Avoimen lähdekoodin (open source) tietokoneohjelmien taloudellinen merkitys ja käyttö on kasvanut. Tämän myötä avoimen lähdekoodin ohjelmien oikeudelliset riskit kasvavat. Julkishallintoon pitäisi saada lisää avoimen lähdekoodin ohjelmistoja. Näin todetaan TEM:n 4.6.2010 julkaisemassa selvityksessä ”Avoimen lähdekoodin oikeudelliset riskit”

Avoin lähdekoodi (open source) syntyi ilmiönä yliopistomaailmassa vastaamaan erilaisiin tutkimus- ja koulutustarpeisiin sekä yksittäisten ohjelmoijien näkemyksiin. Avoin lähdekoodi on sittemmin saanut jalansijaa myös yrityksissä.

Tietokoneohjelmia on perinteisesti tehty yritysten toimesta luottaen liikesalaisuuteen ja uusia oivalluksia tarkasti vartioiden ja valvoen. Nykyisin kuitenkin arvioidaan, että 85 prosenttia yrityksistä ja yhteisöistä käytti avointa lähdekoodia. Loput 15 prosenttia suunnitteli käyttöönottoa seuraavan vuoden kuluessa. Pääsääntö melkein onkin, että ohjelmistoyritys jakaa ainakin osan kehittämästään ohjelmistosta avoimena lähdekoodina.

Tämä luo uusia oikeudellisia kysymyksiä. Enää ei riitä pelkkä oikeuksien suojaaminen. Nyt on myös kysyttävä: miten jaan oikeuteni tehokkaasti ja oikeusvarmasti, ja miten itse vastaavasti hyödynnän yhteistyön tuloksia turvallisesti.

Julkishallintoon lisää avoimen lähdekoodin ohjelmistoja

Selvityksen tekijät suosittavat, että julkishallinnolle laaditaan avoimen lähdekoodin hankintoja koskeva strateginen säännöstö, jolla helpotetaan yhteistoimintaa ja vähennetään riskejä. Esimerkiksi julkishallinnolle pitäisi valita tietyt avoimen lähdekoodin lisenssit, joita tulee käyttää. Lisäksi he suosittelevat julkishallinnon ylläpitämän tietokannan luomista, johon voisi koota tiedot jo valmiista oikeudellisista lisenssiselvityksistä.

Immateriaalioikeudellisista suojamuodoista lähinnä tekijänoikeudella on toistaiseksi liiketoimintaa kasvattavaa merkitystä ohjelmistoalan toimijoille Suomessa. Patentointi on toissijaista. Selvitys osoittaa, että alan yleinen tietotaso immateriaalioikeuksista ei ole ajan tasalla. Näkemys tekijänoikeuksista ja patenteista oli karkeasti sanottuna mustavalkoinen, lisäksi muita immateriaalioikeudellisia suojamuotoja ei tunnettu.

Selvityksen ovat laatineet FT Ville Oksanen ja FT Mikko Välimäki. Molemmat ovat hiljattain väitelleet aineettomien oikeuksien alalta. Selvitys on luettavissa ministeriön verkkosivuilla osoitteessa www.tem.fi/julkaisut.

Doc Searls CC-By-SA

In November 2009 a designer from NBC Universal found the photos and contacted Searls. In an email, NBC’s representative told Searls that their designers were creating graphic backgrounds for the coverage of the Vancouver Olympic Games and that in their search for winter images they came across Searls’s crystal photographs on Flickr. They had noticed that they could use the pictures as long as they credited Searls as the author. Since Searls’s photos would be used as the background to text, video and other images, NBC asked if they could credit him along with their design team when the credits ran at the conclusion of NBC’s final Olympic Broadcast. For Searls the NBC’s proposition was acceptable. “Those photos are meant to be used any way people like. I’m glad to accept payment when offered:)  But when not, running my name in the credits is fine,” said Searls in an email to NBC.

After getting the permission NBC was not shy in using Searls’s photos. The ice crystal images were used in transition graphics with the Olympic logo, in background of the digital studio sets, in event information graphics and just about in every other graphic element of the NBC’s Olympic broadcasts. Searls’s photos, which had received just over 1,000 views in Flickr suddenly had a daily audience of over 20 million American sports fans.

Doc Searls, CC By-SA 2.0

So far, this sounds like a sweet story of web 2.0 publishing, where big media company designer and amateur photographers can collaborate without the need of getting lawyers involved. Searls had already granted the public, including NBC, a permission to use his photos by attaching a public license to them. One could read the email exchange between Searls and NBC so that NBC wanted to waive the attribution part of the license or that NBC wanted to waive the whole license and replace it with another one. Having two non-lawyers agreeing in an email about copyright licensing could spell disaster. Especially when the license Doc Searls used did not only require credit but also that the adaptations made from Searls’s photos share the same license terms.

