[OAI-general] OAI and intellectual property issues

[Michael L. Nelson]

Terry said:

>Should OAI have some sort of GNU-like license that should
>be signed onto that would preclude service providers 
>from unfairly exploiting open archives to the detriment
>of others? From the OAI perspective, what IP would a 
>service provider have claims to?

actually, the rights relationship that SPs may have to DPs is (in a
sense) outside the scope of the protocol.

take a look at:

http://www.openarchives.org/OAI/openarchivesprotocol.htm#Identify   
 
specifically, the example at the end of that section.  it is the
responsibility of the DP to advertise its metdata use policy through
the Identify verb.  the eprints.org folks have introduced an
"eprints" namespace to help delineate some of the issues.  note that this
namespace is optional -- this is just a convenient way to provide pointers
to a policy that will be defined "outside" the protocol.

its up to the SP to respect the policies that the DP advertises.

Jose said:

>The idea behind OAI is not to consider "the metadata as THE
>resource", but to raise the awareness about the resource that the
>metadata describes. In that sense, the value is in the resource,
>and not in the metadata that it announces.
 
that's not *necessarily* true (though so far, has been true in practice).  
without sliding into the "data" vs "metdata" issue, its entirely possible
and appropriate that a DP might wish to restrict the use of their metadata
(as per Thomas' example).  "Identify" gives DPs/SPs a way to announce and
discover, respectively, this policy.

How all of this actually plays out is hoped to be uncovered in the initial
12-16 months (starting Jan 01) of the official unveiling of the OAI
protocol.  

regards,

Michael

---
Michael L. Nelson			
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