|

Free Archaeology

Creative Commons license for archaeological data : Heathrow T5

View: New views

5 Messages — Rating Filter: Alert me

	Creative Commons license for archaeological data : Heathrow T5 by Stefano Costa :: Rate this Message: Reply to Author \| View Threaded \| Show Only this Message Dear all, last month the Past Thinking blog [1] reported about the Heathrow T5 archaeology data released under Creative Commons license [2]. The raw excavation data has been released in a variety of useful formats (including XML and GML, CSV, SHP), under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license [3]. In short words, this means that you can use them for whatever you like, as long as you don’t make money from their use. As remarked by Tom on his blog, this "is quite a milestone", because the T5 excavation is a really important and large one. So, this is perhaps the first time (or one of the first times) that archaeological data are released under such an "Open Content" license. More data will be eventually published under these terms, based on this example. One question that comes to me is whether the Creative Commons can apply to archaeological data, because of their unique nature where objective facts are tightly mixed with subjective interpretations and choices (btw, this is a big and controversial topic of archaeological theory and I'm not going into the details). Choosing a Creative Commons license suggests that the "subjective" part is somehow more important, and thus the archaeologist retains the copyright on her/his work (the CC stuff only applies in case of copyright). The counterpart is the famous "Facts are free" motto, that should apply in any case where data are "objective" and thus there is lack of creativity by the author/archaeologist. In such a case, if one chooses to publish data from an excavation\|survey\|experiment, data should ideally be in the public domain (at least in countries where PD exists). I know this sounds all like useless legalese stuff, but I do think discussing about it is very important, given the fact that more and more archaeological data will go public through the WWW in the next few years, and this is already happening [4][5]. As always, practice is one step beyond theory. This is why we started talking about Creative and Science Commons at the Genoa Workshop last May. I'd like to hear some discussion from the list about this topic, perhaps revamping the "Data sharing" issue seen here months ago. Best, Stefano [1] http://www.pastthinking.com/blog/ [2] http://snipurl.com/1r5rk [3] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/20/ [4] http://opencontext.org/ [5] http://pleiades.stoa.org/places -- Stefano Costa steko@... http://www.iosa.it Archeologia e Software Libero Io uso Debian GNU/Linux! -- Mailing list info: http://lists.linux.it/listinfo/archaeology
	Re: Creative Commons license for archaeological data : Heathrow T5 by Chris Puttick-3 :: Rate this Message: Reply to Author \| View Threaded \| Show Only this Message We will be using Creative Commons for all our data/interpretation/stuff - in the UK copyright is difficult to avoid and we would need to retain it for some literature anyway, so picking Creative Commons for all our stuff is just easier. Not being an archaeologist, I have some difficulty seeing any other way of dealing with data etc. that results from archaeological work. Synthetic works I can see being sold for profit, but more or less everything else is both (a) irreproducible scientific data and (b) not profitable in its own right. Why would you not put your results and data in public? Chris PS I too was pleased to the Framework joint venture decide to publish data openly - next I hope to get them to join in the open source thing too! ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stefano Costa" <steko@...> To: list@... Cc: "ekansa" <ekansa@...>, "Antonella D'Ascoli" <dascolia@...>, "Andrea Glorioso" <andrea.glorioso@...> Sent: Monday, September 24, 2007 11:05:31 AM (GMT) Europe/London Subject: Creative Commons license for archaeological data : Heathrow T5 Dear all, last month the Past Thinking blog [1] reported about the Heathrow T5 archaeology data released under Creative Commons license [2]. The raw excavation data has been released in a variety of useful formats (including XML and GML, CSV, SHP), under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license [3]. In short words, this means that you can use them for whatever you like, as long as you don’t make money from their use. As remarked by Tom on his blog, this "is quite a milestone", because the T5 excavation is a really important and large one. So, this is perhaps the first time (or one of the first times) that archaeological data are released under such an "Open Content" license. More data will be eventually published under these terms, based on this example. One question that comes to me is whether the Creative Commons can apply to archaeological data, because of their unique nature where objective facts are tightly mixed with subjective interpretations and choices (btw, this is a big and controversial topic of archaeological theory and I'm not going into the details). Choosing a Creative Commons license suggests that the "subjective" part is somehow more important, and thus the archaeologist retains the copyright