Transcript NAS/NRC Licensing Study

Licensing Geographic Data and Services:Vision
for a National Commons and Marketplace
A Conceptual Model for Meeting the Needs of
Government, Commercial, Scientific and
Nonprofit Sectors
Professor Harlan J. Onsrud
Spatial Information Science and Engineering
University of Maine
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Sample Domestic Uses of Geographic Data,
Technologies and Systems
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track changes in the landscape, weather,
vegetation, and water resources
inventory and manage the physical facilities of
utilities and city governments
navigate and track automobiles, truck fleets
emergency vehicles
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track crime
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profile and target consumer preferences
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…
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and
Uses
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analysis
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inventory
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monitoring
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routing
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design
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resource allocation
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maintenance
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modeling
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mapping
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management
Myriad personal, commercial, government,
educational, scientific, and non-profit uses.
No longer the domain of just the specialist.
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Standard practice of federal government
agencies and science
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Acquire full ownership of geographic data by selfcollection or through purchase from private
sector and distribute data without restriction
Licensing has emerged as a prevalent
private sector business model that
agencies must now consider
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Why an Increase in Licensing?
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Geographic data, as opposed to geographic creative works,
are difficult to protect through copyright alone;
A shift away from supplying distinct datasets to providing
access to databases;
The rise of subscription business models dependent on
multiple subscribers despite technical ability to distribute
perfect and inexpensive copies;
Risk management – perfecting disclaimers through licensing;
and
The rise of shared cost and data maintenance partnerships.
Primary Drivers for Study
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A proliferation of nonstandard licensing arrangements;
Difficulty in designing licenses that address the legal,
economic, and public interest concerns of different levels of
government;
Difficulty in designing licenses that accommodate all
sectors of the geographic data community;
An imperfect appreciation of licensing perspectives across
the geographic data community; and
Lack of effective license tracking and enforcement
mechanisms.
Committee Charge
1. To explore the experiences of federal, state, and local
government agencies in licensing geographic data and
services from and to the private sector using case studies
such as the Landsat Program;
2. To examine ways in which licensing of geographic data and
services between government and the private sector serve
agency missions and the interests of other stakeholders in
government data sets;
3. To identify arguments in favor of and in opposition to
spatial-data licensing arrangements;
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Committee Charge
4. To dissect newly proposed license-based models that
could meet, concurrently, the spatial-data needs of
government, the commercial sector, scientists, educators,
and citizens;
5. To consider potential effects on spatial-data uses and
spatial-technology developments of competing
license/non-license approaches within the commercial
sector, and
6. To analyze options that will balance the interests of all
parties affected by licensing of spatial data and services to
and from government.
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Challenge
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What comes after the national map?
… a seamless national map at specified scales and
themes
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What comes after geospatial one-stop?
… a portal for searching for metadata and
accessing government geographic data
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Are the problems of producing and finding
geographic data for society then solved?
Premise: most national governments believe
they will be unable to gather and maintain
more than a small percent of the data users
in society desire
Solution: depend on those already gathering
detailed local information to help construct
and maintain the infrastructure
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Recommendation 9:
The geographic data community should consider a
National Commons in Geographic
Information where individuals can post and
acquire commons-licensed geographic data. The
proposed facility would make it easier for
geographic data creators (including local to federal
agencies) to document, license, and deliver their
datasets to a common shared pool, and also would
help the broader community to find, acquire, and use
such data. Participation would be voluntary
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Recommendation 10:
The geographic data community should consider a
National Marketplace in Geographic
Information where individuals can offer and
acquire commercial geographic data. The proposed
facility would make it easier for the geographic data
community to offer, find, acquire, and use existing
geographic data under license. Participation would
be voluntary
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Recommendation 11:
The geographic data community should consider a
system of “data donations” in which anyone who
sells data using the National Marketplace in
Geographic Information automatically agrees to
donate their data to the commons after a
commercially reasonable time, which we
provisionally set at five years
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Recommendation 12:
Federal agencies should investigate options for and
encourage development of a National Commons and
Marketplace in Geographic Information
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Typical Architecture Environments:
1. Desktop - software and data on your machine but
data may be drawn from anywhere on the web
2. Multipurpose or database focused - (a) many
users accessing and using same remote database
(e.g. spatial appliances) (b) many users
potentially drawing from and updating multiple
standardized databases
3. Web services - stand alone that anyone can
access or distributed and shared, highly focused
GIS applications
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Problem:
Assume tens of thousands of common
people creating spatial works on desktops
• Middle school biology teacher - detailed tree
map
• Community group - 3D animation of how
pollutants moving through water supply system
• Local government - detailed map files about
storm
and sanitary sewers, streets, water
lines, power
lines, …
• Scientists - glaciologist, epidemiologist, …
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Currently, spatial data is very difficult for the
common person to find, use and share
Whether sharing or selling data or services,
producers and users cannot find each other
efficiently nor agree on terms of use
efficiently
Problems not resolved by most current
national visions
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Incentive Premise for Sharing Spatial Data:
Many creators would be more than willing to
share their spatial data sets if:
(1) it was much easier to do,
(2) creators could reliably retain credit and
recognition for their contributions to the public
commons,
(3) liability exposure minimized, and
(4) obtain benefits: non-monetary
(long-term archiving, increased
recognition,
peer review, credibility,
interchange versions)
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Conceptual Design of Public
Commons for Geographic Data
- redirect technological and legal
approaches towards providing incentives
for sharing local data and enabling
sharing
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Approach
- peer-to-peer file sharing system that
automatically supports open access
licenses, user friendly metadata
creation, and documents parent lineage
of any newly submitted public commons
data set (i.e. central server at least for
indexing and possibly archiving)
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Analogy: Citeseer for spatial data
(common pool resource) but with clarity
of legal issues
Proof of Concept
- prototype user interface for delivery of
data and downloading data
- see
http://www.spatial.maine.edu/geodatacommons
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OPERATIONAL REQUIREMENTS MET?
