content license for TreeBASE and ToLWeb
Hilmar Lapp
the most part), but has some serious drawbacks.
The licensing is explained on two pages:
http://tolweb.org/tree/home.pages/toluse.html and
http://tolweb.org/tree/home.pages/tolcopyright.html
First, unfortunately these policies are complex to the extent that it
gets quite confusing, and it doesn't help that the two pages aren't
always consistent with each other. For example, the toluse.html page
states the default license offered to contributors is CC-BY-NC,
whereas tolcopyright.html states that one needs permission from
content authors for anything other than fair use for all scientific
content.
Second, it's not obvious how much content is licensed in a way that
allows reuse (one of the CC flavors), and how much is not. Perhaps
most of the content is actually restrictively licensed and thus very
little can be reused? Can we get stats on that?
Third, it is not obvious from clade pages which license an author has
chosen. For example, http://tolweb.org/Heterolobosea/96360 asserts in
the bottom that all rights are reserved (which actually directly
contradicts the CC-BY-NC licenses for the images). Does that mean the
author has decided against the CC-XX-XX license options, and that any
form of reuse will require permission?
Forth, the tolcopyright.html page states that the Tree of Life itself
is CC-BY-NC licensed. This is quite bad for the immediate purposes of
the grant, actually - NC-licensed content is considered non-free(*),
and drastically and (I think) unnecessarily precludes a lot of
organizations and purposes from using it. Applying it to the backbone
topology itself, it also asserts copyright for something that isn't
what we commonly understand as a creative work of art (even if it
requires lots of - cumulative - expertise to build), and thus it is
somewhat questionable whether the backbone tree is even eligible for
copyright protection.
My question to PRF Board: I understand we can't fix all this now and
there are complex questions. But can we get a commitment from the
Board that they will work with us as one of the first matters of
business if the grant is funded, with a shared understanding to
accomplish the following licensing-related goals:
1) Simplify the content licensing policies going forward to allow only
the CC-BY license for clade pages. This is in fact required if we want
clade pages to be eligible for publication in PLoS Currents Tree of
Life. All other content, such as annotations of nodes or branches, are
under a public domain waiver (such as CC-Zero), except for copyrighted
media files which may also be CC licensed, including CC-BY-NC. This is
assuming that contributions that aren't clade pages or media files
have the character of facts (of biology, for example), and facts are
not eligible for copyright.
2) Clearly mark non-CC licensed legacy content on restricted for reuse
on the web interface, and exclude it from all bulk downloads. (Mixed-
license downloads are very hairy in terms of reuse conditions, and
allowing those is not user-friendly.)
3) Allow the Community Coordinator with the blessing of the Board to
contact all authors of non-CC licensed content to encourage them to
change to CC-BY (for clade pages).
4) Make the Tree of Life tree available under a public domain waiver
(CC-Zero, for example). BTW this critically depends on #1 above - if
the annotations aren't CC-Zero, anything beyond the bare topology
can't be either, and allowing different license choices for content
will lead to a tree of life download with mixed-license parts - a
nightmare for reuse.
In comparison, TreeBASE doesn't say anything about content licensing
or reuse permissions, or at least I can't find it. Is it fair to
assume that TreeBASE content is effectively under CC-Zero or otherwise
in the public domain once its "published"? Can we clarify this on the
website?
-hilmar
(*) Especially the NC issue has come up lots of times and created lots
of discussion just recently in the context of ViBRANT and other
biodiversity knowledge digitization projects, so I think people are
getting sensitized to this. The issues, and what is free content and
what isn't, have been well articulated, and so there is lots of
guidance and examples to go by:
http://www.opendefinition.org/okd/ - from the Open Knowledge
Foundation. This is being used to systematically catalog data
resources for whether or not they are open (http://www.isitopendata.org/about/
).
There are also the Panton Principles: http://pantonprinciples.org/
And places articulating this for cultural works:
http://freedomdefined.org/Definition
http://freedomdefined.org/Licenses/NC
http://freedomdefined.org/Licenses
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy
--
===========================================================
: Hilmar Lapp -:- Durham, NC -:- informatics.nescent.org :
===========================================================
Robert Guralnick
the TreeBASE-TolWeb proposal is funded. I wonder if the pathwork
quilt of copyrights has to do both with the organic development of
TolWeb and that some of the clade page authors are copywriting figures
and text and such, not the clade representation itself. It begs some
interesting logistics questions and challenges.
