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."

Be the best and stop trying to "own" data

[BitZtream]

You'll only be THE clearing house if you are the best source. Second, it's public data, stop trying to own it, you can't, it's not yours to own in the first place.

Plenty of other sites

[cold fjord]

There are plenty of publicly accessible sites that mirror data from trivial to critical. I would contact a few of them and see what agreements they have in place, if any.

I would think you would want to make sure they note their data is a mirror, and that updates should be sent to your site. That might be handled by doc files for each file, or some type of about file in each directory. You probably want something like that if for no other reason so as to note metadata.

I've seen quite a few sites that prefer that you go to a mirror to download actual data.

Thats why API's were invented

[muphin]

create an API and provide an interface where your client base can interface with the data.
there are a lot of places out there that does this, as its considered Intellectual Property.

Not much you can do.

[king neckbeard]

This is a compilation of public data, with the legwork being done by others. You've got no real legal option in protecting the data, at least in regards to the US. You could perhaps try some technical means of controlling the data, but that would greatly reduce the utility. I would also consider in unethical to try and 'own' the results of work done by other unpaid volunteers. If you wish to be the center of this data collection, than make it as useful as possible.

Re:Protect from what?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's fairly obvious to anyone who took 3 seconds to figure out what they are asking.
They don't want to give their data up only to loose all their user-base to a "mirror". There are several ways around this, probably the easiest is not to share the data.
However, their data does appear that it could potentially be of great use, especially to anyone who wants to calculate an accurate arival time when talking a trip. I would recommend keeping the actual data on your server, but providing an external API that allows outside apps to access your data and commit updates. I might even add a disclaimer that a portion of all profits made using your data must go to you. (Even if it is just adds) Also watch for data mining bots that will "steal" your data via rapidly accessing all data on your server through your interfaces. This is your hard work, you do need protection.

Silly copyright notice

[FaxeTheCat]

From the home page "the sign you capture is copyrighted with your name since you found it".

How on earth can you copyright a speed sign, and even if you could, how can that copyright be relevant to anything?

The location and speed limit of a speed sign is a fact. How can that be copyrighted? How can it limit the rights of others who observer the sign to publish its location and speed limit?

If anybody were entitled to copyright a speed sign, it would be the authorities that put it there and who actually own it. How can the location of other peoples property be copyrightable? Looks like somebody took the concept one step too far...