OPSI’s new licensing model – taking the licensing of government content to the next level

The Government’s response to the Power of Information Taskforce’s recommendation 8 stated that OPSI was developing a new licence model, building on the success of the Click-Use Licence.  We thought it would be good to post our initial thoughts about what the new licence terms could look like here on our blog for your comments. 

The key characteristics of the new licence model are:

• Re-users will not need to register and apply for a licence like they do now with the Click-Use Licence;
• The new licence terms are compatible with other standard licences such a Creative Commons and GNU GPL;
• The range of information covered by the PSI Click-Use Licence is also covered by the new licence.  The licence will also cover information that was formerly covered by Crown copyright waiver conditions, such as legislation and government press notices;
• Initially, the licence will only cover information produced by central government departments – information that is Crown copyright.  However, we expect that in time it will also cover information produced by a wider range of public sector organisations, such as local government and the health service;
• Some government departments already manage the licensing of information that they produce themselves.  This includes government trading funds such as Ordnance Survey, the Met Office and UKHO.  This information will not be covered by the new licence so re-users will still need to apply to directly to these departments for a separate licence.
• The new licence will be made available on the OPSI website;
• The licence terms cover re-use only and not the supply of information and data.  Re-users will still be responsible for obtaining the information they want to re-use, for example by downloading it from a government website; purchasing it from a bookshop; or by obtaining it under Freedom of Information;
• Government departments and others will identify what information can be re-used under the new licence terms;

So, here are the terms, let us know what you think:

Terms and conditions

Purpose

This licence explains how you may re-use a wide range of public sector information and what conditions apply.  Under this licence the term information means any content, including any part of such content, whether in writing or stored in electronic form or as a sound, visual or audio-visual recording, other than computer programs and software.

What you can do

1. You can copy, publish, translate into other languages, adapt, mash and convert to Braille and other formats for people who are visually impaired.

What information is covered

2. All Crown copyright information can be re-used under this licence apart from the specific exemptions listed below.

3. Information produced by other public sector organisations as listed at [link to be inserted].

What information is not covered

4.  Crown copyright information produced by government departments and trading funds that are responsible for licensing the re-use of the information they commission or produce.  Details of these organisations can be found at [link to be inserted]

5.  Information where re-use is not permitted for policy reasons, for example the HSE Health and Safety Law poster.

6.  Information that is exempt under Freedom of Information legislation and the Environmental Information Regulations.

7.  Personal information about named individuals.

8.  Official imprints, public sector organisation logos, badges, crests and insignia of the armed forces.  This includes the Royal Arms unless they form an integral part of the information that you are re-using.

Your obligations

9.  You must:

• Re-use the information accurately
• Acknowledge the copyright and the source of the information, for example the title of a report and the name of the department that issued it.
• Not re-use the information in a deliberately misleading way.
• Not re-use the information for promotional or advertising purposes; not to imply endorsement by a government department or other public sector organisation.
• Not mimic the style and appearance of the original information, for example by replicating the look and feel of a published document or a departmental website.

Disclaimer

Your use of the information covered by this licence is entirely at your own risk.  OPSI makes no warranty, representation or guarantee that the information is error free.

Governing law

This licence is made under the laws of England and Wales and comes under the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.

Comments

[Jeni Tennison]

Mostly this looks pretty clear but there are two parts in this licence that I think are likely to lead to problems for people wanting to re-use information.

First, the conditions within the licence about what information it applies to makes it very hard for me, as a re-user, to figure out whether a particular piece of information is covered by the licence or not. How am I supposed to know whether a particular piece of information isn't available for re-use for policy reasons? How could I work out whether a particular piece of information is exempt under the Freedom of Information legislation without becoming an expert in that legislation?

To me, the "What information is covered" and "What information is not covered" sections place a great burden on the shoulders of the potential re-user, when that burden should be placed on the publishers of the information. The publishers of the information know best whether the licence applies to the information that they publish. If a page links to the licence, I expect it to be covered by this licence; if it doesn't, then not.

So I would remove these two sections from the licence, and instead have a policy that the licence under which particular public sector information is made available is clearly indicated when it is published. Information about what's covered by the licence could be provided elsewhere, particularly during the transition period while departments adopt this model.

Second, it's hard to work out the limits of not "replicating the look and feel of a published document" are. For example, the layout of legislation is pretty standardised; if someone wanted to embed some parts of an item of legislation within their website, how much would they have to change the appearance to make it reusable? How could people ever re-publish a PDF covered by the licence without replicating its look and feel?

I think the intent of this clause is to prevent people re-publishing the information on a site that deliberately looks like the original site in order to mislead users into thinking it is the original site. To me this falls under re-using the information in a deliberately misleading way, so perhaps you could add to that clause "such as by replicating the style or appearance of the original document or website".

Oh and one last thing, I've heard of "mashing up" but not of "mashing", except in the context of potatoes of course :) I think that "mash" should be "mash-up".

