information about ppl, one of the things I must do is along ppl access to view/modify there record. (Within reason, ppl can't demand to modify their bank balance ;)). I also must state what I plan to do with the information, including wether I plan to sell it. Ianal, but I don't think it prohibits me from selling it to anyone I want.
Theres a good reason for this, our electoral rolls (list of ppl who are enrolled to vote, names, addresses, etc) are availible for purchase, (incidentaly, in order to have my record unavailible, I have to have a "good" reason, eg I'm being stalked, and I have a restraining order, etc. I can't opt out of it just because I want to).
This means that my database of your personal habits I noticed is mine. And I can do with it what I want. (Note; there is an option for various personal defimation(sp) laws here if I say false things).
Now that thats settled, what DO I want to do with my database of your habits? Well, I believe in free speach, my programs are GPL, so I want to make it free.
I will license my database under a "free" license. This license is NOT designed to allow ppl to make money off of my database, so the same rights must be transmitted to the user of the database. So, the license must allow a user to "copy" the database one record at a time if they like.
Now, the big thing, cost. Simple, same as the GPL, a distribution fee. ie you can charge a reasonable fee for the distribution of the database in whole to the user.
Ahh, but what about accessing records, eg a web database, or phone, whatever. Thats fine, you can charge me whatever, that is outside the scope of the license, but what is in scope, is you MUST offer the entire database for a reasonable cost.
"What!" you cry, "This is no good for me". Fine, then don't use the license, if you want to make money out of something, why are you trying to use a "Free" license?
The point of the matter is, a "free" database license should not be orientated at making money. I don't earn a cent from the GPL programs I write. If i wanted to, I could, I'd just use a different license. But I don't, and I want my database of your personal habits to be free aswell.
The minute you try and work out how a company can still make money with this license, you defeat the purpose of it. As I said, you can offer access to the database for whatever price you want, but you must offer the entire database for a resonable price too. RedHat makes their money by basically selling pretty boxes and support.
Stop trying to work out how you can make money out of database, and start working out how you can make it available for all.
I use to have a funny sig, but slash cut it off, and I forgot what the punchline was.
I have no problem with a company databasifying public data and charging for their compilation. Don't like it? Buy a different compilation from a competitor, or get the raw data and databaseify it yourself.
On the other hand, I have a BIG problem with a company and a government agency cutting a sweetheart deal such that only that ONE company gets to databaseify and sell that agency's public records. (This has happened with both the US Patent Office and the Library of Congress card catalog, though I'm not sure if either exclusive deal is still in effect.)
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Look at the IMDB. as an example.
It's not "open" in the facet that it can't be repackaged or repurposed, but is "open" as far as using it to obtain a wide variety of well-organized and searchable information. Updates, servers, and bandwidth are paid for with mass exposure (advertising).
Databases are interesting things. I mainly work with radio/tv station db's. It has been determined that the average cost for obtaining a name/address/phone is roughly $7. Appending interesting information costs more money, as well as yearly NCOA (National Change of Address) updates, databases can be expensive, or I should say, used to be. The Internet has changed things siginificantly (as if you didn't know). Acquisition has dropped (for us) to about $.10 a name.
Large Databases used to (15-20 yrs. ago)require the work of millions of dollars of heavy iron, now a moderately equipped small company can do serious modeling/profiling and apply it (BTW, this is another reason CS majors are pulling heavy $) effectively.
I don't really see how the OS model fits this. Unless you're talking about DB tools. OS developement isn't like DB developement, collecting/organizing data is different than coding compilers and desktop environments.
centscents
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To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
Thank you! This is exactly what I am talking about! This is a much better explination of what I am talking about. Thank you!!!!!!!
Myddrin