...The public domain is not an “unlicensed commons”. The public domain does not equal the BSD. It is not a licensing option.
It is the natural legal state of data.
It is a damn shame that we no longer think of the public domain as an option that is attractive. It’s a sign of the victory of the content holders that the free licensing movements work against that something without a license – something that is truly free, not just just free “as in” – is somehow thought to be worse. We’ve bought into their games if we allow the public domain to be defined as the BSD. The idea of the public domain has been subjected to continuous erosion thanks to both the big content companies and our own movements, to the point where we think freedom only comes in a contract.
The public domain is not contractually constructed. It just is. It cannot be made more free, only less free. And if we start a culture of licensing and enclosing the public domain (stuff that is actually already free, like the human genome) in the name of “freedom” we’re playing a dangerous game....
Speaking as someone who got into this two years ago convinced SA [ShareAlike] was the way for data, this stuff is complicated....
I don’t know the answers. But I do know that if we start to frame “public domain data v. viral data” as “BSD v. GPL” that we’ve already lost the debate, because we’ll have bought into the erosion of the public domain that led to the need for commons licensing in the first place.
PS: For a longer version of John's defense of the public domain for open data, as opposed to open licenses for open data, see the Science Commons Protocol for Implementing Open Access Data or my blog post on it from December 2007.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/11/2008 11:42:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
