[Talk-us] State Open Data

[OSM Volunteer stevea]

I'm not an attorney, though were I to attempt to sharpen focus on these two replies, I'd say that in California, it's more like this:  data produced by state agencies (by our state government personnel "on the clock") publishing them as "produced by the state of California" cannot have onerous copyright terms/restrictions put upon them.  They simply "belong to the public."  (This is especially true of GIS data, as in the County of Santa Clara and Orange County/Sierra Club cases).

So when you say "copyright...owned by the government," that is effectively equivalent to "copyright owned by the People of the state" because of California's Open Data laws and stare decisis (law determined by court precedence/findings).  Whether "public domain" is the correct legal term I'm not sure, but if there is a distinction between the legality of California-produced data and "the data are in the public domain" it is either very subtle or completely non-existent; I consider California-produced data "somewhere around, if not actually PD" and "fully ODbL-compatible" for OSM purposes.  So, (and I hope this dispels any confusion and answers your question, Pine), "created by the government" means they can't put "onerous copyright" on it, meaning it is effectively owned by the People for any purpose for which We see fit.

If there ARE lawyers out there who think I'm getting this wrong, please chime in, but I strongly believe this is firm legal ground.

FEDERAL laws are slightly different, and maybe even MORE generous:  data produced by federal agencies are "in the public domain" (unless classified as Confidential, Secret and Most Secret, which are NOT for wider consumption).

SteveA
California
(and again, not an attorney, though I am an educated person who can read and interpret my laws)


> From: Pine W <wiki.pine at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Talk-us] State Open Data
> Date: August 11, 2018 at 10:59:55 AM PDT
> To: talk-us <talk-us at openstreetmap.org>
> 
> I'm interested in this subject. An issue is that the copyright might be owned by the government entity that created it, even if the records are open for the public. If something is public record in California, does that also mean that it's not copyrighted by the government entity that created it?
> 
> Pine
> ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )


> On Sat, Aug 11, 2018 at 12:01 PM Pine W <wiki.pine at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm interested in this subject. An issue is that the copyright might be owned by the government entity that created it, even if the records are open for the public. If something is public record in California, does that also mean that it's not copyrighted by the government entity that created it?
> 
> Its my understanding that if the state government has an open data law similar to the US, then when they release the data it's public domain. There are exceptions. Sometime they license the data from a company without have the rights to release it as PD. They also have exceptions for not releasing data that has personal information. I sat through a talk by WSDOT. One of the big issues they pressed was to be very careful be for adding data to the state's open data portal. Once it's out in the open, they can't get it back.