The Communia Association has responded to the European Commission’s consultation on recommended standard licenses, datasets and charging for the re-use of public sector information (PSI). The Commission asked for comments on these issues in light of the adoption of the new Directive on re-use of public sector information. See our response here. The Directive 1) brings libraries, museums, and archives under the scope of the Directive, 2) provides a positive re-use right to public documents, 3) limits acceptable charging to only marginal costs of reproduction, provision, and dissemination, and 4) reiterates the position that documents can be made available for re-use under open standards and using machine readable formats. Communia recognizes the high value of PSI not only for innovation and transparency, but also for scientific, educational and cultural benefit for the entire society.
We have been providing feedback to the Commission during this process. We last wrote about the Directive in June, and questioned why the Commission had not yet clarified what should be considered a “standard license” for re-use (Article 8). The dangers of license proliferation–which potentially leads to incompatible PSI–is still present. But it’s positive that the Commission is using this consultation to ask specific questions regarding legal aspects of re-use.
Part 3 of the questionnaire deals with licensing issues. One question asks what should be the default option for communicating re-use rights. We believe that there should be no conditions attached to the re-use of public sector information. The best case scenario would be for public sector information to be in the public domain. If it’s not possible to pass laws granting positive re-use rights to PSI without copyright attached, public sector bodies should use the CC0 Public Domain Dedication (CC0) to place public data into as close as possible to the public domain to ensure unrestricted re-use.
Communia calls on the Commission and Member States to ensure that core datasets are released for maximum re-use, either by exempting PSI from copyright and sui generis database rights altogether, or by requiring that these rights are waived under the CC0 Public Domain Dedication.
Another question first states that the Commission prefers the least restrictive re-use regime possible, and asks respondents to choose which condition(s) would be aligned with this goal. Again, we think that every condition would be deemed restrictive, since the best case scenario would be for PSI to be removed from the purview of copyright protection through law or complete dedication of the PSI to the public domain using CC0.
Some conditions would be particularly detrimental to interoperability of PSI. An obligation not to distort the original meaning or message of public sector data should be deemed unacceptable. Such an obligation destroys compatibility with standard public licenses that uniformly do not contain such a condition. The UK’s Open Government License has already removed this problematic provision when it upgraded from OGL 1.0 to OGL 2.0. Any condition that attempts to discriminate based on the type of use or user, or imposes additional requirements on the re-user, should be avoided. Examples include: 1) fees for cost recovery, 2) prohibitions on commercial use, modifications, distortion, or redistribution, and 3) unreasonable attribution requirements. Copyleft conditions can threaten interoperability with existing “attribution-only” standard licenses.
In addition to mentioning CC licensing as a common solution, the questionnaire notes, “several Member States have developed national licenses for re-use of public sector data. In parallel, public sector bodies at all levels sometimes resort to homegrown licensing conditions.” In order to achieve the goals of the Directive and “to promote interoperable conditions for crossborder re-use,” the Commission should consider options that minimize incompatibilities between pools of PSI, which in turn maximize re-use. As far as we are concerned that means that governments should be actively discouraged from developing their own licenses. They should consider removing copyright protection for PSI by amending copyright and/or PSI law or waive copyright and related rights using CC0.
Part 4 of the questionnaire addresses charging options for PSI re-use. While the Communia Association did not provide an opinion on this matter, Federico Morando, Raimondo Iemma, and Simone Basso have provided an in-depth analysis on the Internet Policy Review website.
