Data
This page supersedes Databases and Creative Commons.
Much of the potential value of data is to society at large — more data has the potential to facilitate enhanced scientific collaboration and reproducibility, more efficient markets, increased government and corporate transparency, and overall to speed discovery and understanding of solutions to planetary and societal needs.
A big part of the potential value of data, in particular its society-wide value, is realized by use across organizational boundaries. How does this occur legally? Many sites give narrow permission to use data via terms of service. Much ad hoc data sharing also occurs among researchers. And increasingly, sharing of data is facilitated by distribution under standard, public legal tools used to manage copyright and similar restrictions that might otherwise limit dissemination or reuse of data, e.g. CC licenses or the CC0 public domain dedication.
Many organizations, institutions, and governments are using CC tools for data. For case studies about how these tools are applied, see: