Cameron Neylon

There has been some debate going backwards and forwards over the past
few weeks about licensing, peoples expectations, and the extent to which
researchers can be expected to understand, or want to understand, the
details of legal terms, licensing and other technical minutiae. It is
reasonable for scientific researchers not to wish to get into the
details. One of the real successes of [Creative
Commons](http://creativecommons.org) has been to provide a relatively
small set of reasonably clear terms that enable people to express their
wishes about what people can do with their work. But even here there is
the potential for significant confusion as demonstrated by the work that
CC is doing on the perception of what "non commercial" means.

The end result of this is two-fold. Firstly people are genuinely
confused about what to do and a result they give up. In giving up there
is often an unspoken assumption that "people will understand what I
want/mean". Two examples yesterday illustrated exactly how misguided
this can be and showed the importance of being clear, and thinking
about, what you want people to do with your content and information.

The first [was pointed
out](http://friendfeed.com/nuin/93ae5e60/amazon-is-stealing) by [Paulo
Nuin](http://blindscientist.genedrift.org/) who linked to [a
post](http://matrixcookbook.com/?p=24) on The [Matrix
Cookbook](http://matrixcookbook.com), a blog and
[PDF](http://www.imm.dtu.dk/pubdb/views/edoc_download.php/3274/pdf/imm3274.pdf)
containing much useful information on matrix transforms. The post
complained that Amazon were selling [a Kindle version of the
PDF](http://www.amazon.com/The-Matrix-Cookbook-ebook/dp/B0027P9C2S),
apparently without asking permission or even bothering to inform the
authors. So far, so big corporation. But digging a little deeper I went
to the front page of the site and found this interesting "license":

> "License? No, there is no license. It is provided as a knowledge
> sharing project for anyone to use. But if you use it in an academic or
> research like context, we would love to be cited appropriately."

Now I would intepret this as meaning that the authors had intended to
place the work in the public domain. They clearly felt that while
educational and research re-use was fine that commercial use was not. I
would guess that someone at Amazon read the statement "there is no
license" and felt that it was free to re-use. It seems odd that they
wouldn't email the authors to notify them but if it were public domain
there is no requirement to. Rude, yes. Theft? Well it depends on your
perspective. Going back today the authors have made a significant change
to the "license":

> It is provided as a knowledge sharing project for anyone to use. But
> if you use it in an academic or research like context, we would love
> to be cited appropriately. And NO, you are not allowed to make money
> on it by reselling The Matrix Cookbook in any form or shape.

Had the authors made the content CC-BY-NC then their intentions would
have been much clearer. My personal belief is that an NC license would
be counter-productive (meaning the work couldn't be used for teaching at
a fee charging college or for research funded by a commercial sponsor
for instance) but the point of the CC licenses is to give people these
choices. What is important is that people make those choices and make
them clear.

The second example related to identity. As part of [an ongoing
discussion](http://friendfeed.com/science-2-0/9af350c1/why-people-do-not-comment-online-articles-what)
involving online commenting [genereg](http://friendfeed.com/genereg), a
Friendfeed user, linked to their blog which included their real name.
[Mr Gunn](http://synthesis.williamgunn.org), the nickname used by Dr
William Gunn online wrote [a blog
post](http://synthesis.williamgunn.org/2009/05/24/online-engagement-of-scientists-with-the-literature-anonymity-vs-researcherid/)
in which he referred to genereg's contribution by linking to their blog
from their real name \[subsequently removed on request\]. I probably
would have done the same, wanting to ascribe the contribution clearly to
the "real person" so they get credit for it. Genereg objected to this
feeling that as their real name wasn't directly in that conversational
context it was inappropriate to use it.

So in my view, "Genereg" was a nickname that someone was happy to have
connected with their real name, while in their view this was
inappropriate. No-one is right or wrong here, we are evolving the rules
of conduct more or less as we go and frankly, identity is a mess. But
this wasn't clear to me or to Mr Gunn. I am often uncomfortable with
trying to tell whether a specific person who has linked two apparently
separate identities is happy with that link being public, has linked the
two by mistake, or just regards one as an alias. And you can't ask in
public forum can you?

What links these, and [this week's other
fracas](http://friendfeed.com/the-life-scientists/6a1b5014/wow-biophotons-for-signalling-anyone-knows),
is confusion over people's expectations. The best way to avoid this is
to be as clear as you possibly can. Don't assume that everyone thinks
the same way that you do. And definitely don't assume that what is
obvious to you is obvious to everyone else. When it comes to content,
make a clear statement of your expectations and wishes, preferably using
a widely recognized and understood licenses. If you're reading this at
OWW you should be seeing my nice shiny new cc0 waiver in the right hand
navbar (I haven't figured how to get it into the RSS feed yet). Most of
[my slidesets](http://slideshare.net/cameronneylon) at Slideshare are
CC-BY-SA. I'd prefer them to be CC-BY but most include images with
CC-BY-SA licenses which (try to make sure) I respect. Overall I try to
make the work I generate as widely re-usable as possible and aim to make
that as clear as possible.

There are no such tools to make clear statements about how you wish your
identity to be treated (and perhaps there should be). But a plain
english statement on the appropriate profile page might be useful "I
blog under a pseudonym because...and I don't want my identity
revealed"..."Bunnykins is the Friendfeed handle of Professor Serious
Person". Consider whether what you are doing is sending mixed messages
or potentially confusing. Personally I like to keep things simple so I
just use my real name or variants of it. But that is clearly not for
everyone.

Above all, try to express clearly what you expect and wish to happen.
Don't expect others necessarily to understand where you're coming from.
It is very easy for one person's polite and helpful to be another
person's deeply offensive. When you put something online, think about
how you want people to use it, think about how you don't want people to
use it (and remember you may need to balance the allowing of one against
the restricting of the other) and make those as clear as you possibly
can, where possible using a statement or license that is widely
recognized and has had some legal attention at some point like the CC
licenses, cc0 waiver, or the PDDL. Clarity helps everyone. If we get
this wrong we may end up with a web full of things we can't use.

And before anyone else gets in to tell me I've made plenty of
unjustified, and plain wrong, assumptions about other people's views
before.
[Pot](http://blog.openwetware.org/scienceintheopen/2008/11/10/more-on-%e2%80%9ctheft%e2%80%9d-and-the-problem-of-identity/).
[Kettle](http://blog.openwetware.org/scienceintheopen/2008/11/09/my-bador-how-far-should-the-open-mindset-go/).
[Black](http://friendfeed.com/sciphu/cc145da2/now-here-example-of-shameless-stealing-ref-dna).
Welcome to being human.


There has been some debate going backwards and forwards over the past few weeks about licensing, peoples expectations, and the extent to which researchers can be expected to understand, or want to understand, the details of legal terms, licensing and other technical minutiae. It is reasonable for scientific researchers not to wish to get into the details.

Publicaciones de Rogue Scholar

It’s not easy being clear…