From: Richard Weait [mailto:rich...@weait.com]
Sent: Monday, September 30, 2013 2:11 PM
Subject: Re: [Talk-us] Baltimore County GIS Data is now public domain
Your use of public domain in the subject is potentially confusing,
since there is no reliable method for you to declare that the data is
in the public domain.
Although this is true for an individual, it is more complicated for a
government. There are a few ways that a dataset might be public domain.
- The government could view the material as data which does not qualify
for copyright protection in the US. This puts the dataset in the same
state as one created by the federal government - there is nothing
protected by copyright.
- The government could be barred by a statute or regulation from
restricting the dataset's use under copyright. The situation here is
more complex because they may be copyright holders, but are prevented
from acting like they were.
I generally accept that when a government makes a statement about releasing
data in a particular way that they have the legal ability to do so. Their
lawyers presumably know the law applicable to them and have a basis on
which to make their statements.
It would be wonderful if you would choose and attach the following
license(s) to the data, and your web site on which they are published.
ODC PDDL (preferred, because it is specific to data), CC-Zero.
In the US there are no database rights so CC0 does an adequate job of
releasing the rights that do exist. It's when you start to not
unconditionally release rights that the CC licenses and ODC licenses
differ in the US.
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