on her/his work (the CC stuff only applies in case of copyright). The counterpart is the famous "Facts are free" motto, that should apply in any case where data are "objective" and thus there is lack of creativity by the author/archaeologist. In such a case, if one chooses to publish data from an excavation\|survey\|experiment, data should ideally be in the public domain (at least in countries where PD exists). I know this sounds all like useless legalese stuff, but I do think discussing about it is very important, given the fact that more and more archaeological data will go public through the WWW in the next few years, and this is already happening [4][5]. As always, practice is one step beyond theory. This is why we started talking about Creative and Science Commons at the Genoa Workshop last May. I'd like to hear some discussion from the list about this topic, perhaps revamping the "Data sharing" issue seen here months ago. Best, Stefano [1] http://www.pastthinking.com/blog/ [2] http://snipurl.com/1r5rk [3] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/20/ [4] http://opencontext.org/ [5] http://pleiades.stoa.org/places -- Stefano Costa steko@... http://www.iosa.it Archeologia e Software Libero Io uso Debian GNU/Linux! -- Mailing list info: http://lists.linux.it/listinfo/archaeology ------ Files attached to this email may be in ISO 26300 format (OASIS Open Document Format). If you have difficulty opening them, please visit http://iso26300.info for more information. -- Mailing list info: http://lists.linux.it/listinfo/archaeology
	Re: Creative Commons license for archaeological data : Heathrow T5 by Luca Bezzi :: Rate this Message: Reply to Author \| View Threaded \| Show Only this Message Hi Stefano, about sharing data with CC licence i can only say that after the workshop of Genova and the interesting discussion about this license we (Arc-Team) decided to release the final report of the excavation we were working on, under the Creative Common. If i understood well, when we write something, we automatically have what in Italy is called ''paternita' dell'opera'' (a kind of copyright), so we could put our final report (that we have to send to the archaeological sovrintendence) under a public license. The problem for us still remain the same: i think we cannot put such a license on all the other data of the excavation (the founs, the layers, etc...), cause this data is not something we created... I think that one of the main point in this discussion is to understand when something can be considered an intellectual creation, cause in this case we can put it under a license (an open one is always better). Of course an ''intellectual creation'' can speak about facts, like in our final report we spoke about finds and layer. In this sense i would like to understand if the map i draw or the picture i take with my camera, when they are representing founs or layer (facts), can be considered an ''intellectual creation'' or not. In the first case maybe it is possible to put them under an open license and share them. If, on the other hand, they have to be considered ''facts'', is possible that someone has a kind of copyright on them? If it is like this, i fear that in Italy this ''copyright'' belongs to the Italian repubblic, represented by the sovrintendence, so it is impossible to share them without a written permission. Sorry for the long email, but this is a problem that we often find in our work, so I would like to know something more about it, and if someone else found solutions. Best reguards, Luca Bezzi Arc-Team Archaeology & Free Software http://www.arc-team.com/ luca.bezzi@... -- Mailing list info: http://lists.linux.it/listinfo/archaeology
	Relevant and Accessible Statistics for Archaeologists by Helen Goodchild :: Rate this Message: Reply to Author \| View Threaded \| Show Only this Message Dear All, I've just seen this on the HEA website and thought it relevant to your wiki. http://www.hca.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/TDG/reports/orton/index.php Hope this is useful! Helen ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~* Helen Goodchild Distance Learning Manager School of Historical Studies University of Birmingham Edgbaston Birmingham B15 2TT 0121 414 5331 H.Goodchild@... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~* -- Mailing list info: http://lists.linux.it/listinfo/archaeology
	Re: Relevant and Accessible Statistics for Archaeologists by Stefano Costa :: Rate this Message: Reply to Author \| View Threaded \| Show Only this Message Il giorno lun, 01/10/2007 alle 15.02 +0100, Helen Goodchild ha scritto: > Dear All, > I've just seen this on the HEA website and thought it relevant to your > wiki. > http://www.hca.heacademy.ac.uk/resources/TDG/reports/orton/index.php > > > Hope this is useful! Hi Helen, very useful indeed, prof. Orton is really making his best to make students learn Statistics. Thank you for the link. BTW, I always keep track of on-topic websites with the "qmdaa" tag (which is unique) on del.icio.us http://del.icio.us/tag/qmdaa If someone else is using it, it should be quite easy to add that tag to the relevant links. Best, Stefano -- Stefano Costa steko@... http://www.iosa.it Archeologia e Software Libero Io uso Debian GNU/Linux! -- Mailing list info: http://lists.linux.it/listinfo/archaeology