Best, Rob
Karen Cranston
I endorse your suggestions 1 though 4. A couple of comments, though:
> 2) Clearly mark non-CC licensed legacy content on restricted for reuse on
> the web interface, and exclude it from all bulk downloads. (Mixed-license
> downloads are very hairy in terms of reuse conditions, and allowing those is
> not user-friendly.)
I assume this would also prevent the sharing of these individual items
with TreeBASE (i.e. not simply "bulk" downloads"). Absolutely, we
should task the HelpDesk with contacting contributors about changes in
licenses, after preparing some clear documentation about the benefits
of that choice.
> In comparison, TreeBASE doesn't say anything about content licensing or
> reuse permissions, or at least I can't find it. Is it fair to assume that
> TreeBASE content is effectively under CC-Zero or otherwise in the public
> domain once its "published"? Can we clarify this on the website?
IANAL, but this seems fair to me. It is in line with Dryad policy, and
with the general feeling that scientific facts are not copyrightable.
A tree may be a hypothesis rather than a fact, but the sequence data
is certainly the former (despite unfortunate past decisions to allow
patents on genes). Let's not go there.
I thought this post about University Michigan libraries illustrated
nicely the issues with the (seemingly logical) choice of CC-BY-NC for
content:
http://blog.grossmeier.net/2011/04/15/mlibrary-changes-cc-license/
Karen
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karen Cranston, PhD
Training Coordinator and Informatics Project Manager
nescent.org
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
William Piel
On Jul 8, 2011, at 6:50 PM, Hilmar Lapp wrote:
> In comparison, TreeBASE doesn't say anything about content licensing or reuse permissions, or at least I can't find it. Is it fair to assume that TreeBASE content is effectively under CC-Zero or otherwise in the public domain once its "published"? Can we clarify this on the website?
We've generally punted on this issue in terms of TreeBASE. I recall some discussions in the past where our reasoning was that TreeBASE only stores and publishes ideas and facts (e.g. the branching pattern of relationships) but that we don't store or publish artwork or prose (other than article titles and abstracts, which don't belong to us but are republished under fair-use). While ideas can be patented, they cannot be copyrighted unless as an artistic expression. If we clearly stated that our data content is distributed under a license or other, we would be implying that this information is under copyright.
(The software code is a separate matter, and the open-source license is explicit.)
By contrast, ToLWeb is full of beautiful artwork and prose -- and the licensing needs to be clear, (e.g. as EXIF/XMP metadata in images, etc)
bp
Hilmar Lapp
domain dedication instead. Are you saying that it's OK to assign CC-
Zero to TreeBASE content in published status?
(As an aside, files that TreeBASE receives through the Dryad hand-
shaking are already CC-Zero and thus in the public domain, though
TreeBASE doesn't say or indicate that.)
-hilmar
--
Val Tannen
> My question to PRF Board: I understand we can't fix all this now and there are complex questions. But can we get a commitment from the Board that they will work with us as one of the first matters of business if the grant is funded, with a shared understanding to accomplish the following licensing-related goals:
>
> 1) Simplify the content licensing policies going forward to allow only the CC-BY license for clade pages. This is in fact required if we want clade pages to be eligible for publication in PLoS Currents Tree of Life. All other content, such as annotations of nodes or branches, are under a public domain waiver (such as CC-Zero), except for copyrighted media files which may also be CC licensed, including CC-BY-NC. This is assuming that contributions that aren't clade pages or media files have the character of facts (of biology, for example), and facts are not eligible for copyright.
>
>
> 3) Allow the Community Coordinator with the blessing of the Board to contact all authors of non-CC licensed content to encourage them to change to CC-BY (for clade pages).
>
> 4) Make the Tree of Life tree available under a public domain waiver (CC-Zero, for example). BTW this critically depends on #1 above - if the annotations aren't CC-Zero, anything beyond the bare topology can't be either, and allowing different license choices for content will lead to a tree of life download with mixed-license parts - a nightmare for reuse.
>
> In comparison, TreeBASE doesn't say anything about content licensing or reuse permissions, or at least I can't find it. Is it fair to assume that TreeBASE content is effectively under CC-Zero or otherwise in the public domain once its "published"? Can we clarify this on the website?
In my opinion, clarifying these issues is one of the most important jobs of the PRF board. I agree with you.
Val
Vision, Todd J
>> reuse permissions, or at least I can't find it. Is it fair to assume that
>> TreeBASE content is effectively under CC-Zero or otherwise in the public
>> domain once its "published"? Can we clarify this on the website?
