A law about open geodata in Italy

On August 7, 2012 Italian parliament approved a new law (legge n. 135/2012) related to the socalled "public spending review" where we can find an interesting reform about open geodata.
Here is an English translation of the first part of Article 23, Paragraph 12-quaterdecies:

To support the development of applications and services based on geospatial data and to develop the technologies of Earth, including for environmental protection, risk mitigation and scientific research, all the data and information acquired from soil, air and satellite platforms and financed by public resources must be available to all the potential users, within the limits imposed by reasons of safeguarding national security.

It is a good piece of news in the field of openness for Italy. Now we have only to hope that this new rule become effective soon in all the Italian public administrations and not just a nice principle.
- - -

Second part of the paragraph includes some specific references to the Italian State apparatus and is hard to correctly translate in English. If you want to read also the second part of the paragraph and a few comments about it, a longer article by me is available here.

For more information about open data in Italy, see this presentation by Carlo Piana. 

The Italian Constitutional Court experiments an open data approach (with a CC license)

The Digital Agenda reform which ratified for the Italian legislation the idea of ​​open data is starting to bring results and this time it happened to judiciary data.
At the end of March 2013 on the official website of the Constitutional Court an "experimental" open data section (with all the data of the Court are published in XML format) has finally appeared.

The published data include:

• The archive of all the verdicts (about 18 thousand texts from 1956 to present);
• The archive of the maxims;
• The identity records of the Constitutional Judges, with the dates of oath, cessation and a brief biographical note;
• The rules pending before the Constitutional Court.

The online consultation of the Constitutional Court website was already free (free as in "free beer"); but this is obviously a step further, allowing an effective reuse of this mass of information. Effective from a technological point of view, with the availability in standard and interoperable format; and effective from the legal point of view, thanks to the application of an open content license (Creative Commons BY-SA).

Somebody will say: "hey, there is no copyright on verdicts!". Sure, we all agree. But if verdicts are printed on paper and stored in the dusty folders of the courts, how can we make them really open and reusable? Having a digitized entire dataset available is a big step. And remember that in Europe we also have the so complicated database right.
We should greet this decision as an excellent example for all the main Italian courts: the major courts (Court of Cassation and State Council) and maybe also the biggest local courts (Milan, Rome, Naples...).

__________________________________

Read the Italian version  |  Read the Spanish version 

 

OpenStreetMap: open data ecosystem between opportunities and legal conundrums

Here are the video and slides of a presentation by Maurizio Napolitano for "Open data in transition", an interesting conference at University of Trento (December 19, 2013).
[Also available the video and slides of another presentation from the same conference: the one by Carlo Piana and Simone Aliprandi about Open Data Licensing.]

- - - - - - - - - -

OpenStreetMap open data ecosystem between opportunities and legal conundrums
from Maurizio Napolitano

Open licensing and databases

The English version of my article about open licensing and databases is out. It has been published in Vol 4, No 1 (2012) of International Free and Open Source Software Law Review.

Here you can read the abstract.

Data and databases are a complex, nuanced area within intellectual property law.

In the European Union databases have a special legal treatment that provides two levels of protection. A database is protected by copyright in the classical sense when it can be considered an intellectual work with a creative nature. Where databases represent mere collections of data without sufficient creativity to trigger copyright, EU jurisdictions protect the database under sui generis rights when substantial investment has been made in obtaining, verifying, or presenting the database contents according to Directive 96/9/EC.

This system creates a substantial discrepancy between the situation of European countries and the rest of the world, and also affects those databases that have been released under open licenses.

Not all of the currently available open licenses take account of the legal and practical implications of this discrepancy, and we should examine the consequences and options.

The paper aims to provide a high-level analysis on the protection of databases under European law and identify the main legal problems arising from it in an open data scenario. Then it will focus on the solutions tried so far to implement a proper open licensing framework for the database (with an introduction to the licenses offered by Creative Commons and the Open Data Commons project). Finally, some of the most prominent use cases of open licensing for data will be analysed (such as those of geo-data and linked-data), with some observations on the modus operandi of the various promoters of projects.

If you want to read the entire article, you can find it here: PDF | HTML

Italian version is also available: click here.

...and don't forget to see my diagram about open data legal tools.

Spatial data licensing: guidelines for choosing and applying the most suitable license

FreeGIS.net Data License
Guidelines for choosing and applying the most suitable license for spatial data (by public bodies) (WP 5 - Document 2 and Document 4)

Documents by Simone Aliprandi and Carlo Piana for FreeGIS.net Project.

- Release: July 2013 – original version of this document available at www.freegis.net.
- License: Creative Commons Attribution – Share Alike 3.0 unported (see the license)

After drafting the legal framework document, the team of legal experts produced two documents that aim to publish the best operating license for the issue of spatial data by public bodies. The first document analyzes the main technical legal issues relating to licensing and shows the way for choosing the ultimate instrument. The second document, on the basis of what has emerged in the advisory board and the user community, is concerned to present several precautions for a correct application of the license and for its enforcement.

Opendata graph

I realized a diagram including all the most important opendata licenses that are now available, and classifying them according to their legal effects (attribution and share-alike, attribution only, public domain). I hope this work can be useful to better understand the actual situation of database (open)licensing.

By clicking here you can download the PDF file with the complete version of the diagram.

If you like to deepen this topic, you can also read my article:
- Italian version: Open licensing e banche dati (Informatica e diritto, n. 1-2/2011);
- English version: Open licensing and databases (International Free and Open Source Software Law Review, Vol 4, No 2, 2011)

If you appreciate my work, I will be grateful if you will share this contents and correctly attribute them to me linking to this page.

