News on Science, Technology, Law and Society
Tag Archive | Intellectual Property
in Privacy and Security
Practical guidelines for open data licensing have been published in the United Kingdom
Thanks to Kevin Pomfret for passing along the following link:
by Katleen Janssen, EPSI Platform, 27 May 2011
Naomi Korn and Charles Oppenheim have prepared a Practical Guide for Licensing Open Data, targeting organisations that want to use open data and want to understand under which terms they can use data licensed by third parties. The Guide relies on work done by the Strategic Content Alliance and JISC projects related to digital content, including Web2Rights. The Guide provides short information on some of the most important legal domains that need to be taken into account when licensing open data (intellectual property rights, contract law, data protection, freedom of information, and breach of confidence). It explains the commonly known open licence models…
For full text of the article, click Licensing Open Data: A Practical Guide at EPSI Platform.
Open Knowledge Conference 2011 (creativecommons.org)
License or public domain for public sector information? (downes.ca)
Why OpenStreetMap is moving from Creative Commons to the Open Database License (geodatapolicy.wordpress.com)
in Legal Issues
Court Says No, You Can't Sue Google For Bad Walking Directions
by Greg Sterling, June 17, 2001
Remember the woman in Utah who used Google Maps' walking directions, was hit by a car and sued? The case is Rosenberg v. Harwood and Google was successful in getting almost all the claims against the company dismissed last week.When last we left our story the plaintiff, Lauren Rosenberg, was walking from 96 Daly Street to and 1710 Prospector Avenue in Park City, Utah. Google Maps sent her via route 224, a highway without sidewalks. She was hit on Route 224 by driver-defendant Patrick Harwood. …
For full text of the article via Court Says No, You Can't Sue Google For Bad Walking Directions.
Court Dismisses Google Walking Directions Lawsuit Claims (searchengineland.com)
Injured Pedestrian Can't Sue Google for Providing Faulty Map Information — Rosenberg v. Harwood (ericgoldman.org)
Why OpenStreetMap is moving from Creative Commons to the Open Database License
by Audrey Watters, O'Reilly Radar, June 16, 2011
… When OpenStreetMap launched, contributions to the project were licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/ShareAlike license. That meant that anyone could copy OSM data, but if it was incorporated into another project, those same terms and conditions applied (ShareAlike) and the copyright owner had to be credited (Attribution). … After much discussion with lawyers and with the community, OpenStreetMap opted to make the move to the Open Database License (ODbL), arguing it was more suited to OSM's purposes. I recently asked OSM founder Steve Coast about the decision and the process of making the switch. …
Full text of the article via Choosing the right license for open data – O'Reilly Radar.
Choosing the right license for open data (radar.oreilly.com)
The Legal Implications of Social Networking Part I
By David Navetta, Information Law Group, June 11, 2011
Much like the "Cloud computing revolution" there is an almost frenzied excitement around social media, and many companies are stampeding to exploit social networking. The promise of increased intimate customer interactions, input and loyalty, and enhanced sales and expanded market share can result in some organizations overlooking the thorny issues arising out of social networking. Many of these issues are legal in nature and could increase the legal risk and liability potential of an organization employing a social media strategy.
In this multi-part series the InfoLawGroup will identify and explore the legal implications of social media. This series will help organizations begin to identify some of the legal risks associated with social media so that they may start addressing and mitigating these risks while maximizing their social media strategy.
In Part One of the series, we will provide a high level overview of the legal risks and issues associated with an organization's use of social media. In subsequent parts members of the InfoLawGroup team will take a deeper dive into these matters, and provide some practical insight and strategic direction for addressing these issues. As always, we view our series as the beginning of a broader conversation between ourselves and the larger community, and we welcome and strongly encourage comments, concerns, corrections and criticisms.
