Ask Slashdot: How To Both Mirror and Protect Crowdsourced Data?

New submitter cellurl writes "I run wikispeedia, a database of speed limit signs. People approach us to mirror our data, but I am quite certain it will become a one-way street. So my question is: How can I give consumers peace of mind in using our data and not give up the ship? We want to be the clearing house for this information, at the same time following our charter of providing safety. Some thoughts that come to mind are creating a 'Service Level Agreement' which they will no doubt reject, or MySQL-clustering, or rsync. Any thoughts, (technically, logistically, legally) appreciated."

Re:Be the best and stop trying to "own" data

[dyingtolive]

Well, I mean, the alternative is that you insist that it IS an e-peen contest. If that's what you're going for, then by all means, build an API, license it out, but most importantly, PATENT THE MECHANISM YOU HAVE FOR COLLECTING DATA. Seriously. The more extraneous words you can add in, the better. If you need help on that, just let me know. I have a friend; this guy is amazing. He has this thing called a thesaurus. Neither me nor my MBA friends are entirely sure what exactly it is or does, but we know that when he uses it, it makes RoI improve 23% and IPOs, on average (cause we're professionals) improve by 62%, on average, by volume.



Seriously though, to anyone reading this, I'm trashed, full of shit, banned from posting on the forums I normally frequent, and too uncoordinated to start an emulator. Do not mod this up. Do not encourage the OP.