Ask Slashdot: How To Both Mirror and Protect Crowdsourced Data? 76
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Be the best and stop trying to "own" data (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Other sites slurp OpenStreetMap data all the time. No biggie, that's what it's for - if the traffic gets too much they *ask* you to take a mirror to reduce bandwidth costs. OSM has a "share with attribution" kinda licence.
If you're really wiki-anything, you'll recognise that this is public information that you curate. Let 'em have it.
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It's a collection of public data, kind of like you know, a dictionary.
Each individual picture is copyrighted. The collection has an editorial copyright much like encyclopedias.
And he does actually own the collection. Do you really think databases of public data can't be "owned" (in the non haxorz way)? Better tell Google to stop wasting all that money on street view, which is merely taking pictures of public streets.
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Op needs a copyright lawyer, and may be out of luck.
As others have said, openstreetmap is relevant.
Most important is the existing licence of the database.
If it does not contain a 'I can change the licence at whim' clause, you're fucked.
You need approval from every submitter.
At least for the photos, and for the data too in some countries.
Read up on why openstreetmap chose odbl,
Re:Be the best and stop trying to "own" data (Score:4, Interesting)
Well that's nice until a facebook comes along to crush the myspace. "Public data" isn't something to be owned. But a specific distribution method or implementation of it can be. Yellowpages anyone?
If they're trying to make a living off this there is the real world factor of keeping this info someone secured and then following up with a business model of some sort. Just because it says non-profit doesn't mean everyone works for free.
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Facebook replaced because they were a better Myspace.
Everyone gets replaced eventually, you only lead while you actually have the best product or cheat.
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Of course, but why give someone else a headstart and piss away all of your efforts?
Plenty of other sites (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Find a partner (Score:2)
Consider teaming up with a seasoned negotiator with good business sense, or hiring an attorney -- or both. If there is any value in your dataset, those who got in touch with you will not reject fees, SLA's, reciprocal updates, etc. It all depends on how much data you have, and how accurate it is.
On a separate note: your site is disfunctional on my tablet. I'm left wondering what it's about or how it's supposed to work.
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I thought that too since there is nothing showing in my town, but the wikipedia [wikipedia.org] page says the project was started in 2005 and there should be a lot more than that..
Perhaps their database is slashdotted, or the website is just broken? For some reason the map API is slightly different from the normal google-map one..
Thats why API's were invented (Score:5, Insightful)
there are a lot of places out there that does this, as its considered Intellectual Property.
Examples (Score:1)
By license (Score:2)
License the mirroring only in the event that:
1. It's visibly acknowledged that you are the source site
2. updates are either directly sent to you, or are sent to you by the other site within a time limit
3. All content on your site, including that sent to you by another (mirror) site, be watermarked as belong to your site. For pictures, this would be a visible watermark on the picture.
Be the best (Score:4, Interesting)
Not much you can do. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Tell that to Lexis-Nexis.
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You don't pay Lexis-Nexis for the data, you pay them to FIND the data you're looking for. They can claim they own it all day long, doesn't make it actually true.
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That depends on the AUP of the site in question. Mine states (or used to, my legal module may be missing) that comments remain the property of the poster but that I'm granted a irrevocable right of reproduction for any and all purposes. If anyone were uploading original images or other potentially useful data I might want to protect that right.
Protect from what? (Score:4, Interesting)
You want to "Protect...Data", "not give up the ship", "follow...our charter of providing safety". But what is it that you don't what mirrors to do with the data? Less verbiage, more clarity, please.
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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 al
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Err, no, that isn't obvious. Or at least it is in direct conflict with the request that the data be "mirrored", which implies to me a copy which also distibutes to the public.
I'd like to hear more from cellurl to resolve the conflict I see in the request.
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They don't want to give their data up only to loose all their user-base to a "mirror".
It's not their data at all, it's data that was entered by their users.
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I may be wrong, as the OP didn't mention budget!
