Updated Guidelines Encourage Federal Agencies to Publish "License-Free" Data | TechPresident

"A group of open government advocates and advocacy organizations have come together to issue updated guidance on how federal agencies can make their documents available in an open and accessible way, seeking to go beyond and clarify open data guidance that the Obama administration had published in May. As techPresident reported at the time, advocates such as Joshua Tauberer, creator of GovTrack, found some of the language in the memorandum problematic, for the reason that it promotes the use of "open licenses" rather than encouraging agencies to make data available "license free' ... The World Wide Web Foundation and the Open Data Institute cited the issue in explaining their ranking of the United States in their study of worldwide countries' open data initiatives, suggesting the memorandum could create 'confusion about [data's] public domain status' given the U.S. precedent of copyright law not applying to federal data.  Tauberer is the primary author of the new guidance, on which he cooperated with Eric Mill from the Sunlight Foundation, Jonathan Gray from the Open Knowledge Foundation, Parker Higgins from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Michael Weinberg from Public Knowledge. The document also has the support of the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Free Law Project, the OpenGov Foundation, Carl Malamud, WashingtonWatch.com and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington ..."