Open Data liability issues

Hi,

As a follow-up on this thread, I was at Joel Gurin's talk in the ODI last Friday on 'The value of open data to business' [1] I asked him his views on whether the 'as is' clause of Open Licenses, i.e. not accepting liability is an obstacle for businesses reusing Open Data. He seemed a little surprised by the question, but acknowledged it was an interesting issue. Joel gave the example of Medicare recently releasing data about how much doctors are paid, which could lead to potential liability issues, however this isn't an example of third-party reuse. He said he'd be interested in our findings.

As Joel works with a lot of Open Data companies with the Open Data 500 project, and liability doesn't seem to have registered as an issue for him signalled to me:

a)      We're ahead of the game thinking about such issues :), or

b)      Liability isn't an issue for actual business re-users of Open Data!

Cheers,
Deirdre

[1] https://soundcloud.com/theodi/friday-lunchtime-lecture-the-value-of-open-data-to-business-the-open-data-500-study

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Deirdre Lee
Research Associate
eGovernment Domain (DEG)
Insight-NUIG
IDA BusinessPark, Lower Dangan,
Galway, Ireland

deirdre.lee@deri.org<mailto:deirdre.lee@deri.org>
skype: deirdrelee
twitter: @deirdrelee
linkedin: ie.linkedin.com/in/leedeirdre/<http://ie.linkedin.com/in/leedeirdre/>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Makx Dekkers [mailto:mail@makxdekkers.com]
Sent: 15 May 2014 09:11
To: 'DWBP WG'
Subject: RE: Two blog posts that may be of interest

To me, Steve's observation about Governments not accepting responsibility is an important one. Even the UK Open Government Licence, which I think qualifies as an Open Licence, contains this statement:

Non warranty

The Information is licensed 'as is' and the Information Provider excludes all representations, warranties, obligations and liabilities in relation to the Information to the maximum extent permitted by law.

The Information Provider is not liable for any errors or omissions in the Information and shall not be liable for any loss, injury or damage of any kind caused by its use. The Information Provider does not guarantee the continued supply of the Information.

So: Provider excludes all representations, warranties, obligations and liabilities, Provider is not liable for any errors or omissions, Provider does not guarantee the continued supply ...

I understand Steve's conclusion that without some form of guarantee of quality and availability, businesses may think twice before building their products on such data.

There is a bit of a tension between the push of a part of the open data community to "publish early, even if data may be 'dirty'" and a business community that needs quality guarantees.

Maybe something to include in BP guidelines? Something like: "If you publish data quickly without guarantees, you're helping developers to experiment with the data and investigate innovative usage of the data; if on the other hand, you want to enable high-quality and sustainable products and services, you need to provide guarantees of quality and availability".

Makx.



From: Steven Adler [mailto:adler1@us.ibm.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2014 9:28 PM
To: DWBP WG
Subject: Two blog posts that may be of interest

Hi Folks,

Here are two perspectives on the business use of Open Data.  I think we can take up the first topic as a recommendation in our Best Practices work.

The question is, should Open Data license terms be machine readable?  And if so, should we (and can we) define a standard vocabulary to make it so?

https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140512164919-384693-open-data-is-not-open-for-business?trk=mp-reader-card

https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140514120932-384693-business-needs-open-data?trk=mp-reader-card

Looking forward to your comments.

Best Regards,

Steve

Motto: "Do First, Think, Do it Again"