View the entire entry:
http://www.infolawgroup.com/2011/06/articles/social-networking/the-legal-implications-of-social-networking-the-basics-part-one/index.html
Social Media and Emergency Management: Top 10 Questions (geodatapolicy.wordpress.com)
Presentations from National Academies' Symposium on International Scientific Data Sharing
From Paul Uhlir, Director, Board on Research Data and Information, National Academy of Sciences:
Presentations from Symposium on International Scientific Data Sharing The Board of Research Data and Information (BRDI) at the U.S. National Academies co-sponsored a free, two-day symposium on April 18-19th in Washington, DC on international scientific data sharing, with focus on developing countries. The presentations from the event are available online. The symposium sought to address the following questions:
1. Why is the international sharing of publicly funded scientific data important, especially for development? What are some examples of past successes and what are the types of global research and applications problems that can be addressed with more complete access to government data collections and government-funded data sources?
2. What is the status of public data access internationally, particularly in developing countries?
3. What are the principal barriers and limits to sharing public data across borders?
4. What are the rights and responsibilities of scientists and research organizations with regard to providing and getting access to publicly funded scientific data? How can international scientific organizations, government agencies, and scientists improve sharing of publicly funded data to address global challenges, particularly in less economically developed countries, more successfully?
http://sites.nationalacademies.org/PGA/biso/PGA_061353
International Symposium on the Case for International Scientific Data Sharing: A Focus on Developing Countries (geodatapolicy.wordpress.com)
Opening up scientific data (blogs.nature.com)
The emergence of spatial cyberinfrastructure (geodatapolicy.wordpress.com)
Our data, ourselves: What if privacy is keeping us from reaping the real benefits of the infosphere?
By Leon Neyfakh, Boston Globe, May 22, 2011
… Taken together, the information that millions of us are generating about ourselves amounts to a data set of unimaginable size and growing complexity … Up to now, the public conversation on this kind of data has taken the form of an argument about privacy rights, with legal scholars, computer scientists, and others arguing for tighter restrictions on how our data is used by companies and the government, and consumer advocates instructing us on how to prevent our information from being collected and misused. But a small group of thinkers is suggesting an entirely new way of understanding our relationship with the data we generate. Instead of arguing about ownership and the right to privacy, they say, we should be imagining data as a public resource: a bountiful trove of information about our society which, if properly managed and cared for, can help us set better policy, more effectively run our institutions, promote public health, and generally give us a more accurate understanding of who we are. This growing pool of data should be public and anonymous, they say — and each of us should feel a civic responsibility to contribute to it. …
For full text of the article, visit Our data, ourselves – The Boston Globe.
FCC steps into privacy debate over location-based data, announcing forum (geodatapolicy.wordpress.com)
IBM to invest $100 million for big-data analysis research (infoworld.com)
The Privacy Challenge in Online Prize Contests (bits.blogs.nytimes.com)
in Economics, Privacy and Security
The Future of the Value of Data
by Bradley Kreit in the Future Now Blog, March 28, 2011
Some of the more interesting questions that emerge from using advanced analytics and algorithms to drive our understandings of health surround a question that is likely to get a lot more contentious over the next decade: Who owns the right to new ideas, products, services and cures that emerge from the findings we gain from mining the collective? … At this year's World Economic Forum, as the Wallstreet Journal reports, "executives and academics gathered to discuss how to turn personal data into an "asset class" by giving people the right to manage and sell it on their own behalf."…
For full text of this great article, click here.
World Economic Forum starts work on Data Portability (skypejournal.com)
World Economic Forum and Personal Data as an Asset Class (joeandrieu.com)
Personal Data: The Emergence of a New Asset Class (exponere.com)
Missed Opportunities (technologyreview.in)
Pervasive Adds Marketplace As They Prepare For Cloud And Big Data (cloudave.com)
Is Personal Data the Next Killer App for the Web? (bigthink.com)
SDM 2011: Other thoughts (geomblog.blogspot.com)
Getting More Value from Cell-Phone Data (technologyreview.com)
World Economic Forum's Global IT Report: Where Canada Ranks (michaelgeist.ca)
Health Provider Wants Algorithm That Can Predict Illness (pcworld.com)