[Air-l] ethics - aol data

[burkx006 at umn.edu]

On Aug 29 2006, Michael Zimmer wrote:

>The original (widespread & public) release of the data set was fully  
>intentional. The README text file accompanying the datasets included  
>this note:
>    This collection is distributed for NON-COMMERCIAL RESEARCH USE ONLY.
>    Any application of this collection for commercial purposes is  
>STRICTLY PROHIBITED.
>
>The bottom of the file includes a copyright notice, but I don't know  
>if that's meant to refer to the dataset, or just the ReadMe file.

It sounds as if they were asserting copyright in the datasets, since it's 
hard to think of any other basis on which they could be "STRICTLY 
PROHIBITING" commercial use.

There are mass-market licenses that "run with the data," attempting to bind 
any user of the material, but I don't think the notice above meets the 
requirements.


-- 
Dan L. Burk
Oppenheimer, Wolff & Donnelly Professor
University of Minnesota Law School
229 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN  55455
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