> IANAL, but this seems fair to me. It is in line with Dryad policy, and
> with the general feeling that scientific facts are not copyrightable.
> A tree may be a hypothesis rather than a fact, but the sequence data
> is certainly the former (despite unfortunate past decisions to allow
> patents on genes). Let's not go there.
CC0 is a waiver, and you can't legitimately use it to waive rights on someone else's work. In such instances, what you want to use is a "public domain mark", which indicates an assertion that something is already in the public domain. CC has an instrument for conveying such marks.
NC licenses are often chosen by academics with the best of intentions, but IMHO they invariably do more harm than good when used for scholarly works. For artists who make a living off their creative work, NC licenses are more appropriate, but even then can sometimes be counter-productive. For example, the lesser known the artist, the more economic return there is in just getting one's work into the public eye through CC-BY. And a scholar's goals are generally similar -- he/she is after widespread recognition and prestige, and the financial reward then comes from the scholar's own institution.
Todd
Vision, Todd J
>> reuse permissions, or at least I can't find it. Is it fair to assume that
>> TreeBASE content is effectively under CC-Zero or otherwise in the public
>> domain once its "published"? Can we clarify this on the website?
> IANAL, but this seems fair to me. It is in line with Dryad policy, and
> with the general feeling that scientific facts are not copyrightable.
> A tree may be a hypothesis rather than a fact, but the sequence data
> is certainly the former (despite unfortunate past decisions to allow
> patents on genes). Let's not go there.
CC0 is a waiver, and you can't legitimately use it to waive rights on someone else's work. In such instances, what you want to use is a "public domain mark", which indicates an assertion that something is already in the public domain. CC has an instrument for conveying such marks: https://creativecommons.org/about/pdm
David Maddison
You are right, Hilmar, there is inconsistency in the text presented on ToLWeb pages; I hadn't realized it was as bad as you point out. There is more inconsistency in what it says on the pages then what is happening behind the scenes. Some of the problem is that we simply never got around to doing things we had planned to do, like better mark individual content as to the license. That's done in part, but not as fully as it should be.
And, re. the CC-BY-NC for the tree structure XML: woah, I don't remember that at all. That is absurd. Let me look into that. I think it fair to say that we can at least bring it to CC-BY.
One of the problems we encountered when we revamped the licenses for ToLWeb content some time back is that we had all this legacy content, and at that point we felt we had to let authors choose the content they would allow there material to be distributed under. Some authors we absolutely couldn't convince to do it under a CC license. The real stickler was often the images, as there are a good number of biologists who do make money by selling their photographs. Some of our best images are by professional photographers, and they would not release the pictures under CC-BY. There was another issue encountered: at least one biologist had been burned by having some of his photographs used, and credited, in some highly questionable commercial context, and it was made to look as if he endorsed some product. Bottom line: we had all this legacy content, and for us to impose a CC-BY license would have meant losing more than half of our content, I suspect.
As for future contributions, requiring a particular license for publication is reasonable. However, I very much expect that some of the best photographers will refuse to contribute under a CC-BY license.
Let's keep talking about this.
d
On 8 Jul 2011, at 3:50 PM, Hilmar Lapp wrote:
> The content licensing for ToLWeb is good in intention (CC licenses for the most part), but has some serious drawbacks.
>
> The licensing is explained on two pages:
> http://tolweb.org/tree/home.pages/toluse.html and
> http://tolweb.org/tree/home.pages/tolcopyright.html
>
> First, unfortunately these policies are complex to the extent that it gets quite confusing, and it doesn't help that the two pages aren't always consistent with each other. For example, the toluse.html page states the default license offered to contributors is CC-BY-NC, whereas tolcopyright.html states that one needs permission from content authors for anything other than fair use for all scientific content.
>
> Second, it's not obvious how much content is licensed in a way that allows reuse (one of the CC flavors), and how much is not. Perhaps most of the content is actually restrictively licensed and thus very little can be reused? Can we get stats on that?
>
> Third, it is not obvious from clade pages which license an author has chosen. For example, http://tolweb.org/Heterolobosea/96360 asserts in the bottom that all rights are reserved (which actually directly contradicts the CC-BY-NC licenses for the images). Does that mean the author has decided against the CC-XX-XX license options, and that any form of reuse will require permission?
