A Question of Balance Private Rights and the Public Interest in Scientific and Technical Databases (1999) / Chapter Skim
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1 Importance and Use of Scientific and Technical Databases
1 Importance and Use of Scientific and Technical Databases
Pages 14-39
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From page 14... ...
Currently many for-profit and not-for-profit database producers are concerned about the possibility that significant portions of their databases will be copied or used in substantial part by others to create "new" derivative databases. If an identical or substantially similar database is then either redisseminated broadly or sold and used in direct competition with the original rights holder's database, the rights holder's revenues will be undermined, or in extreme cases, Box I
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This report explores issues in the conundrum posed by the need to properly balance the rights of original database producers or rights holders and the rights of all the downstream users and competitors with the principal focus on the balance of rights between the database rights holders and public-interest users such as researchers, educators, and librarians. In particular, the Committee for a Study on Promoting Access to Scientific and Technical Data for the Public Interest focuses on scientific and technical (S&T)
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From page 17... ...
Throughout the history of science, new findings and ideas have been recorded and used as the basis for further scientific advances and for educating students. Now, as a result of the near-complete digitization of data collection, manipulation, and dissemination over the past 30 years, almost every aspect of the natural world, human activity, and indeed every life form can be observed and captured in an electronic database.2 There is barely a sector of the economy that is not significantly engaged in the creation and exploitation of digital databases, and there are many such as insurance, banking, or direct marketing that are completely database dependent.
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From page 18... ...
. Improved diagnosis, pharmaceuticals, and treatments in medicine; · Better and higher-yield food production in agnculture; New and improved materials for fabrication of manufactured objects, building matenals, packaging, and special applications such as microelectronics; · Faster, cheaper, and safer transportation and communication; · Better means for energy production; · Improved ability to forecast environmental conditions and to manage natural resources; and · More powerful ways to explore all aspects of our universe, ranging from the finest subnuclear scale to the boundaries of the universe, and encompassing living organisms in all their vanety.4 SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL DATABASES AS A RESOURCE THE CURRENT CONTEXT The comm~ttee's January 1999 Workshop on Promoting Access to Scientific and Technical Data for the Public Interest: An Assessment of Policy Options,5 3 See John A
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From page 19... ...
Ongoing rapid advances in electronic technologies for computing and communications, experimentation, and observation ranging from high-frequency direct sampling to multispectral remote sensing have enabled dramatic increases in the quantities of data generated about the natural world at scales from the microcosm to the macrocosm. For instance, the volume of data on weather and climate stored in the National Climatic Data Center has increased 750-fold in the past two decades (Box 1.2~.
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Genomic From the public domain: government-produced maps (federal, state, local) , digital geographic data, remotely sensed imagery Other sources: commercial and other countries' maps, digital data, remotely sensed imagery, other published sources National Center for GenBank: DNA and protein Direct contributions from Biotechnology sequence data; Other genomic scientists; access to other Information mapping databases; 3D protein databases from government, (Government)
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and directly to corporate customers Mapping services distributed via Internet Internet access via Web servers and File Transfer Protocol (FTP) Internet access Source code distributed directly Some software products downloaded from the Web; others require on-site expert installation continued
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Information contents (Commercial) Information services Linkages to publishers' full-text databases Meteorological National Climatic Climatological summaries from National Weather Service, World Data Center National Weather Service Meteorological Organization, (Government)
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. agribusiness Variety of forms: hard-copy publication, CD-ROM or floppy disk, Internet access; NIST distributes directly or via agreements with secondary distributors Electronic access, hard copy, CD-ROM Diskette, CD-ROM, FTP files, Internet access, hard copy Hard-copy, microfiche, magnetic tape, disks, CD-ROM, FTP, Internet Internet Public and private data communication networks: satellite broadcasting services and Internet
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From page 24... ...
This broad-based acquisition of data, coupled with data mining and knowledge discovery6 and the broad review and analysis of information stored in large databases, is anticipated to reveal trends or patterns or to lead 6 Data mining and knowledge discovery are related, frequently confused terms, as are data, information, and knowledge. In the context of electronic databases, the data stored therein remain as data until they are extracted (mined)
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71. 11 See the NASA Web site at |
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In addition, most large federal government research projects and programs involve one or more foreign government agencies, often with significant international participation of researchers.l6 Large-scale research in areas such as climate trends, marine biology, and space science requires international cooperation in the collection, production, and dissemination of observational data. The effectiveness of such cooperation is dependent on, among other things, agreement on laws and policies for sharing and using those data in different countries.
