Legal Standards: Boring, Necessary Timothy Vollmer | Creative Commons | @tvol

Common Legal Principles

●  License free ●  Public domain ●  No restrictions on use ●  CC0 ●  Most open licensing terms

available ●  CC BY is default ●  Enable free reuse, including

commercial ●  Open Definition is baseline ●  all about minimizing

restriction, maximizing reuse!

Common Legal Principles

Why legal standards in the first place?

●  Legal clarity ●  Or else! chilling effects ●  Legal problems = huge

timesuck ●  Make it invisible ●  Posting online not enough ●  Put in PD or attach license ●  Machine-readable license ●  It’s not so difficult!

Why legal standards in the first place?

What is enabled by clarifying legal standards?

●  Efficient reuse by all, esp gov’t ●  Effective gov’t spending;

maximize investments ●  Citizen participation,

collaboration, transparency ●  Promote creativity, innovation,

unexpected uses and applications

●  Spur economic activity ●  Example: Europeana -

http://pro.europeana.eu/case-studies-edm

What is enabled by clarifying legal standards?

Challenges and the future

PDDL ●  Public domain =

problems solved ●  Even better: harmonize

limitations & exceptions ●  Ongoing “license envy” ●  So be it, but keep out

“poison” clauses that kill interoperability

●  Example: OGL 2.0 ●  Good moves: Open

Definition WG, LAPSI 2.0

Challenges and the future

or

Graphics Credits

●  Policy Icon - by The Noun Project - Public Domain

●  Question Icon - by Rémy Médard, from The Noun Project - CC BY

●  Stamp Icon - by Marino Cagnina, from The Noun Project - CC BY

●  Big Idea Icon - Public Domain

●  Puzzle Icon - by John O’Shea, from the Noun Project - CC BY

This work is dedicated to the public domain. https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/. Attribution is optional, but if desired, please attribute to Creative Commons.