>
> Forth, the tolcopyright.html page states that the Tree of Life itself is CC-BY-NC licensed. This is quite bad for the immediate purposes of the grant, actually - NC-licensed content is considered non-free(*), and drastically and (I think) unnecessarily precludes a lot of organizations and purposes from using it. Applying it to the backbone topology itself, it also asserts copyright for something that isn't what we commonly understand as a creative work of art (even if it requires lots of - cumulative - expertise to build), and thus it is somewhat questionable whether the backbone tree is even eligible for copyright protection.
>
> My question to PRF Board: I understand we can't fix all this now and there are complex questions. But can we get a commitment from the Board that they will work with us as one of the first matters of business if the grant is funded, with a shared understanding to accomplish the following licensing-related goals:
>
> 1) Simplify the content licensing policies going forward to allow only the CC-BY license for clade pages. This is in fact required if we want clade pages to be eligible for publication in PLoS Currents Tree of Life. All other content, such as annotations of nodes or branches, are under a public domain waiver (such as CC-Zero), except for copyrighted media files which may also be CC licensed, including CC-BY-NC. This is assuming that contributions that aren't clade pages or media files have the character of facts (of biology, for example), and facts are not eligible for copyright.
>
> 2) Clearly mark non-CC licensed legacy content on restricted for reuse on the web interface, and exclude it from all bulk downloads. (Mixed-license downloads are very hairy in terms of reuse conditions, and allowing those is not user-friendly.)
>
> 3) Allow the Community Coordinator with the blessing of the Board to contact all authors of non-CC licensed content to encourage them to change to CC-BY (for clade pages).
>
> 4) Make the Tree of Life tree available under a public domain waiver (CC-Zero, for example). BTW this critically depends on #1 above - if the annotations aren't CC-Zero, anything beyond the bare topology can't be either, and allowing different license choices for content will lead to a tree of life download with mixed-license parts - a nightmare for reuse.
>
> In comparison, TreeBASE doesn't say anything about content licensing or reuse permissions, or at least I can't find it. Is it fair to assume that TreeBASE content is effectively under CC-Zero or otherwise in the public domain once its "published"? Can we clarify this on the website?
>
> -hilmar
>
> (*) Especially the NC issue has come up lots of times and created lots of discussion just recently in the context of ViBRANT and other biodiversity knowledge digitization projects, so I think people are getting sensitized to this. The issues, and what is free content and what isn't, have been well articulated, and so there is lots of guidance and examples to go by:
>
> http://www.opendefinition.org/okd/ - from the Open Knowledge Foundation. This is being used to systematically catalog data resources for whether or not they are open (http://www.isitopendata.org/about/).
>
> There are also the Panton Principles: http://pantonprinciples.org/
>
> And places articulating this for cultural works:
> http://freedomdefined.org/Definition
> http://freedomdefined.org/Licenses/NC
> http://freedomdefined.org/Licenses
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy
>
> --
> ===========================================================
> : Hilmar Lapp -:- Durham, NC -:- informatics.nescent.org :
> ===========================================================
>
>
>
---------------------------------
David R. Maddison
Department of Zoology
3029 Cordley Hall
Oregon State University
Corvallis, OR 97331 USA
david.m...@science.oregonstate.edu
http://david.bembidion.org
http://mesquiteproject.org
http://macclade.org
http://tolweb.org
Hilmar Lapp
and things that are more like facts (or secondary facts - results
obtained by analyzing facts). That's because the former is clearly
eligible for copyright protection, whereas the latter in most
jurisdictions is not. I think it is possible to apply different
licensing policies to each of these two categories. In fact, we are
finding ourselves having to do precisely that in Dryad [1].
For ToLWeb, I would argue that we keep it reasonably simple, for
content authors as well as users. As a user, it is (technically in
bulk downloads [2], and visually in web pages) relatively easy to
distinguish media content from other content, and we could simply
treat all media content as a creative work of art, eligible for a
copyright-asserting license (so long as it is CC).
As for the unwanted appearance of endorsement, nearly all open-content
licenses contain an express provision to disallow that. So does CC-BY
[3]: from section 4b: "You may only use the credit required by this
Section for the purpose of attribution in the manner set out above
and, by exercising Your rights under this License, You may not
implicitly or explicitly assert or imply any connection with,
sponsorship or endorsement by the Original Author, Licensor and/or
Attribution Parties, as appropriate, of You or Your use of the Work,
without the separate, express prior written permission of the Original
Author, Licensor and/or Attribution Parties."
So the way to prevent or terminate such unwanted reuse is to send a
cease-and-desist letter to the offender, not to choose CC-BY-NC over
CC-BY.
