On 9/11/2012 9:06 PM, Karen Coyle wrote:
> Not in the way that they are requiring it -- again, read their
> documentation. Attribution is on the data set, not individual data, and
> you only need to say that "WorldCat data was used in this project."
Huh, if this is indeed true that would be AWESOME.
So you're thinking they only require attribution on a single 'about this
service' page or something like that? That's obviously a lot more tractable.
And looking at the page you linked to -- yeah, it does seem to say that,
nice!
Weird, I swear I've spent a LOT of time looking at the various OCLC
documentation on this (sometimes hard to find and confusing and
contradictory)... but I don't think I could had come accross that page
before:
http://www.oclc.org/us/en/data/attribution.html
Don't know if it's new or improved since I last looked (perhaps they
responded to my bitching by clarifying!), or if I just missed it before
amongst all the various documentation and clearifications and guidelines
and norms documents.
But yeah, that's more reasonable, much better than I thought. Still not
completely in the clear, there are still issues.
For one, despite OCLC's statement on Europeana.... OCLC's statement
doesn't make a lot of sense. It's not clear if they are saying that this
is a special exemption/license for Europeana, or if they're saying that
their ODC-BY license already let you contribute data to Europeana. Note
that Europeana is CC0, but just has a non-enforceable request for
attribution. So if they're saying the ODC-BY already let you contribute
to Europeana.... that seems to mean that in their opinion anyone who
wants to can take WorldCat data and put it in a CC0-licensed database
with a simple non-enforceable request for attribution to OCLC. And then
someone else can take the data from that CC0 database, and choose not to
comply with that non-enforceable attribution. So why even license as
ODC-BY with an attempt to legally enforce attribution, if you think
anyone can 'launder' the data through a CC0 database and not be legally
compelled to attribute? Very confusing.
Also, there are still issues of "attribution overload" in an envisioned
world of lots of remixing and deriviation and re-use. You could easily
have to include dozens of attribution notices on your 'about' page,
including some for sources that in fact no longer have much contribution
to your data. Let's say I include data from A, B, and C, all of which
are ODC-BY. And B included data data from X, Y, and Z, all of which are
ODC-BY. And Z included data from OCLC. Now my 'about' page needs to
credit A, B, C, X, Y, Z, and OCLC. It may be that over time all of the
OCLC data was overwritten and merged with other data and no actual
WorldCat contributions remain... but unless I (and A,B,C,X,Y, and Z!)
were (expensively!) tracking all the provenance, there's no way to be
sure of that, so the OCLC attribution requirement will effectively
remain forever. You'll keep picking up more and more attribution
requirements the more data sources you use, all of which are 'viral' and
effectively perpetual for lifetime of your database, you'll end up with
a lot of credits on 'about'. Still, it could be worse.
Received on Wed Sep 12 2012 - 17:00:17 EDT