Adding a Right Statement to data published via WordLift

[cyberandy]

As data published to the web should always be accompanied by machine-readable metadata that describes the dataset, its means of creation and, importantly, a statement of the rights that relate to potential re-use of the data. This option should be given to editors in the WordLift settings. An initial implementation could include:

• dataset title (presumably the name of the website)
• dataset rights
• dataset license

More info for the implementation can be found here: https://theodi.org/guides/publishers-guide-to-the-open-data-rights-statement-vocabulary.

[cyberandy]

It is also extremely important to clear out any thoughts on the fact that the data produced with WordLift belongs to the user and this is why he/she pays a recurring fee.

[Byrlyne]

I agree with cyberandy. I know I am jumping in here without having much background on WordLift, but as a former attorney, I believe whatever boilerplate language you use to convey this message (ownership rights and copyright information) must be agreed to at the time your product/service is purchased, is clearly identifiable at the point of service, AND repeated in each and every piece of correspondence you send out. This way there is no gray area, or room for a user to claim you failed to make this clear before purchase or during use, in order to avoid lawsuits. This is not one of those situations where you can bury this information in convoluted legal-ease.

[cyberandy]

@Byrlyne thanks for your input here. WordLift (that you can test with any WordPress website as beta tester) is currently under development and aims at providing anyone with the possibility to create his/her own knowledge graph. It is extremely important that ownership rights and usage rights are clear regardless of the fact that the data will move back and forth from the user's local site to the cloud. Of course as we're approaching the commercialization these issues become more and more important.

[cyberandy]

Adding a single statement on the whole dataset like:

:example2
    a dcat:Dataset ;
    dct:title "Open Products" ;
    dct:rights :example2-rights-statement;
    dct:license <http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1.0/>.

Would work. These options shall be configured from the WordLift > Settings Tab.

[mcolacino]

@cyberandy @ziodave which kind of alternative we want to provide as licences
Is it ok to refer to what suggested here for homogeneous DB? http://opendatacommons.org/faq/licenses/#Why_Do_You_Distinguish_Between_the_8220Database8221_and_its_8220Contents8221
I think we should provide a collection of licenses to the user instead of ask to provide a license uri

[ziodave]

I think the end-user should be able to select how s/he would like to license her/his own contents.

I believe Creative Commons is more understandable and appropriate (than ODbl) since the end user is licensing contents, this wizard gives an overview of the available choices: https://creativecommons.org/choose/

The RDFa example in the above page shows the actual vocabulary to use when describing the license, which is also described here:

• https://creativecommons.org/ns
• https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/RDFa

Finally I don't think we should use dcat:Dataset which pertains to data catalogs (a direct subclass of dcmitype:Dataset, "examples include lists, tables, and databases. A dataset may be useful for direct machine processing").

We can instead use http://schema.org/WebSite or http://schema.org/Blog (or the more generic http://schema.org/CreativeWork) to define the whole dataset (these classes have a schema:license property). http://schema.org/BlogPosting(s) can be related to http://schema.org/CreativeWork subclasses using the schema:isPartOf property.

[mcolacino]

mmm schema:isPartOf does not seems the proper one here ... Look at the property details