[Alan Bell]

which Creative Commons license did you mean? I think it will be a bit of a struggle to come up with something compatible with both the GPL and a Creative Commons license because they are not compatible with each other (they might be similar in spirit, but compatibility is a higher bar to reach). I think it is great to clarify the meaning of Crown Copyright, which is already remarkably similar to some of the creative commons language. I think you need to think about the implications for the many other countries around the world that use crown copyright.
To change Crown Copyright will be a non-trivial legislative task and you will have to watch out for weird things like the King James Bible http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_James_Bible#Copyright_status and I expect there are plenty of other special cases. Why can't you simply use the range of Creative Commons licenses?

[Alan Bell]

ok, I read the presentation on the previous post (thanks for the .odp by the way) and I am astonished at the lack of recognition of the Creative Commons that you found. I can see why you are going down the lines of inventing your own, however there is an important benefit to the Creative Commons license. People can apply it to their own works. If you are educating people about share-alike licensing please don't give the impression it is something that only the government can do. You can't set a good example with this Crown Commons scheme because people can't follow. Creative Commons is growing in recognition in schools, students are being encouraged to use CC material and license their works as CC.

[The Open Sourcerer]

I concur with Alan bell,

I really don't see why you need to come up with another license?

Using a CC-AS-Appropriate will ensure easy to understand, consistent licensing, and will also encourage the proliferation of the information or content to which the license applies.

By creating another license surely this will make it hard or impossible for a recipient to the use that content and "mash" it with other CC based content. What license do they then need to use to release the combined product?

[David Newton]

As others have said, which Creative Commons licence? For example it certainly would not be compatible with a CC-BY-SA licence. It would also not be compatible with a CC-BY licence due to the restrictions in section nine about not using it for promotional or advertising purposes.

It also seems that there are strong elements of trademark law creeping in there. Passing off is not to do with copyright, but with trademark law.

[Baden Appleyard]

I agree with Alan, and share Davids concerns about compatibility. Its important that information licensing be compatible. One of the advantages of the Creative Commons model is the international compatibility with some 59 countries having ported the CC licence, aside from the unported licences of course. The www.gilf.gov.au website contains a licensing review it that addresses the compatibility of mashing up where the underlying CC licences for the contents are different.

Whilst Im sure the surveys were quite sound statistically, I am also surprised by the response to the CC licence. The community does understand CC. Wikipedia is now all CC-SA. There are hundreds of millions of photographs on Flickr all licensed under CC. Perhaps with some attention to public education about CC on Govt websites, the issues referred to in the survey might be overcome.

Perhaps the CC UK staff/volunteers might be of assistance in selling the message for your government. Or perhaps they could work in partnership with you?

[Tom Holden]

For us at Wikimedia UK it would be superb were all or some Crown Copyright material released under a CC-BY-SA license, as we would immediately be able to incorporate it into the Wikimedia Foundation's various projects (Wikipedia, Wikinews, Wikiversity, Wikimedia Commons, Wikisource etc.).

This would also be true were Crown Commons material to be released under a license explicitly designed to be compatible with CC-BY-SA ( http://creativecommons.org/compatiblelicenses ), which is far from trivial, and, I imagine, requires the license to have been produced in cooperation with Creative Commons' lawyers.

However, any content released under a license which Creative Commons' lawyers have not certified as compatible would be next to useless to us. (Having content under mixed licenses on Wikipedia is really not viable and neither is changing CC-BY-SA to fit with Crown Commons.)

We would be interested in hearing any arguments you have for preferring your own license over CC-BY-SA and would love to be involved in any further discussions you are having. Please get in touch.

Tom Holden
Treasurer, Wikimedia UK

[Rufus Pollock]

As I understand it, you plan for this license to be used to cover data/databases as well as ordinary "content" (for example the datasets released by the UK National Statistics). As such it is probably important that this be made explicitly clear, for example in the first paragraph where the subject matter of the license is discussed. Also any rights in the data(base) should be licensed along with the rights in 'normal' content.

I would note here that the one of our projects, http://www.opendatacommons.org/, has produced two licenses specifically for data(bases): the Public Domain Dedication and License (public domain) and the Open Database License (share-alike). More information can be found here:

http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/

[John Ponting]

1. I like the overall approach, with direct statements of what can and cannot be done, and what is covered.

2. I like the idea of trusting people to follow the rules rather than requiring them to register. After all, the normal approach to Crown copyright is to trust that rules will be followed, rather than requiring users to register. Even with registration, there is no guarantee that the rules may be followed; indeed registration can sometimes work the other way - users may think that once registered they can do what they like.

3. Without seeing the links, I cannot comment directly on the details that underpin this approach. In particular, many people may assume that all central government bodies are covered by Crown copyright; however The Environment Agency is a notable exception.

4. I support the intention behind point 6 (Information that is exempt under Freedom of Information legislation and the Environmental Information Regulations); however this will be very difficult to implement in practice. I think that the intention is to show that there is some information produced by Government Departments that will not be released hence will not be available for re-use. However, the clause does not quite read like that.

5. On point 6, should 'exempt under' be 'exempt from release under'.

6. Similar comments to those in paragraph 4 apply to point 7.

I am concerned at the statement in the introduction that 'Government departments and others will identify what information can be re-used under the new licence terms'; this could lead to a lot of confusion - it implies that only information explicitly labelled as being part of the new approach will be included - updating millions of web pages will take a long time! Clearly, much will depend on how it is implemented.