RE: Using databases for data mining research

[<matt@biomedcentral.com>]

I should clarify:

My point was that for articles distributed under a Creative 
Commons license, you are explicitly granted rights, and do not 
have to ask for permission *in relation to the rights granted to 
you by that license*.  It is quite true that what exactly those 
rights depends on the specific version of the license.

All versions of the creative commons license allow non-commercial 
use and redistribution (as long as attribution is preserved) - 
and this is sufficient for academic textmining.

Versions of the Creative Commons do exist which selectively restrict:
(a) whether people are allowed to distribute *derivative* works
and/or
(b) whether *commercial* reuse is allowed.

BioMed Central and PLoS in fact both use the most liberal 
'Attribution license', explicitly allowing both derivative works 
and commercial use: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/

The key thing about Creative Commons mechanism is that it allows 
content creators to be selective about the limitations they put 
on the use of their content.

Rather than 'all rights reserved', the Creative Commons tagline is 'some 
rights reserved'.

Matt

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu on behalf of Anthony Watkinson
Sent: Tue 8/8/2006 10:36 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Using databases for data mining research

I suppose Matt does (in his situation) have to put in a gibe in 
his second paragraph but am I not (as an author) at his mercy if 
I am not able to pay for admission into one of his journals?  I 
have not looked at the suite of creative commons licenses but I 
did think that some of them did allow licensees to make some 
restrictions e.g. to suggest that for-profit bodies did not have 
the right to use the content without permission or payment.

Anthony Watkinson