Responsible Data Use: Copyright and Data

This training module is part of the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (or ESIP Federation's) Data Management for Scientists Short Course.  The subject of this module is "Copyright and Data".  The module was authored by Matthew Mayernik from the National Center for Atmospheric Research.  Besides the ESIP Federation, sponsors of this Data Management for Scientists Short Course are the Data Conservancy and the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

In this module, we will focus on copyright law and associated procedures related to data. We don’t often think about data as having intellectual properties as a book or a movie would, but there are some important intellectual property issues to understand about data, especially involving copyright.

We will first talk about what is and is not copyrightable in the United States with respect to data. Copyright laws can be vary greatly from country to country and jurisdiction to jurisdiction around the world, so we want to emphasize that our discussion in this module will focus upon copyright and data in the United States. 

We will also talk about open copyright license options and how they apply to data, and how copyright can be used or deliberately waived, in order to make data more open and easier to access and use.  We will also discuss how it’s possible to use non legal means for establishing community based norms to address some of these issues. 

Responsible Data Use: Copyright And Data from ESIPFed on Vimeo.