'Indemnification' clauses in "Open" data licenses
Locked
'Indemnification' clauses in "Open" data licenses
 
|
Re: 'Indemnification' clauses in "Open" data licenses
|
|
Re: 'Indemnification' clauses in "Open" data licenses
|
|
Re: 'Indemnification' clauses in "Open" data licenses
|
|
Re: 'Indemnification' clauses in "Open" data licenses
|
|
In reply to this post by Glen Newton
Agreed. Very disappointing. I would love to see more cities do what Kelowna is doing (PDDL), Montreal, Québec, Gatineau, Sherbrooke and the Quebec government are doing (they are adopting or have adopted CC BY 4). Surrey has also done a great job of creating a license based on the Canadian OGL. It's non-reusable but has passed conformance. http://opendefinition.org/licenses/ My hope was that more governments would adopt common standard licenses, or at the very least we would be able to get at least one Pan-Canadian open data license that those who don't want to use common standards could adopt. For sure we should try to get these cities to re-think these terrible clauses. There was an effort to create a Pan-Canadian license at one point but it never materialized and instead we continue along with these sorts of one-off custom licenses with clauses that are essentially user averse. I personally think we really need to solve this licensing issue in Canada if we want to truly realize the benefits. Progress is still being made but it's still on a shaky foundation. Thankfully, the Canadian Government has made a point of creating their own license as a conformant license - which sets a great example, but I would like to see them go one step further and create a fully conformant (http://opendefinition.org/od/) Pan-Canadian license that can be used **without modifications** by any jurisdiction in Canada. H On Wed, Jul 15, 2015 at 7:26 PM, Glen Newton <[hidden email]> wrote: I just did a google search on: open data license indemnify _______________________________________________ CivicAccess-discuss mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss |
Re: 'Indemnification' clauses in "Open" data licenses
|
|
I think this is much more complicated. To be making blanket statements strikes me risking fostering some poor incentives.
A. A huge amount of government data was designed for internal use, it was accepted that there will be errors in it, and they certainly weren’t intending for it to be used in an operational manner (or even potentially for much analysis). To suddenly treat it as though it will and should be perfect and/or could be kept to such as standard is, at best, challenging. B. As a result there may actually be very, very few data sets that governments would stand behind and being willing to indemnify against for any mistake and any outcome. C. If you say that the government must indemnify ANYONE against ALL POSSIBLE problems that arise from the data they create… expect very few data sets to be released. Creating the quality control mechanisms, the reviews for possible liabilities, etc.. would be quite onerous for every data set the government release. Even the PDDL makes it clear - you are liable for whatever happens - not the government. I’m not sure what the right answer is. I’ve always felt there are some core data sets that are critical - census data, parcel address and mapping data (although even this is challenging), budget and finance data that governments might be willing to give blanket indemnities around. But… everything? This would probably shut down the open data movement. Moreover, there is a ton (in fact, I believe, the vast majority) of innovation and value creation that doesn’t require blanket indemnities. Most non-profit service work, policy or general analytics work designed to gain insights or comment on public policy and government services wouldn’t care for such indemnities. Finally, as a founder of a business that was made possible by being to innovate on open data, non of the licenses ever created a barrier for us. I’m sure this is not the case for some business models, but the barriers it creates probably impact a negligible about of the potential value that open data can create.
_______________________________________________ CivicAccess-discuss mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss |
Re: 'Indemnification' clauses in "Open" data licenses
|
|
Government data "is" used for operational
purposes and analysis among other things. The government collects
data to fulfill business needs. If it doesn't meet some purpose,
it should not be collected.
How correct the data will be depends upon it use and whether appropriate data management practices are in place and followed. This is a significant issue in government. Everybody understands perfection may be unattainable (or not needed). The advantage of the Quebec license approach is that it facilitates the integration of data across multiple jurisdictions and reduces or eliminates license stacking. Think Metro regions and having to deal with several licenses. The so called Pan-Canadian license is an improvement but since each administration modifies it slightly (e.g., name and jurisdiction) it effectively becomes a unique instance to each jurisdiction. In the creation of the Pan-Canadian license I saw little (or no) discussion on balancing real risk. That is, in the real world, what is the real chance a situation would occur that would incur real cost. I have also not seen any discussion about developers using open data and having a terms of use or license for end users to protect developers. This might be worth a discussion. A class of data that is important is anything related to "movement" since this touches us everyday. What facilitates getting us from point A to point B and what hinders us. Some of this data is available but in some cases not (I am thinking real time transit data for some municipalities). ... gerry On 15/07/2015 10:15 PM, David Eaves
wrote:
I think this is much more complicated. To be making blanket statements strikes me risking fostering some poor incentives. _______________________________________________ CivicAccess-discuss mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss |
Re: 'Indemnification' clauses in "Open" data licenses
|
|
In reply to this post by David Eaves
No one is saying it should be perfect. And, I don't think anyone is asking for indemnity for users.