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From page 27... ...
Involvement by the original data collectors in managing that part of the database production process decreases the probability that unusable or inaccurate databases will result, reduces the need for subsequent attempts to rescue or complete such data sets, and saves time and expense overall. The level of processing and related database production activities is a significant factor in defining the ultimate utility (and legal protection)
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From page 28... ...
In the context of this report, the most significant aspect of these third-party, value-adding arrangements is that they almost always involve the transfer of public or publicly funded data and databases to private-sector proprietary database producers and vendors. To the extent that these transfers are done on an exclusive basis and the original government databases are not maintained or otherwise made publicly available, the result is a concomitant decrease in the public availability of S&T data.
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From page 29... ...
Measurements of a snowstorm obtained with a single radar observation, or a statistical compilation of some key socioeconomic characteristics such as income levels collected by a state agency, cannot be recaptured after the original event. The vast majority of observational data sets of the natural world, as well as all unique historical records, can never again be recreated independently and are thus available only as originally obtained, frequently from a single source.
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From page 30... ...
Digitization and the potential for instant, low-cost global communication have opened tremendous new opportunities for the dissemination and utilization of S&T databases and other forms of information, but also have led to a blurring of the traditional roles and relationships of database producers, vendors, and users of those databases in the government, not-for-profit, and commercial sectors. In fact, virtually anyone who obtains access to a digital database can instantly become a worldwide disseminator, whether legally or illegally.20 Two of the most important mechanisms for the dissemination of public and publicly funded databases have been government data centers and public libraries.
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From page 31... ...
Increasingly, both government and not-for-profit organizations are exploring means to recover database production and distribution costs, or to generate revenue streams in order to support their expensive data activities, thereby making them function in a manner similar to commercial organizations. The ability to access existing data and to extract and recombine selected portions of them for research or for incorporation into new databases for further distribution and use has become a key part of the scientific process by which new insights are gained and knowledge is advanced.
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Use of Scientific and Technical Databases Prior to its public dissemination, the use of a database is limited to those involved in the collection of data or production, and therefore does not provide the opportunity to contribute broadly to the advancement of scientific knowledge, technical progress, economic growth, or other applications beyond those of the immediate group. It is only upon the distribution of a database that its farreaching research, educational, and other socioeconomic values are realized.
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From page 34... ...
For example, data are routinely mined and collected by "knowbots" and "web crawlers" (software employing artificial intelligence and rule-based selection techniques) on the Internet throughout the world and retrieved for pro 24 See, for example, the Engineering Village of Engineering Information Web site at |
From page 35... ...
With a capability to integrate information in multiple databases comes the potential for exploiting relationships identified in the information and developing new knowledge. In many scientific fields, the initial investment by the database rights holder may not produce the greatest value until it is integrated with the investments of others.
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For instance, these data enable basic research on severe weather and long-term climate trends and provide various retrospective applications for industry. The original databases are archived and made available by the National Climatic Data Center (see Box 1.2~.
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For example, the not-for-profit American Association for the Advancement of Science, a scientific society, produces a database containing the full text of articles from Science magazine, including enhancements to the content that do not appear in the print version.29 Similarly, the for-profit publisher Elsevier Science produces ScienceDirect, a database containing the full text of its journal articles. Bibliographic reference databases are also produced by government, not-for-profit, and for-profit organizations, such as the National Library of Medicine, Chemical Abstracts Service, and the Institute for Scientific Information, respectively (see Table 1.1 and the online workshop Proceedings30~.
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THE CHALLENGE OF EFFECTIVELY BALANCING PRIVATE RIGHTS AND THE PUBLIC INTEREST IN SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL DATABASES The general advancement of knowledge independent of its eventual societal benefits is a goal of basic research. Nevertheless, an endless array of examples demonstrates how the creation of new knowledge, building on the existing base of understanding and information developed by researchers, has enabled broad and important socioeconomic benefits for the nation as a whole.
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From page 39... ...
At the same time, there are legitimate concerns by the rights holders in databases regarding unauthorized and uncompensated uses of their data products, including at times the wholesale commercial misappropriation of proprietary databases. Because of the complex web of interdependent relationships among publicsector and private-sector database producers, disseminators, and users, any action to increase the rights of persons in one category likely will compromise the rights of the persons in the other categories, with far-reaching and potentially negative consequences.
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