Thursday, April 30, 2009

Open Database License, new draft out

The Open Data Commons (no relation) has a new draft of their Open Database License out (v1.0 release candidate). From its preamble:

The Open Database Licence (ODbL) is a licence agreement intended to allow users to freely share, modify, and use this Database while maintaining this same freedom for others. Many databases are covered by copyright, and therefore this document licenses these rights. Some jurisdictions, mainly in the European Union, have specific rights that cover databases, and so the ODbL addresses these rights, too. Finally, the ODbL is also an agreement in contract for users of this Database to act in certain ways in return for accessing this Database.

The license does a good job of using copyright to maintain freedoms, as free software licenses do. It does not address "privacy rights / data protection rights over information in the contents." I wonder whether such rights could be used, like copyright, as a means to maintain data freedom? In other words, as part of the privacy / data protection terms, agreeing to maintain freedom would be a requirement.

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