Guest Blogger Francis Davies: Copying, sharing and remixing - what do you think?

-

 

Francis Davies
Francis Davies does, among many other things, consulting on legal matters for The Open Data Institute and the Open Knowledge Foundation.

Originally posted by Francis Davies on his blog: 
http://www.francisdavey.co.uk/2014/02/copying-sharing-and-remixing-what-do.html

I am completing a part-time LLM (masters) in computer and communications law with Queen Mary University London. I would really appreciate your help in completing a survey. It should take less than 5 minutes to complete. If you want to know more about the survey, read on...

I, like many lawyers, spend a lot of time thinking, talking and writing about intellectual property law and, in particular, copyright. But law is not the whole story. People do what they do for all sorts of reasons: what the law says is only one of them.

People may also be driven by socially accepted rules of conduct known as social norms. In simple terms: what they think is OK. Norms are complicated things. For example you may have your own views about what is OK, but you might also pay attention to:
  • what you think other people think is OK
  • what you think other people actually do
Obviously law affects social norms. I'm sure it would be a fun an interesting exercise to find out what people think they are allowed to do by the law. But that is not what I am trying to find out - this time anyway.

For my research I have created a to try to find out something about social norms for a number of common situations where someone might want to copy, share or remix an existing work. I hope that learning what people actually think will be illuminating.

I would therefore be extremely grateful if you could try the survey out for yourself and also pass it on to as many of your friends, relatives, colleagues (and really anyone else you know) as you can.

I hope to post the results of the survey in July of this year (2014) and discuss some of the results as they come in. For now I won't say any more about the design so that I do not influence you when you fill it in (which I am sure you are going to do). If you don't want to read my other blog posts restrict yourself to the tag copynorms.

Here is the link for the survey again in case you missed it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Podcast: Open Data Discussions with Anthony Fung

-
Image
A look back at Virginia’s 4 years of data innovation with Anthony Fung, Deputy Secretary of Technology for the Commonwealth of Virginia  Welcome to the OpenDataSoft Leadership Podcast Series, “Open Data Discussions”. Each month, Jason Hare, our Open Data Evangelist, features a different open data program around the country to discuss what has made it successful. These examples will provide insights and strategies that you can implement in your own city. We had the pleasure of welcoming Anthony Fung, Deputy Secretary of Technology for the Commonwealth of Virginia for the fifth podcast in our series. Anthony discussed various subjects, including: What role does open data play in policymaking at the state level in Virginia? Does his department work on ensuring open data quality? What are some of the steps he makes in ensuring sound data governance? How did Virginia come up with this technology and engagement solutions?  How, for example, did yo
Read more

Open Data Licensing

-
Image
Everything you wanted to know but you were afraid to ask. Making data open and available is not just about choosing a format or having an API. A poor choice in your license can prevent people from using them. A traditional open license reassures potential users that their work on the data will be useful in the long run. So, what license should you pick for your data to be broadly used? There are a few things to consider. Choosing a license for your open data can usually be one of the biggest challenges for an open data project. There are plenty of licenses available for your data. Choosing one mostly depends on the usage and reach you want to give to your project. CHOOSE A LICENSE: BASED ON NATIONAL, INTERNATIONAL AND LOCAL STATUTES IN ADDITION TO REUSE It should be noted that different parts of the world use data licensing terms differently. In the US, works in the “public domain” are works are not covered by intellectual property rights, such as copyright. The copyright mig
Read more

AN OPEN DATA POLICY FOR NORTH CAROLINA: COMING SOON?

-
Image
All parts of North Carolina will benefit from open data legislation. FOR THE BETTER PART OF TWO DECADES, I’VE WORKED TO OPEN UP NORTH CAROLINA’S DATA. I’ve been a public servant at Durham Public Schools and the Department of Energy. I have been an onsite consultant for the Cities of Raleigh, Durham as well as the Towns of Cary and Chapel Hill. I’ve been on teams serving state agencies and local governments. I’ve witnessed dozens of open data projects both locally and abroad. All of these projects share crucial steps and goals in common. First, by transforming public documents from disconnected PDFs into machine-readable data, by applying the right open formats, we can liberate public information from the repositories where it used to require manual review. Insights become instant. Second, by publishing machine-readable data compilations online, for everyone to use, we can crowdsource those insights. Citizens and companies and the media can scrutinize. Even better, when a government age
Read more