Text and Data Mining in an OA World CC Global Summit 2015 14th - 17th October Seoul, Korea twitter.com/openminted_eu Text and Data Mining in an OA World thomas.margoni@stir.ac.uk ● Why TDM ● What legal barriers to TDM ● Exceptions to legal barriers ● Limits of exceptions ● Licences ● Legislative reform ● Policy choices Why TDM thomas.margoni@stir.ac.uk ● Over 1.5 million scientific publications every year ● ca 50 million as of 2010. ● reading and analysing them is beyond human capacities ● Text and data mining (TDM) is a powerful tool for harnessing the power of and discovering value in data, by analysing structured and unstructured datasets and content and to discover concepts and entities in the world, patterns they may follow and relations they engage in, and on this basis annotate, index, classify and visualise such content. Why TDM thomas.margoni@stir.ac.uk ● However, “text and data mining remains a fragmented set of tools” and “access is more than just being able to download something; in some cases the user (or more likely their institution) may need to pay [and negotiate] four different costs to enable the materials to be mined – traditional access (reading) costs, the right to copy, the right to digitise and then the right to text mine” (JISC, 2012) What legal barriers to unrestricted TDM thomas.margoni@stir.ac.uk ● Copyright and rights related to copyright ● Esp. Sui generis database right (SGDR) – These rights usually restrict the reproduction (copy) and distribution of protected works or databases with substantial investment – Problem: reproduction is defined very broadly by EU law (any temporary or permanent copy of the whole or part of a work, etc); SGDR restricts copies of substantial parts and repeated copies of insubstantial parts ● Therefore any TDM (or any other act) which requires a copy of the original work or DB (even if temporary) infringes protected works and DB What legal barriers to unrestricted TDM thomas.margoni@stir.ac.uk ● Privacy/data protection – Protects personal data (e.g. databases containing names, addresses, age, sex, etc). – One of the main aspects is the concept of consent: data subject can give consent for treatment of his/her data (e.g. in a DB). But such consent needs to be specific for a purpose. Consent cannot be given for any type of use (like e.g. copyright licences). Therefore, data subject may have to give his/her consent for every new use (some times 1M of data subjects). What legal barriers to unrestricted TDM thomas.margoni@stir.ac.uk ● PSI – Public Sector Information legislation is based on a different paradigm than other approaches (e.g. U.S. where works of Federal Government are not protected in the U.S.). PSI 2013 has a “open by default” approach by copyright and other similar rights and privacy are object of specific exception and therefore PB are under no obligation to make them accessible and/or reusable What legal barriers to unrestricted TDM thomas.margoni@stir.ac.uk ● Contracts/terms of use – Even when no rights exist on a specific BD (because there is no originality, no substantial investment, no personal data, etc) terms of use of data provider may restrict use and redistribution of DB. This limitation is based on a contractual relationship (no rights) but is still and enforceable obligation (although there are differences) Exceptions to legal barriers thomas.margoni@stir.ac.uk Copyright and rights related to copyright ● Exception and limitations to copyright (ELC), fair dealing, fair use. ELC are limited (in EU max 1 mandatory plus 20 at discretion of MS) ● For TDM only possible one is exception for research and teaching. Problem is that it is not uniformly implemented in all MS and that it is usually limited to partial copies. It is also limited to non commercial activities and only for illustration for teaching and research. Fair dealing (e.g UK) is a broader standard but not as much as fair use (US). ● Recently, UK introduced a limitation to copyright and related rights for acts of TDM for non commercial purposes and for DB legally accessed. Exceptions to legal barriers thomas.margoni@stir.ac.uk ● Privacy/data protection – Anonymisation of data (removal of personal data) but this is time/money consuming and may reduce the usefulness of DB ● PSI – PSI legislation does not affect FoA (Freedom of Access) legislation which is MS power. But if MS empower FoA legislation then PSI “reusable by default” rule applies. However, limitation regarding copyright&C. and privacy still apply ● Contracts/terms of use – These are private agreements so there are no really exceptions. However, certain regulations (antitrust, abusive clauses, consumer protection) could under certain circumstances invalidate specific terms. This is however a case per case issue and does not seem to constitute a sound course of action. Licences thomas.margoni@stir.ac.uk ● Licences are permissions/authorisations (contractual or otherwise based) that allow one or more parties to do perform certain acts. ● In the field of OA, Open Content Licences (e.g. CCPL) are used to grant a permission to perform acts (copy, redistribute, modify, etc) a work of authorship or other subject matter (e.g. a DB) ● Different type of licences in the OC field. A possible problem is “licence proliferation”, i.e. too many (and possibly incompatible) licences. Therefore, in the “open environment” there is a general consensus that new licences should not be created unless really necessary. One of the main goals of the Legal Interoperability WG in OpenMinTeD is to prepare a licence compatibility matrix as well as recommending which licences should be used. Legislative reform thomas.margoni@stir.ac.uk ● Licences are a powerful instrument but not perfect… ● Examples of problems with licences: – “Private ordering tool” i.e. can we entrust a private law tool with a function that should be a matter of public interest (wider access to knowledge)? – Licences are a voluntary tool, i.e. only of the owner of DB is willing to grant you access, licences work. If data owner says no, there is no remedy based on contracts that can force it to deal with you. – Even if DB is willing to employ OA licences, so many times there are problems of correct labeling of resources (legal code and metadata). This is a very serious problem faced in many projects in the OA field. Legislative reform thomas.margoni@stir.ac.uk ● Legislative reform (if properly done) can address many of the limits of licences: – It is a “public ordering tool” meaning that the approval of a piece of legislation goes through the standard legislative procedures with all proper guarantees – Legislative reform can be mandatory therefore it can apply even if data owner disagrees (e.g. UK exception cannot be limited contractually). – Problem of labeling is solved with proper legislative intervention, since all the parties that find themselves in a given situation can perform that specific act under the conditions established in the law (no need to seek precise conditions on case-by-case basis). A possible related problem here can happen if legislation establishes specific limitation to e.g. types of use (such as the UK exception that limits its ambit to non commercial acts) Policy choices thomas.margoni@stir.ac.uk ● Every solution has advantages and disadvantages ● Through proper policy choices some of the disadvantages can be fixed. – Recommending 1 or a very limited no. of licences which are compatible (fixing problem of licence incompatibility) – Crucial importance that data providers, funding agencies, scientific and public institutions require use of correct licences and subject grant of funding to the correct implementation of those licences (fixing problems of “voluntarity” and “labeling”) – Influence public debate so that legislative intervention in the field is appropriate (e.g. definition of right of reproduction, limited amount of ELC, need of a fair use exception in the EU, limit of non commercial exception such as in UK). thomas.margoni@stir.ac.uk Questions? Thank you thomas.margoni@stir.ac.uk This presentation is licensed under the CCPLv4 Attribution Licence