I think that there are a few issues tangled up in your comments Marcin, so I’d like to mae a few points.

– CC no longer offers an SA only licence (that is up-to-date).
– The Open Data Commons Licence specifically addresses some of the issues of databases that are not addressed in the CC licences. One big part is the stating in the licence itself what is likely to have copyright.
– The EU’s Database Right, which covers the extraction and re-utilisation of a substantial part of the contents does cover, in a very limited way in the licence, taking the contents and putting them into a new database.
– Contract is the third approach in the licence for jurisdictions without a DB right. I should note that contract is how the use of factual information is controlled in many settings, especially in the US.
– The ‘burden’ on users is actually really light — they must give notice, keep the licence with the material, and share alike.

Thanks!

I believe he is justified in this decision.

The reason he’s justified is in fact because “the data independent of the database” is in fact generally content that can already be covered by Creative Commons. It’s these special rights—EU database rights, and copyright in the db as a whole–that Creative Commons and other existing licenses are not entirely appropriate for.

The conslusion to draw from this, for something like the Talis project, is that you DO still need to have contributors properly licensing that content within the db. You need to have contributors of specific data subsets to contribute under a Creative Commons or other suitable license, if that data being submitted (the ‘data independent of the database’) may possibly itself be covered by copyright. (Some data is of course not copyrightable, which may also vary slightly by jurisdiction). Unless this is done, I don’t think you’ve achieved the actual protection for openness you would like.

PS: Much respect to Talis for funding this legal work.

Put simply, database right isn’t going to bind third parties who receive a few data that are not copyright.

Even assuming that database right could bite on extracts from the database that are not in themselves copyright, so that third parties are bound, how is it going to help bind those scond parties operating in jurisdictions that do not recognise database rights, or copyright in the underlying data, or the third parties who receive them from those second parties?

Databases can have any type of content — not just factual information.

The factual information licence(in the same vein as BSD/MIT licences) is for information that has a questionable copyright status in some jurisdiction. This could be because some of the info is not purely factual, or because the jurisdiction has a ‘sweat of the brow’ test for copyright and the ‘creator’ of the facts spent a lot of effort collecting them. This licence gives people peace of mind about this information and any copyright claim.

The Database licence (as opposed to the factual information licence) applies for databases — that is when facts or other information is gathered together in a database. These databases are likely to attract copyright in most jurisdictions, and in Europe may also attract Database Rights. Note that copyright over a database is separate from copyright (or lack therof) in the contents of a database. The Database Licence covers these rights, worldwide, with the requirement that users share alike.

Any other questions, please let me know.

Creative Commons is a great movement, and their licenses have been truly transformative in getting people to think about – and engage with – remixing their creative content. I use them myself, and have been involved in evangelising their use in the UK for a few years.

However, Creative Commons licenses (of which, as you say, there are several) are extensions of Copyright Law, and copyright does not – and cannot – apply to the factual content in a database. That’s not Creative Commons’ ‘fault’; it’s a fact of the law.