Content Copyright

[EdwardSmathers]

Hello,

I have a fairly non-unique subject that I am accumulating location information about (New York State Waterfalls). I know that a good part of the content is unique to my "survey". Other content I researched and included in the citation, even though we personally fact checked the information after collecting the initial point information (waterfall name and coordinance).

My question would be:
Once I decide to make this survey public, how do I protect the data from being mined by a "competitor" for their gain? I do not plan on financially gaining from this project, but I have a team of people that have placed decades of work into this survey and I wish to keep them cited for their work.

I am aware of the meta that can be added, but this only serves as a warning... I would like it to be known if anyone has used the data from my specific survey.

A second question would be:

How do I share the content, but restrict access to the "private" locations (posted or inaccessible)? I would love to build a layer only seen by my team and Accademia.

[cedwards8511]

This has been an issue my entire career in city government (in which I also work in a college town where we provide assistance to students often).  All of my work is technically public, so I have seen my work cannibalized in many private projects (that others are making money off of).  I personally like the idea of 'public' or 'open' data and want to provide as much data to people as I have.

The question is going to be, why do you want to publish the data and who is it intended for?  I understand the wanting to keep your name associated with data, especially when you've done something really cool, but is it worth limiting the access to it?

I would say the best you can do is create really good metadata, and maybe add a source field into the data itself.  I can promise that limiting the access to only academia would not prevent it from being hijacked.

[EdwardSmathers]

edwa8511‌ - Your personal experience is very much appreciated here. If I were going it alone on this project I would not have an issue with making the data open source. A long time ago, in order to gain access to a vast amount of data, I signed  NDA (probably not legally binding at this point, but I have a lot of respect for the source). The NDA made it very clear that certain data sets were to stay off public domain/being published.

I totally agree with your sentiment here and think, in an ideal world, knowledge is power. In this circumstance, knowledge offers party-goers and otherwise irresponsible individuals the access to locations otherwise unknown to the general public. Some other notable websites have proven this theory by publishing many posted and public location, only to have people further trash the locations and hurt our efforts in land-owner relations... Basically, it is the "waterfall communities fault" for what is happening to these beautiful locations...

OK... A little off track. But I hope this offers some insight.

[Lake_Worth_BeachAdmin]

You can use the splash screen widget to post a disclaimer and require users to accept in order to continue. Technically this won't prevent users from breaking the copyright agreement but it does give some legal support for your case and may sway users from attempting to download the data.

[EdwardSmathers]

I do like that idea as well!
I was thinking something similar for the posted locations too (even though those will not be public facing) just to say something like, "we will support/back/testify for any landowner claims of trespassing and vandalism of their property."

Thanks jhead@lakeworth‌

[Lake_Worth_BeachAdmin]

no problem @Edward Smathers .

here is a link to a zoning map our city uses with a disclaimer on, maybe give you an idea on yours

ArcGIS Web Application