As for naturalist scientists making money with their photographs, that
sounds fair enough to me. Even Wikipedia (at least English wikipedia)
allows CC-BY-NC media files provided that there is no less
restrictively licensed media available that is of sufficient quality.
This sounds like a reasonable policy to me that's worth considering to
mirror.
-hilmar
[1] http://blog.datadryad.org/2011/06/19/request-for-input-archiving-and-licensing-software/
[2] We could, for example, easily annotate all content attached to the
tree with MIME types, which would readily identify media files.
[3] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode
Westneat, Mark
--
===========================================================
: Hilmar Lapp -:- Durham, NC -:- informatics.nescent.org :
===========================================================
--
Mark W. Westneat
Curator of Zoology
Robert A. Pritzker Director, Biodiversity Synthesis Center of the Encyclopedia of Life
Field Museum of Natural History
1400 S Lake Shore Dr., Chicago, IL 60605-2496
(312) 665-7734
My website: http://synthesis.eol.org/users/mwestneat
BioSynC website: http://synthesis.eol.org
David Maddison
She can change the stated license to CC-BY at a moment's notice.
I am not quite sure what the mechanism is within the PRF to approve that change. How about this: I propose that the license for the ToLWeb XML data is changed to CC-BY. If I receive positive votes from the majority of the PRF board, I will send Katja a note with the go-ahead.
I like the idea of having this done before the grant proposal goes in. We can talk later about whether it should be even less restrictive than CC-BY, but to me this is an important first step.
David
---------------------------------
David R. Maddison
Department of Zoology
3029 Cordley Hall
Oregon State University
Corvallis, OR 97331 USA
david.m...@science.oregonstate.edu
William Piel
On Jul 11, 2011, at 12:47 PM, David Maddison wrote:
> So I asked Katja, and she is not sure why the ToLWeb XML Data is stated to be CC-BY-NC. I suspect it was an oversight. I am pretty sure that CC-BY is what we intended all along. We can talk in more depth about licensing for other content, but the actual tree structure seems to be important to be not too restrictive.
>
> She can change the stated license to CC-BY at a moment's notice.
>
> I am not quite sure what the mechanism is within the PRF to approve that change. How about this: I propose that the license for the ToLWeb XML data is changed to CC-BY. If I receive positive votes from the majority of the PRF board, I will send Katja a note with the go-ahead.
>
> I like the idea of having this done before the grant proposal goes in. We can talk later about whether it should be even less restrictive than CC-BY, but to me this is an important first step.
>
> David
You have my vote to change it to CC-BY.
bp
Rutger Vos
Aye.
--
Dr. Rutger A. Vos
School of Biological Sciences
Philip Lyle Building, Level 4
University of Reading
Reading, RG6 6BX, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0) 118 378 7535
http://rutgervos.blogspot.com
Robert Guralnick
Aye
William Piel
On Jul 11, 2011, at 1:31 PM, Rutger Vos wrote:
> Aye.
On Jul 11, 2011, at 1:37 PM, Robert Guralnick wrote:
> Aye
Booyakasha?
Karen Cranston
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> David R. Maddison
> Department of Zoology
> 3029 Cordley Hall
> Oregon State University
> Corvallis, OR 97331 USA
>
> david.m...@science.oregonstate.edu
>
> http://david.bembidion.org
> http://mesquiteproject.org
> http://macclade.org
> http://tolweb.org
>
> (541) 737 2834
>
>
>
>
>
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
karen.c...@gmail.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jim Allman
> As for future contributions, requiring a particular license for publication is reasonable. However, I very much expect that some of the best photographers will refuse to contribute under a CC-BY license.
Regarding the licensing issues:
Isn't dual licensing a possibility? I've seen this with some software projects--party A accepts the terms of an open-source license, while party B purchases a commercial license on different terms. I believe this is entirely the prerogative of the rights-holder.
If this option is clearly stated, it might make sense to share the content widely with a default, restrictive (NC) license. Interested parties could be encouraged to make other arrangements on a case-by-case basis.
Obviously this adds a (low) hurdle to collaboration, and it requires a little explanation, but it might also make many people/institutions more willing to contribute their work.
=jimA=
Westneat, Mark
David Maddison
So far I have got 5 votes in favor from the PRF board, which is a majority, so I will ask Katja to switch it over to CC-BY.
Judging by the responses, I can tell folks are getting to that day-before-proposal-is-due silly phase :)
Thanks!
David
---------------------------------
Val Tannen
Val