PS: if you want to deepen how these licenses work on geodata, see the FreeGIS.net Project (an interesting project based in Bolzano which I am collaborating with).

A legal framework of open (geo)data

A research document by Simone Aliprandi and Carlo Piana for FreeGIS.net Project.

- Release: June 2013 – original version of this document available at www.freegis.net.
- License: Creative Commons Attribution – Share Alike 3.0 unported (see the license)

 - DOWNLOAD PDF (Italian version only) -

This document is an offspurt of the article Open licensing and databases, published in International Free and Open Source Software Law Review (Vol 4, No 2, 2011) and availble at this link (English version).

_____________________________________________________

This is the first document produced by two experts involved in the Advisory Board of the Project FreeGIS.net and commissioned to stage 5 WP "FreeGIS Date Licence" (https://www.freegis.net/en/project).
The document deals with all the rules and policies regarding the sharing of spatial data. This preliminary analysis is the basis for the production of subsequent documents: FreeGIS.net DateLicense 1.0 and 2.0, and the creation of the White Paper containing the guidelines for the PAs. The explanation and understanding of these dynamics is essential in order to proceed properly. It is recommended to pay d attention to this document, which serves as the basic legal framework for the issue of public data with particular regard to geographical and spatial data.

Open Data Licensing - presentation by Carlo Piana (and Simone Aliprandi)

Here are the video and slides of a presentation by Carlo Piana and me (Simone Aliprandi) for "Open data in transition", an interesting conference at University of Trento (December 19, 2013).

Full title: Open Data Licensing (With Emphasis on the Italian Public Sector): Guidelines for Choosing and Applying the Most Suitable License.

This presentation is based on the documentation produced within the FreeGis.net Project. See original sources here: 
- Spatial data licensing: guidelines for choosing and applying the most suitable license 
- A legal framework of open (geo)data
- Opendata licensing graph

- - - - - - - - - -

Open Data Licensing - presentation by Carlo Piana (and Simone Aliprandi); Trento, 19-Dec-2013 from Simone Aliprandi

 

Open Data in Transition: an interesting conference in Trento

Last December I was in Trento as a speaker (with Carlo Piana) in a very interesting conference about open data. Title is Open Data in Transition: Intellectual Property, Competition Policy, and Regulatory Issues and it has been organized by Giovanni Napolitano and Simonetta Vezzoso for WIPO and Università degli Studi di Trento.

Where: Dipartimento di Economia e Management, via Inama, 5 - Trento (Sala Conferenze)
When: december 19, 2013 - h. 9.00

From the official press release
Public bodies produce a significant amount of information and content, comprising geographical, land, economic and meteorological data created and/or collected by authorities at the different levels of government, and also data stemming from the cultural domain, such as digitized library collections. In recent years, discussions have focused on the feasibility of re-use regimes of public service information designed to maximise the benefits deriving from improved access and increased use.
The Conference, which is jointly organised by the World Intellectual Property Organization and the Department of Economics and Management of the University of Trento, aims at discussing intellectual property, competition, and broader regulatory issues relevant to the re-use of public sector information.

The Conference Programme (download PDF)

9:00am-9:45am - Introduction

• Welcome Address by Daria de Pretis, Rector of the University of Trento

• Opening of the Conference by Paolo Collini, Deputy Rector for International Affairs

• Keynote Speech by Chris Taggart, OpenCorporates, Co-founder and CEO: Open Data for Better Regulation & Competition

SESSION 1 - INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
9:45am-11:10am
Chair: Paolo Guarda, University of Trento

• Licensing Transparency. Intellectual Property in the Hands of Governments - Mireille Van Eechord, The Institute for Information Law - IViR, University of Amsterdam

• Open Data Licensing (With Emphasis on the Italian Public Sector): Guidelines for Choosing and Applying the Most Suitable License - Carlo Piana and Simone Aliprandi, Arraylaw.eu -> see video and slides

• Open Research Data and IP: A Comparative View - Roberto Caso, University of Trento; Thomas Margoni, The Institute for Information Law - IViR, University of Amsterdam

11:10am-11:30am - Coffee Break

SESSION 2 - COMPETITION POLICY
11:30am-1:30pm
Chair: Michele Carpagnano, University of Trento

• Public Sector Information and Competition: An International Perspective - Giovanni Napolitano, World Intellectual Property Organization

• Interfacing Public Sector Information and Competition Policy Development in Sub-Saharian Africa - Mor Bakhoum, Max Planck Institute, Munich

• Seizing the Open Data Opportunity in Brazil: Competition Policy Issues - Vicente Bagnoli, Mackenzie University, Sao Paolo

• PSI: Antitrust Issues and IP Concerns - Maria Teresa Maggiolino, Bocconi University, Milan

1:30pm-2:30pm - Break

SESSION 3 - REGULATORY ISSUES
2:30pm-4:30pm
Chair: Roberta Cuel, University of Trento

• The OpenStreetMap: Open Data Ecosystem Between Opportunities and Legal Conundrums - Maurizio Napolitano, Fondazione Bruno Kessler and Open Data Institute, Trento -> see video and slides

• Spreading Personal Data? A Challenge for Transparency, Innovation and Technology - Eleonora Bassi, University of Trento and Nexa Center for Internet and Society (Polytechnic University of Torino)

• In the Middle of a Tug-O-War: Competition Law, Privacy Law and Regulation Constraints of Novel Public Sector Information Markets - Francisco Marcos, IE Business School, Madrid

• Public Sector Information: Managing the Flow Between Open and Closed
  Luigi Marengo, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa; Simonetta Vezzoso, University of Trento

_______________________________________

Some pictures from the conference

Session 1

Session 2

Session 3