Re: Assigning CC-BY-4.0 licence to CIF dictionaries

On Wed, Apr 24, 2024 at 7:12 AM James H via comcifs <comcifs@iucr.org> wrote:

I want to analyse Herbert's concerns about CC-BY-SA. Before doing so, what I'm proposing is that we determine a default license, but any of CC0/CC-BY/CC-BY-SA would be acceptable depending on how the dictionary authors want to jump. This is similar to Wikimedia, which allow these licenses but individual projects can choose which one they prefer.

> The CC licenses have been lawyered very carefully so that they do what the claim to do in as many jurisdictions as possible. They are used every day by thousands of organisations and individuals. Our situation (wanting to publically share documents) is precisely the one envisaged by Creative Commons. I don't think this is a situation requiring consulting a lawyer.

I would agree.
I am not a lawyer but have been variously involved (including payment) with IP (licences, copyrights, trademarks, patents, tradesecrets, i related to software, pharmaceuticals, documents, protocols and take the view that if something has to be resolved in court it's very expensive, jurisdiction-dependent and usually unpredictable. 

The major (new) issue now is not licenses of individual items but control of and restriction of access to content, whether "OA" or not . This is aggravated by the rise of aggregators and megapublishers who act as if licences do not apply to them, and AI scrapers who scrap and reuse at random. With a few others I have fought these over the years but gained little support

Some examples:

* small molecule data effectively belongs to CCDC - nominally part of the Univ od Cambridge but in practice an autonomous organization. They prohibit the re-use of more than a trivial subset of "their" content and will lawlerize "offenders". Effectively they have a near. monology on small-molecule crystallography.   They have an "agreement" with Elsevier that crystallographic data is deposited directly into CCDC and never sees the light of public. Huge kudos to Crystallography Open Database COD for creating a subset alternative (I am proud to be on the advisory board). People devloping forcefields from "CCDC data" have been lawyered. It has effectively meant that "public" data-driven research is controlled by CCDC.

* Springergate. I discovered that Springer copyrighted ALL images in "their" publications (https://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2012/06/06/springergate-springerimages-for-today/) including my and Wikipedia's CC-BY (SA). They charged 60 USD and added restrictive licences. When confronted they said it was a "glitch" and withdrew the images. 

* SSRN - a preprint server https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Science_Research_Network which the SocSci community trusted as Open for many years. It was bought for a huge sum (rumoured >>100 Million USD) and is now effectively closed and run by Elsevier
* CLOCKSS, etc. - many expired journals are now only accessible through preservation services which are incredibl;y tortuous and restrictive - maybe only access in a clean room and only pen and paper allowed. https://asistdl.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.24460

One common route into this is a voluntary organization sets something up, gains res[ect and value, runs into financial trouble, is "helped" by megapublishers and ends up as a commercial arm of SpringSeverLey.

As a scientific community we generally work by "community norms" and the bioscience, astronomy, crystallography, have prospered without much explicit licensing. We should think *at the beginning* about governance. In the Shuttleworth Foundation we developed a "poison pill" licence which would deter assimilation.

The biggest effective defence is sunlight. Post CIF spec everywhere. Version. it critically . Make sure it's got multiple preservation. Add a tool  (e.g. checksums) to track integrity. Urge that all re-use, especially by company software can be verified . Make verification software universal - effectively unittests forintegrity. This can be done on a voluntary basis - e.g. pledges. We have the tools to monitor this. I would expect almot universal takeup and no pushback.

P.

--

"I always retain copyright in my papers, and nothing in any contract I sign with any publisher will override that fact. You should do the same".

Peter Murray-Rust
Reader Emeritus in Molecular Informatics
Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-336432