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:

1. any program accessing this database must display the advert. provided,
2. a cost of $.000000001 per record returned
3. a nominal monthly subscription fee...

something like that. Very similar to the part of the (L)GPL that says you can charge a nominal fee for the materials of distrubution. The idea is that several competing servers could be set up, with multiple competing open and closed source clients running against it.

Is there a license that allows this kind of thing, or should I be working on one? "

NSI's database...

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?

How about an open end-user license agreement?

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.

New FSF license may be close

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.

Data too, GIS and Europe vs. the US

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!

Public Database License Would Be Good

A database can be protected by copyright if there is sufficient originality in the "selection and arrangement" of the contents. As pointed out earlier, it is important to remember that the contents can be separately protected. Think of it this way: A book of quotations can be protected as a compilation. Each of the quotations within it may also be protected by copyright in the quoted work. There are many useful databases which cannot be protected by copyright, usually databases that are made up of facts, and those facts are comprehensive and have obvious arrangements. A white pages phone book includes all of the phone numbers and names, and arranges them alphabetically. So much for selection and arrangement.

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.

It's just not enough

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 [yahoo.com] 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 [ebay.com] 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?

isn't this a plagiarism issue?

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.

New Year's Rocked. Love you all :-)

Now lets just think about this for a moment

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.