Hi OSGeo folks,
If you are attending the AAG conference in Seattle next April, and are
interested in IP issues related to geographic data, I invite you to sign
up for the following workshop. The workshop is free, and will be held on
the campus of Microsoft Research.
Puneet.
----
Law and the GeoWeb
==================
Announcing "Law and the GeoWeb," a workshop on intellectual property and
geographic data in the internet era sponsored by Creative Commons and
the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in conjunction with the 2011
annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers (AAG). The
workshop will be held on Monday, April 11, 2011 on the campus of
Microsoft Research, and will be streamed live on the Internet.
This workshop will focus on intellectual property issues with geographic
data, exploring situations when users and creators ranging from
individuals to local, state and federal agencies as well as private
companies and non-profits create, share and reuse geographic information
from different sources over the Internet in their projects.
For more information, please see http://punkish.org/geoweb/index.html or
search on Twitter for #lawandgeoweb
Rationale
=========
U.S Copyright Law protects tangible original works with creative content
but the law also ensures that facts, that is, data that are discovered
rather than invented, remain free for everyone's benefit. This
ideas/expression dichotomy creates a lot of issues in the Internet age
when information is very easily created, shared, used and reused.
With inexpensive computing and networking power available to everyone,
geographic datasets are increasingly being created, shared and used by
individuals, grassroots organizations, and private corporations. These
data come with different expectations with regards to how they may be
used resulting in a hodgepodge of licensing and contractual obligations
that hinders data interoperability. Mixing data of different provenance
creates new data with typically more restrictive licensing conditions.
Public agencies may be unable to mix licensed data with government data
due to restrictive licensing terms of the resultant dataset, and thus,
may be unable to capitalize on and benefit from user-generated content.
Workshop Structure
==================
The current line-up of speakers from federal, state and local agencies,
Creative Commons, grassroots agencies, intellectual property lawyers,
the geospatial industry, and research and academia includes:
* Ed Arabas, National States Geographic Information Council
* Greg Babinski, King County, State of Washington
* Michael Brick, Microsoft Legal, Bing Maps
* Steve Coast, Founder, OpenStreetMap
* Kari Craun, Director, National Geospatial Technical Operations, USGS
* Ed Parsons, Chief Technologist, Google Maps, Google
* Diane Peters, General Counsel, Creative Commons
* Tim Trainor, Bureau Chief, Geography Division, US Census Bureau
* Paul Uhlir, Director, Board on Research Data and Information, National
Research Council
The format of the workshop will encourage discussion and participation.
Participate
===========
To ensure those directly involved in the topic get a chance to attend
the workshop, attendance is based on a short application form accessible
at http://punkish.org/geoweb/participate/in_person/index.html. Deadline
for applying for the workshop is December 18, 2010. Selected applicants
will be informed by January 15, 2011.
Attendees will also be able to submit longer papers for publication in a
special issue of the peer-reviewed, completely free and open access
online journal "International Journal of Spatial Data Infrastructure
Research" published by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission.
Logistics
=========
The workshop is organized in conjunction with the AAG annual meeting.
The workshop will be held on the campus of Microsoft Research, and run
from 1 PM to 5 PM on Monday, April 11, 2011.
There is no fee for this workshop but participants do have to register
for the AAG Annual Meeting (This is an AAG requirement). The workshop is
limited to 50 participants to facilitate discussion.
Contact
=======
Please contact either Puneet Kishor, Creative Commons
[punk...@creativecommons.org] or Barbara Poore, USGS [bspo...@usgs.gov]
if you have any questions.
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