"Foster a discussion about Open Data and rights"

On closer reading, the following paragraph seemed overly complicated:

    Rights owners who are better informed of the issues associated with open
    data publishing will be able to make safer decisions. It makes sense for
    consortia with common views on the potential advantages and disadvantages
    of linked data to discuss rights and licensing issues and identify areas of
    agreement. A mixture of rights within linked data space will complicate
    re-use of metadata, so there is an incentive to have rights agreements on a
    national or international scale. For the perspective of UK higher education
    libraries, see the [http://obd.jisc.ac.uk/rights-and-licensing Rights and
    licensing] section of the [http://obd.jisc.ac.uk/ Open bibliographic data
    guide].

For example, does it really mean to say that if -- and only if -- consortia
have common views on the "advantages and disadvantages" of Linked Data, they
should seek to agree about rights and licensing issues?  This is how I
understand the point [1]:

    Rights owners who are well-informed about issues around publishing Open
    Data will make safer decisions. A wide diversity of rights will only
    complicate the re-use of Linked Data, so it makes sense to seek agreement
    about rights and licensing at the level of library consortia or even
    on a national or international scale. (For an example, see the
    [http://obd.jisc.ac.uk/rights-and-licensing Rights and licensing] section
    of the [http://obd.jisc.ac.uk/ Open Bibliographic Data Guide] for UK
    higher-education libraries.)

I'm still not exactly sure how the first sentence leads into the second
("safer" decisions? does this mean "more solid"?) but think it is okay to leave
as is...

Note "Open Data" in uppercase, as in the Scope section; I have made this 
change elsewhere and have updated [2].

Tom

[1] http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/wiki/index.php?title=Draft_recommendations_page_take2&diff=6111&oldid=6106
[2] http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/wiki/ConversionStyle

Received on Sunday, 4 September 2011 14:06:49 UTC