1. Why is open licensing
important for OGP?
Open Government Partnership
Civil Society Day workshop

2. Why do need legal standards and open
licensing in the first place?
● Legal clarity
● Or else! chilling effects
● Legal problems = huge timesuck
● Make it invisible
● Posting online not enough
● Put in PD or attach open license
● Machine-readable license
● It’s not so difficult!

3. What is enabled by clarifying legal standards?
● Efficient reuse by all, esp gov’
t
● Effective gov’t spending;
maximize investments
● Citizen participation,
collaboration, transparency
● Promote creativity,
innovation, unexpected uses
and applications
● Spur economic activity
● Example: Europeana - http:
//pro.europeana.eu/casestudies-edm

4. What is Creative Commons and how
does it work?
● CC licenses built on traditional copyright law
● works within existing system by allowing
movement from “all rights reserved” to
“some rights reserved”
● CC gives creators a choice about which
freedoms to grant and which rights to keep
● CC minimizes transaction costs by granting
the public certain permissions beforehand

5. License Building Blocks
All CC licenses are combinations of 4
elements:
Attribution
ShareAlike
NonCommercial
NoDerivatives

7. Anatomy of a CC license

8. Human readable deed

9. Lawyer readable code

10. Machine readable metadata

11. Creative Commons license chooser
https://creativecommons.org/choose/

13. Important License Attributes 1
●
●
●
●
Scope is copyright and related rights
All are non-exclusive, irrevocable licenses
All require attribution
All permit reuse for at least noncommercial
purposes in unmodified form
● Do not contract away user rights
(exceptions/limitations)
● CC licensor enters into separate license
agreement with each user

14. Important License Attributes 2
● License runs with the work; recipient may
not apply technological measures or
conditions that limit another recipient’s rights
under the license, e.g. no DRM
● no warranties
● license terminates immediately upon breach
● CC is not a party to the license

15. CC0 Public Domain Dedication
● read “CC Zero”
● universal waiver, permanently surrenders
copyright and related rights, placing the work
as nearly as possible into the worldwide
public domain

16. Public Domain Mark
● not legally operative, but a label to be used
by those with knowledge that a work is
already in the public domain
● useful for very old works where we know it is
in the public domain
● only intended for use with works in
worldwide public domain

17. Examples of CC open license
adoption

18. Examples of country-specific open
government license

19. Many statements, common goal
●
●
●
●
●
“License free”
“Public domain”
“No restrictions on use”
“CC0”
“Most open licensing terms
available”
● “CC BY is default”
● “Enable free reuse, including
commercial”
● “Open Definition is baseline”
● all about minimizing
restriction, maximizing
reuse!

20. Challenges
● Public domain = problems solved
● Even better: harmonize limitations &
exceptions
● Ongoing “license envy”
● So be it, but keep out “poison” clauses
that kill interoperability
● Example: OGL 2.0
● Good moves: Open Definition WG,
LAPSI 2.0

21. So what should we use?
● Codify & harmonize limitations and
exceptions to copyright!
● CC0 to waive copyright worldwide
● Open Definition as baseline
○ means, reuse for any purpose (even commercial),
with at most requirement to attribute and sharealike
○ conformant licenses = http://opendefinition.
org/licenses/
● Push for most progressive policies, as fewer
restrictions leads to increased reuse

23. Resources and getting involved
● Open data handbook - http:
//opendatahandbook.org/
● LAPSI project - http://www.lapsi-project.eu/
● EC consultation on PSI Directive - http://bit.
ly/14JyJ8K
● CC affiliates in your country - http://wiki.
creativecommons.org/CC_Affiliate_Network
● OKFN, GODI, Sunlight Foundation
● Open Definition Working group

24. This work is dedicated to the public domain.
https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/.
Attribution is optional, but if desired, please attribute to Creative Commons.
Graphics
Credits
● Policy Icon - by The Noun Project - Public Domain
● Question Icon - by Rémy Médard, from The Noun Project - CC BY
● Stamp Icon - by Marino Cagnina, from The Noun Project - CC BY
● Big Idea Icon - Public Domain
● Puzzle Icon - by John O’Shea, from the Noun Project - CC BY