Share-alike licenses are useful in online collaboration projects like Wikipedia. They enable people to collaborate by improving photos and text of their peers. They also try to make sure that the collaboration can continue. This is why the license requires that the improvements, alterations and adaptations, if distributed, are to be placed under the same license as the original work. If NBC were to honor the license terms, a big chunk of the NBC’s Olympic broadcast would fall under the royalty free Creative Commons share-alike license.

The exact amount of the material that would be affected with the ShareAlike term is unclear. It might include just the background graphics, or it might include every other copyrightable element displayed while the ice crystals were on screen –or even whole segments where the crystals were used. To make the matter even more complicated, NBC does not own and can’t license out many of the copyrightable elements that are shown on the screen next to the background graphics. There is no doubt that NBC never wanted its crown jewels, the Olympics, to fall to any royalty-free licensing scheme. Even if NBC would allow this to happen, the Olympic Committee—the owner of the sports broadcast that NBC only licensed—would under no circumstances agree to it.Fortunately, NBC and Searls worked things out before the end of the Olympic Games. Searls was credited as part of the NBC’s creative team, and NBC’s legal department did not have to worry about the ShareAlike term. “NBC’s extensive use of Searls’ photos, and Searls’ happiness for that use, demonstrates the power of Creative Commons licenses as a means to signal openness to collaboration, even if the resulting collaboration does not occur under the terms of the license originally offered,” said Mike Linksvayer, Vice President of Creative Commons.

The irony of the story is that NBC is known to be eager in targeting users and websites that rebroadcast and share its Olympic coverage without permission. While jealously protecting copyright assets is central to organizations like NBC, it is contrary to of the ideology of sharing with Creative Commons licensing.

Television producers and creative teams are not the only ones tempted to use Creative Commons licensed works. Many journalists use Wikipedia as a source for their research. Journalists who are used to copy-and-pasting text from news agency press releases might carry on with the habit with Wikipedia. However, while the license that Wikipedia uses allows copying, there are rules and limitations involved in the practice. These practices are very different from the ones that journalist have been used to dealing with. This means that big media companies have to come up with policies for using Creative Commons licensed works. Those policies might include guidelines for proper attribution and sharing-alike the modified works, or they might just be a list of best practices for seeking alternative licenses.

Original photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/docsearls/sets/72157613918962531/

NBC using the pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/docsearls/sets/72157623323934755/

Here is a video that explains pretty well how the dual licensing of the CC material is done.

After 1 January 2010, the Universities of Applied Sciences will require all teachers and researchers who work at the universities to save a copy of their research essays that are published in scientific publications, or a university publication series, in the open electronic library, Theseus.

According to Harvard’s open access guru Peter Suber “This is, by far, the largest set of institutions to adopt a joint OA mandate.”

As a part of the project Turre’s partner Herkko Hietanen has been translating Creative Commons 3.0 licenses to Finnish legal system. The license translation and adoption  is at its final stretches and waits for the CC headquarters’s approval. Theseus enables students and teachers to choose a Creative Commons license to their works if they so desire.

Here is a poster of the project and here is an article published in SciecomInfo.

Here is the current draft of the CC 3.0 license for you consideration. Comments to the license are welcomed.

CC-By-SA by HenriBergius. More photos of Kaljakellunta: http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=kaljakellunta&w=all&s=int

The prosecutor got tired of hundreds of beer drinking people floating down the Vantaa river every year in “Kaljakellunta” -event. The beer floaters use inflatable rubber boats and ferries to float down the river. Key part of the event is beer drinking. While alcohol and water are integral parts of the event, there has not been any reported major injuries during the +10 year history of the event.

Prosecutor claimed that two men, who were administrators of kaljakellunta.com discussion forum, were the organizers of the event, and thus liable for cleaning up the mess that hundreds of “drunken sailors” made along the river. However, the court saw that the defendants had just posted the date of the 2008 event to the main page of the site after the discussion had reached consensus of it. They had not contributed otherwise to the organization of the event. The actions of defendants did not make them an organizers of the event. The court also looked at the 2009 kaljakellunta event which had even more participants even though the kaljakellunta.com had been closed for over a year.

The fact that the Kaljakellunta-crowd is turning to Facebook and other social networks to help to organize the event just shows that the law has hard time managing self organizing online communities that have no other ties that members like for beer.

Disclaimer: Turre Legal was the defense counsel for the both defendants. And yes, we may join the fellow sailors floating down the river next year  drinking beer on a floating devices.

Glenn Rune Gallefoss left and Mikko Välimäki right in Bergen, Norway, 6.6.2009.

We just received confirmation that the first filing in our case against Timbaland and Universal Music has been made in the United States District Court, Southern District of Florida. There is a prior case ongoing in the Helsinki Court of Appeal. We have been representing Glenn Rune Gallefoss, a Norwegian Commodore 64 musician, whose rights have been transferred to Kernel Records Ltd. Some background of the case is here. We are living interesting times…