From: Teresa Scassa
Sent: February-23-14 8:02 AM
To: 'civicaccess discuss'
Subject: RE: [CivicAccess-discuss] Montréal disposera de la licence ouverte CC BY 4. Une pr emière au Canada en matières de données ouvertes. Un avantage pour les citoye première au Canada en matières de données ouvertes. Un avantage pour les citoyens
I didn’t mean to suggest that they clauses are never likely to apply as the government is vetting the information – mistakes will be made, and in some cases, as with personal information, it may be a matter of interpretation. So there is a risk for users of government data sets. (Open government information that I would like to see is the criteria/checklists that governments provide their agencies and departments to guide them in deciding what data sets to release). My broader point is really that this is a risk inherent with government data. Governments have legal obligations not to disclose certain types of information that they have received from companies, individuals, etc. If they have erroneously released this information they have to stop releasing it, and these types of clauses in the licences are a means by which they can ‘revoke’ the licence to use data that has been illegitimately released. It’s a bit like closing the barn door after the horse has escaped, but that is the function the clauses serve. I agree that referring to statutes in open licences makes these licences far less user friendly. The clause in the federal open licence is much more accessible – but it doesn’t change the fact that the licence will not extend to data that the government was not legally allowed to release. I disagree that the reference to the law requires individuals to go through any process under FIPPA legislation.
I am not convinced that there is much purpose in users vetting information governed by these types of licences. Users generally do not know how data got into the hands of government or under what terms or conditions. They are not in a position to determine if the data is confidential business information, for example. Users rely on the fact that the government has released the data set, and, presumably has done its due diligence before releasing it.
I agree with Kent that Montreal and other Quebec municipalities are to be congratulated on their new open licences. My question is – what happens when one of these municipal governments release a data set containing data that they were not legally permitted to release?
Teresa
From: <a href="javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','civicaccess-discuss-bounces@civicaccess.ca');" target="_blank">civicaccess-discuss-bounces@... [<a href="javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','civicaccess-discuss-bounces@civicaccess.ca');" target="_blank">mailto:civicaccess-discuss-bounces@...] On Behalf Of Kent Mewhort
Sent: February-22-14 11:57 AM
To: civicaccess discuss
Subject: Re: [CivicAccess-discuss] Montréal disposera de la licence ouverte CC BY 4. Une pr emière au Canada en matières de données ouvertes. Un avantage pour les citoye première au Canada en matières de données ouvertes. Un avantage pour les citoyens
I have to disagree. I think it could be a slippery slope to waive these clauses off as boilerplates that are never likely to apply because the goverment is vetting the information anyways. In this case, the licensor is saying "trust me", while shifting all the legal risk, business risk and uncertainties for a failure of this trust onto the user.
An Teresa mentioned, FIPPA "laws are there to govern what government's disclose". The must-not-release clauses in FIPPA create obligations on governments to withhold certain classes of information. However, when brought into a license, the legal implications change dramatically. Rather than being obligations on the government, they change into obligations on the USER to vet and not use these classes of information -- at risk of being in violation of crown copyright.
The scope of these exemption clauses are also actually very different between different licenses. While the clauses are relatively narrow in the UK OGL 2.0, the Ontario and BC OGLs pull in pages and pages of exemptions from FIPPA legislation. The potential exclusions carry well past the scenario of a particular datasets violating an individuals privacy rights. I won't rehash the discussion of these issues on the OD list, but a couple of entry points to these threads can be found here and here.
All said, a big congratulations to Montreal and Quebec for moving away from these uncertainties!
Kent
On 14-02-21 03:40 PM, Tracey P. Lauriault wrote:From Teresa,
(We,re trying to figure ou the list problem)
On 2014-02-21, at 5:32 AM, Tracey P. Lauriault wrote:
This is a message from Teresa Scassa
*****************************************************
From: Teresa Scassa
Sent: February-21-14 8:18 AM
To: civicaccess discuss; [hidden email]
Subject: RE: [CivicAccess-discuss] Montréal disposera de la licence ouverte CC BY 4. Une pr emière au Canada en matières de données ouvertes. Un avantage pour les citoye première au Canada en matières de données ouvertes. Un avantage pour les citoyens
I'm not sure that it is necessary to know much more about the referenced legislation in these government licences, so I don't agree that these clauses make the licences particularly more complex from a user's point of view. These clauses are boilerplate CYA clauses for government - (there's one in the UK open licence as well). Governments are not allowed to provide, as open data, any of the information that is excluded from disclosure under (in this case) provincial access to information and protection of privacy legislation. So this type of information should simply not be in the open data set in the first place. The clauses are there in an attempt to limit governments' own liability should, by some internal error, they provide a data set containing data they were not legally allowed to make public. Each province will have a slightly different clause because each province has its own legislation, which may have a different title. But the principle is the same in each case.
Even if a user knew these laws inside out they would probably have no way of knowing whether the data in the data set was a third party's confidential business information, to use one example. The laws are there to govern what government's disclose. Knowledge of the law is thus more or less unnecessary, and in my view, these clauses don't have much of an impact on users and shouldn't create any incompatibilities between licences. The only scenario where there might be a problem is if a citizen complained that a particular data set violated their privacy rights (or a company complained that a particular set contained its confidential business information) and an adjudicator or court ruled that this was indeed the case. At that point, the data set might have to be withdrawn and a user of the data set would not be licenced to use the problematic data.
Teresa
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