

How do you encourage users to share/copy/evolve data while preventing competitors from copying it? - amichail

What sort of license would you use?
======
epi0Bauqu
If I understand you correctly, you want people to be able to use your data for
whatever they want except to compete with you. So why not just make everyone
agree to some form of a non-compete with regards to the use of your data? Just
leave it broadly defined with the right to terminate their license at any time
if you feel they are violating the provisions or spirit of your TOS.

~~~
amichail
I don't want anyone to get a copy of a significant portion of the data.
Moreover, I don't want competitors to use any of the data.

------
Hexayurt
So what you're trying to do is prevent wholesale copying from competitors?

The trick here is the _agency_ doing the copying. You want to say that _users_
can copy it, but that _third parties_ can't.

My suggestion would be to be very clear that what you're talking about is bulk
copying by competitors, and prevent it by requiring _users_ to initiate
copies, rather than third parties.

------
jsjenkins168
By data do you mean source code?

As a start you can review the open source licenses commonly used:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_license>

Or in theory you could always write your own license.. But once you open your
source it will be impossible to completely protect your IP. People will find
ways to copy it anyway..

~~~
amichail
No, I mean the data contributed by users. For example, consider a wikipedia-
like site.

~~~
bootload
_"... A Creative Commons license is based on copyright. So they apply to all
works that are protected by copyright law. The kinds of works that are
protected by copyright law are books, websites, blogs, photographs, films,
videos, songs and other audio & visual recordings, for example. ..."_

Maybe you should re-phrase this to ask, _"How could I sell competitors the
data if they want to buy it, but restrict them if they do not?"_. To me the
licenses found in the Creative Commons accommodate this. They give you the
licensing tools to flexibly control content and can let users to share
content. Safe that in the knowledge competitors do not have the copyright
rights to use/abuse licensed content without recourse to the law (in a lot of
cases with laws adopted in your home country).

You cannot however use CC for 'facts and ideas' (as per CC FAQ, _How does a
Creative Commons license operate?_ ) ~ <http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ>

Having said that I know of no known tools or tool sets to automatically check
for content, it's licensing (if any) and contact details for buyers. Buyers
would grab at this seeking for _free_ content (images for instance) clear of
any copyright issues.

If you really don't want competitors (are your users competitors as well?) to
take away your content then don't create API's allowing users to use their own
content. But then you risk making another "Roach Motel" allowing users to
create but not export. Is this what you mean, lockout of users data?

~~~
amichail
My service already has an export feature. I have no problems with users
exporting their data provided that this constitutes only a small fraction of
the entire data set AND that it is not used in a competing service.

~~~
bootload
_"... My service already has an export feature. I have no problems with users
exporting their data provided that this constitutes only a small fraction of
the entire data set ..."_

Excellent. Do you intend to go as far as say flickr and use an open API as
well at some stage? This allows you to integrate third party services but at
the potential competitor raids. Stuart Butterfield has lots to say on this
particular problem ~
[http://flickr.com/groups/central/discuss/72157594165399644/#...](http://flickr.com/groups/central/discuss/72157594165399644/#comment72157594166309763)

Out of curiosity can you define _"data"_? I notice smugmug undertakes the type
of restrictions you are describing in their pro account.

------
mac
You make it a royal pain in the ass to do it beyond the typical user scale to
the point where it's cheaper to create their own similar data than to attempt
to copy yours. Myspace does it for example. You can search their enitre user
database with just clicks, but good luck in trying to scrape their entire user
database.

Anything beyond that and your talking DRM.

------
comforteagle
share alike, non commercial

<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/>

~~~
amichail
I'm looking for something commercial that would prevent competitors from
getting all the user data from my service.

But at the same time, I don't want to put major limitations on what users can
do with their data -- even if it is obtained by copying/modifying data from
others.

~~~
natrius
That's impossible.

If you're trying to stop automated scraping of your data, then limit the
access rate per IP. That won't really help things since someone can just tell
the script to slow down to the pace of a normal user.

If a user can access unauthenticated data, so can a computer.