The issue is that publishers are making their own indemnity, and in some cases saying users have to protect them in case of a law suit, a condition of the license. These licenses often come with other conditions that basically make it impractical to comply with the terms in a business context. Anyone who works with data understands that it's not perfect. Sometimes that's even a good idea (i.e. reduce costs when 100% accuracy isn't needed). That's not a good reason to not release it. If it's just plain wrong, then no one should be using it or collecting it. If it's worth collecting then it's worth releasing. Users just want data they can use. The Government of Canada publishes 244,576 datasets under a conformant open license free of the extra business risks the cited licenses impose. Again, I don't think anyone said they needed 100% accuracy or indemnity. It is easy to use licenses that work. It's hard to fathom why some Canadian sub-national jurisdictions continue down this road of creating custom licenses that are no doubt costly for data publishers to create, certainly costly for data consumers to understand and comply with, and simply do not scale. We can do better. H On Wed, Jul 15, 2015 at 9:15 PM, David Eaves <[hidden email]> wrote:
_______________________________________________ CivicAccess-discuss mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss |
Re: 'Indemnification' clauses in "Open" data licenses
|
|
Re: 'Indemnification' clauses in "Open" data licenses
|
|
In reply to this post by Herb Lainchbury
Okay, there are separate issues here.
One is consistency of licenses. I’m a huge fan of this and have worked really hard to try to make it happen - convening provinces and cities around the Government of Canada license. Am I frustrated that cities keep forking it, definitely and would love to find ways to stop that. The second is this issue of indemnity. Someone in the thread linked to the IBM person’s quote about government’s “not standing behind their data” or something and there were complaints about indemnity. There was also a suggestion - in light of these comments - that PDDL was better than the GoC license, implying that PDDL offered indemnity (which it does not). All this to say that my comments were focused on that part and the complications around it. Just don’t want to conflate these two issues.
_______________________________________________ CivicAccess-discuss mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss |
Re: 'Indemnification' clauses in "Open" data licenses
|
|
I am concerned with licenses being called "open" and their data called "open" when they are not. I - and many developers and startups - will only use real open data, because we cannot afford to lose our entire lives or companies through indemnification. So these faux open data sets are not a concern of mine, because I will never use them. But their false labelling concerns me.On Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 1:41 PM, David Eaves <[hidden email]> wrote:
_______________________________________________ CivicAccess-discuss mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss |
Re: 'Indemnification' clauses in "Open" data licenses
|
|
Glen, I think your fight is with the Open Definition people since, as far as I know, the rights you are looking for are not part of the official definition of open as defined by them (and they are probably the most canonical source for this). Herb? -- @daeaves Sent from my iPhone
_______________________________________________ CivicAccess-discuss mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss |
Re: 'Indemnification' clauses in "Open" data licenses
|
|
Re: 'Indemnification' clauses in "Open" data licenses
|
|
Re: 'Indemnification' clauses in "Open" data licenses
|
|
In reply to this post by David Eaves
"the rights you are looking for are not part of the official definition of open" Dave: what specific rights do you think Glen is looking for that are not part of the open definition? ( I think it's the conditions under which those rights are granted that is the issue. ) On Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 12:24 PM, David Eaves <[hidden email]> wrote:
_______________________________________________ CivicAccess-discuss mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss |
Re: 'Indemnification' clauses in "Open" data licenses
|
|
I agree... the rights granted under these Open Licenses allow "developers and startups" to use the information as they see fit. The issue that is being raised is that "developers and startups" are reluctant to assume the associated risks. On Fri, Jul 17, 2015 at 4:00 PM, Herb Lainchbury <[hidden email]> wrote:
_______________________________________________ CivicAccess-discuss mailing list [hidden email] http://lists.pwd.ca/mailman/listinfo/civicaccess-discuss |
| Free forum by Nabble | Edit this page |