1. place the data set affirmatively into the
public domain or into open access licensing
status in a legally supportive manner
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- part of the metadata form filling process
- automated: need to click one of a very
small
number of commons license
choices
- must commit to the public as a condition
of
using
the metadata, permanent
identification and archiving
services
- open access status always readily
verifiable
for the data set
2. allow creators of technical data sets to
readily document their data sets, (e.g. online metadata creation)
- must be “lite” (few items to complete)
- “pull down menu” for completing most
metadata fields
- must allow for a full open-ended “naïve”
description of data set to
facilitate
future unstructured
organic tagging
- must allow for full metadata as an option
(e.g. full ISO 19115)
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Future Work: “smart metadata lite”
(a) self adapting metadata entry forms
i. later suggested pull down menu choices
adapt on-the-fly based on earlier metadata
selections. That is, later menus offer the most
likely to be selected choices at the top of each
successive pull down offering
ii. suggested minimum entry list expands based
on type of data described (e.g. vegetation suggest completion of Darwin core)
iii. thousands of choices by users automatically
adapts the offered pull down menus (i.e.
changes the assumed ontology to a user built
ontology)
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Future Work: “smart metadata lite” (continued)
(b) entry selections based on ontologies
i. Start with an assumed set of ontologies
(taxonomies) as reflected in menu choices for
major categories of thematic files likely to be
submitted (vegetation, transportation, health,
etc.)
ii. Tie in common dictionary: Word Net?
iii. Because the metadata creators define the
terms they use, each metadata record has more
extensive descriptions and deeper meaning.
Records contain sufficient text to allow
inferences in future semantic web environments
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Future Work: “smart metadata lite” (continued)
(c) at least one open-ended entry to facilitate
emerging link management approaches
i. Ontology is Overated - the rise of user
developed classification
listen - http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail470.html
read - http://shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html
ii. Social Bookmarking Tools - “unabashedly
open and unstructured approach to tagging, or
user classification, of links”
read - http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april05/hammond/04hammond.html
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Future Work: “smart metadata lite” (continued)
Shirky “Ontology, far from being an ideal high-order tool, is a
300-year-old hack, now nearing the end of its useful
life.”
Ontologies give power to classifiers. Links, tags and
search give power to the user.
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Characteristics where ontological classification doesn't
work well:
Domain
* Large corpus
* No formal categories
* Unstable entities
* Unrestricted entities
* No clear edges
Participants
* Uncoordinated users
* Amateur users
* Naive catalogers
* No Authority
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3. affix permanently the contributors identity
to the data contribution (completely automated)
- “open access” approach to IP mngmnt
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a. visible indication that file is in the public
commons or a derivative product of a file in
the public commons
• anyone may download free Commons
File
Identifier software
- drag any technical file to the software
icon
- if hidden commons identifier number is
detected, owner and license
conditions are
exposed
(locally? link to
facility server?)
b. invisible unique number attached to file
• hidden number provides link to complete
metadata file and license in the
archive facility
- enables verification of
identity
- enables detection of alterations
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Steganographic Methods
• lowest bit method - insert message in least
significant bit plane of a carrier file (JPEG,
GIFF, TIFF, PNG, WAV, BMP)
• adding spaces, tabs or white spaces to ends
of lines - easily detected (ASCII)
• insertion of special characters and
unnecessary punctuation marks - easily
detected (text and PDF)
Encryption - Hidden message typically is
encrypted and password required to read.
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4. archive the data set for longer than is
typically achieved currently,
- knowledge disappearing
- archive in several formats (eg. Citeseer)
so that major interchange formats already
have
identifier embedded
5. allow anyone to search for, access,
download, and freely use the data set.
- currently employed web search engines
rely almost exclusively on text-based keyword
matches
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What is the purpose of hiding identifiers in
the various forms of spatial data files?
• discourage license breakers, but not ban
• create extra work to breach the license for a
data set you can use for free anyway
• need not be foolproof - create drag - make
easier to follow the license than breach for the
typical user
• little incentive to strip unobtrusive IDs since
everyone can use file for free anyway
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II. Data Marketplace Component
Similar operationally to the Commons
Any seller or licensor, no matter how small,
should have the ready ability to:
 post to the system standard
meaningful metadata about their spatial
data offerings,
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 define detailed yet standard license or
sale conditions,
tie data offerings to seller defined
pricing formulas that can accommodate
automatically variations in quantity,
quality, legal conditions of use, and
similar data product variables, and
participate in automated financial
transactions and delivery of product.
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Bottom Line:
Would the millions of individuals creating
geographic datasets make use of such
capabilities to make their datasets or web
services available for sharing with others?
Our hypothesis: Yes
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For more information on
Commons and Marketplace Approaches
See:
Licensing Geographic Data and Services
http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11079.html
Research and Development Challenges
http://www.spatial.maine.edu/geodatacommons
Science Commons
http://science.creativecommons.org
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