[Opengenalliance] old bailey proceedings

[Guy Etchells]

On 16/05/2011 16:26, Javier Ruiz wrote:
> Guy
>
> sorry I missed this point before.
>
>     Rather than fight these companies it would be better to try to find
>     common ground where there is a balance between commercial access and
>     free access.
>     Cheers
>
>
> This is one area where it would be great to have some ideas. Also,
> because commercial activities in the future could be very diverse and
> follow other models completely different to the main sites nowadays.
>
I run a book scanning company and recently we have scanned electoral 
registers for a local library which we sell on CD.
Everyone benefits from this.

We benefit from CD sales.

The library benefits as we have supplied them with CDs with no 
conditions on how they use the digitised records.
They could use them on an intranet, on the internet or they could use 
them to preserve the fragile original registers by limiting the access 
to the registers and using the CDs instead.

The public benefits in at least two ways as well.
First those who live at a distance from the library can purchase the 
electoral register from us, saving travelling expenses.
Those who can visit the libray can print out pages from the registers or 
even download pages to a usb stick.

There is also the fact that the digitised records are OCRed and this 
allows individuals, streets etc. to be quickly located.

> So far proposals tend to look at this in serial mode, as in first closed
> commercial, then after a period open, but do you think there could be
> other ways?

The 1901 census was released on a royalty payment contract. Basically 
once the digitising costs were met the National Archives received a 
percentage of the download fees.

The 1911 census had a closed contract until all the census was online 
then any other person or company could purchase copies of the 1911 census.
This gave the National Archives the potential to make good profits 
quickly enabling them to re-invest in other digitasation projects, such 
as those that may not be commercially attractive.

We offer to scan at our expense and provide copies of the digitised work 
to the Archive, Library or Church Societies etc. with no conditions to 
use attached.
>
> BTW, I checked your signature site, amazing transcription work. Have you
> thought about using an open license, such as Creative Commons, instead
> of an ad-hoc one? Just curious if you had any strong opinions.
>
> best, Javier
>

Thanks for the comments about the site.

As to the copyright no I would not use Creative Commons.

I have spent large sums of money (thousands of pounds) over the last 4/5 
years buying and making available records for family historians.
I think the best way to protect my investment is to use standard 
copyright law which includes Database Right.

I all cases where I have been asked if I would allow my transcriptions 
to be reused (FreeBMD being just one example) I have agree without 
hesitation.

It is not difficult to email a webmaster/site owner and ask to use their 
work.
The internet actually make contacting copyright owners far easier than 
it was before the advent of the internet.

Cheers
Guy

-- 
http://freespace.virgin.net/guy.etchells/ The site that gives you facts 
not promises
http://anguline.co.uk/ Old and rare books on CD