Creative Commons license for archaeological data : Heathrow T5

[Luca Bezzi]

Hi Stefano,
about sharing data with CC licence i can only say that after the workshop of 
Genova and the interesting discussion about this license we (Arc-Team) decided to 
release the final report of the excavation we were working on, under the Creative 
Common. If i understood well, when we write something, we automatically have what 
in Italy is called ''paternita' dell'opera'' (a kind of copyright), so we could 
put our final report (that we have to send to the archaeological sovrintendence) 
under a public license. The problem for us still remain the same: i think we 
cannot put such a license on all the other data of the excavation (the founs, the 
layers, etc...), cause this data is not something we created... 

I think that one of the main point in this discussion is to understand when 
something can be considered an intellectual creation, cause in this case we can 
put it under a license (an open one is always better). Of course an ''intellectual 
creation'' can speak about facts, like in our final report we spoke about finds 
and layer. In this sense i would like to understand if the map i draw or the 
picture i take with my camera, when they are representing founs or layer (facts), 
can be considered an ''intellectual creation'' or not. In the first case maybe it 
is possible to put them under an open license and share them. If, on the other 
hand, they have to be considered ''facts'', is possible that someone has a kind of 
copyright on them? If it is like this, i fear that in Italy this ''copyright'' 
belongs to the Italian repubblic, represented by the sovrintendence, so it is 
impossible to share them without a written permission. 

Sorry for the long email, but this is a problem that we often find in our work, so
I would like to know something more about it, and if someone else found solutions.

Best reguards,    

Luca Bezzi

Arc-Team
Archaeology & Free Software
http://www.arc-team.com/
luca.bezzi@arc-team.com