However looking at their site, I'm guessing they're desperate to keep costs to an absolute minimum - correct me if I'm wrong (please), I think the S3 would be potentially quite expensive?
I *think* the OP is looking for crowd-source solutions, i.e. a way for people to run mirrors themselves whilst maintaining integrity and copyright(s).
Private or Community Mirrors (Score:2)
If it's safety you want, I don't understand why you are trying to get other sites to freely back up your data.
Get a real backup service and tell people how it's backed up, poof! safety.
Or if you want to make a community resource you can do like sourceforge, ibiblio, etc, free mirrors that point back to your site.
Don't force it, just make it easy (Score:3)
You don't want to mandate people give you data. That will just get you bad data. Instead, make it as easy as possible for them to do - APIs, easy web forms, any method you can think of that will make the barrier to entry as low as possible. Encourage them to use it, but relax and set your data Free and don't try to force it. It's like Wikis... Somehow it works out OK.
Fully Homomorphic Encryption (Score:2, Funny)
Fully Homomorphic Encryption. FHE. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption#Fully_homomorphic_encryption
Silly copyright notice (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
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Obviously it's the capture that's copyrighted. Certainly it's ambiguously stated, but did you really not understand it?
And facts can be copyrighted. The sun rising over a meadow is a fact, but a picture or drawing or recorded description of it is copyrighted.
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Obviously it's the capture that's copyrighted. Certainly it's ambiguously stated, but did you really not understand it?
As it is a legally binding statement, it needs to be unambiguously stated. Also, if each and every fact is copyrighted by the "discoverer" that would place some severe limitations on the information, as each and every copyright holder would need to accept changes to the use of the data. This means that as an example replicating the data may require a license from all copyright holders. From the posting, it appears that this is not the case, so the copyright has no value whatsoever.
And facts can be copyrighted. The sun rising over a meadow is a fact, but a picture or drawing or recorded description of it is copyrighted.
There is a difference betw
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The statement itself isn't what's legally binding. Unless explicilty stated otherwise via assignment to the public domain, copyright protection for produced works (such as photographs) is automatic in the United States
As the position and speed limit of a speed sign is not an artistic expression, your post actually support what I wrote.
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How can the position of a speed sign be copyrighted? How is the position of a speed sign a "produced work"? What is not a fact about it? So far nobody have claimed that a fact can be copyrighted, so is your claim that a fact can be copyrighted?
First poster to use the word "cloud" (Score:3)
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So if you have a Chinese accent don't repost the title.
Similar to phone directories (Score:2)
World's most boring website? (Score:1)
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Extra alerts at the right times are useful.
I've seen signs disappear because someone ran over them.
I've seen signs disappear because kids stole them.
I've seen trees grow around signs and obstruct the view of the signs.
These are DoT issues that should resolved ASAP, but until then it might be useful to know that the 45mph limit dropped to 25 suddenly due to being very near a school for the blind and oh, by the way, the untrimmed bushes grew over the sign. No locals bother to report it because they know the
Affero GPL (Score:2)
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So basically what you want to do is cause someone else to start a competing site so they can use the data in thier own way without being bound by you're silly selfishness?
Putting up barriers to getting the data is a good way to become irrelevant.
YOU WANT COMMERCIAL USE. Commercial users (some, not all) will commit changes back to the main site just so they don't have to maintain their own distinct database for that purpose. Ask OSM.
If you disallow others, they'll just start their own collection systems.
"Your browser sucks, upgrade it." (Score:2)
You could fix that first.
Interesting, but why? (Score:2)
OpenStreetMap [openstreetmap.org]
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There are a number of particular reasons. One I can think off the top of my head, at least in the state I live in, is that speed limit signs have to be displayed with in the rules of state law. If the sign is hidden by trees, to low to the ground, etc.. you can get the ticket dismissed in court. Also it can be used in defense when a cop tickets you incorrectly, 60 in a 55, when it actually is a 60.
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That was my thought too... What the heck is the point of this exercise? Especially since you're supposed to be paying attention to the road anyhow.
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