SDI Convergence - Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Association

3.3 International activities on managing use rights of geographic information
Worldwide, many activities are focusing on the management of use rights linked to
geographic information and on instruments to express use conditions. In recent years,
in the GeoDRM environment, the main activities are emerging in the Open Geospatial
Consortium, in the ISO TC211 Geographic Information/Geomatic and in the Rights Expression
Languages (RELs).
Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is a non-profit international organisation “leading
the development of standards for geospatial” information and services (OGC web site).
By 2004, the OGC established a GeoDRM working group with the mission of coordinating
work done on digital rights management. The main objectives are to implement
business models on use rights for web-based services (software components accessible
over the web for use in other applications) and to develop OGC specifications and
technologies required for GeoDRM. During 2007, GeoDRM working group activities
had lead to the drawing up of the Geographic Digital Rights Management Reference
Model. The document is an abstract specification defining a conceptual model for digital
rights management of geo information and requirements for rights management systems
(OGC, 2007).
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is the largest developer and
publisher of International Standards, formed by a network of national standards Institutes.
In the ISO context, the ISO/TC211 Geographic Information/Geomatics working
group, responsible for the ISO geographic information standards, is developing an Item
proposal – “Rights expression language for geographic information” (2007) - on a
Rights Expression Language, to be used to compose digital licences for geographic
information. A REL is a language that expresses rights related to a specific resource: in
the digital rights management sense it is a formal language that can be executed as an
algorithm. The GeoREL is an extension of a rights expression language in the GI field,
which defines an authorisation model to specify the semantics of a set of rights expressions,
given on specified resources. The Item proposal on GeoREL has been created
using the Geographic Digital Rights Management Reference Model, drawn up by the
OGC GeoDRM working group.
3.4 European legal context of use, diffusion and reuse of digital information
Public authorities produce large amounts of digital information, called public sector information,
such as maps, meteorological, legal and business information. Most of this
digital information has commercial potential for reuse. In fact, a growing number of
companies are reusing public sector information to create new added-value products
and services. In Europe, two specific Directives regulate use, sharing and reuse of digital
content produced by public authorities: the Directive on public access to environmental
information (2003/4/EC) and the Directive on the reuse of public sector information
(PSI Directive, 2003/98/EC).
Directive 2003/4/EC requires Member States to make actively available and disseminate
environmental information. It guarantees the right of access to environmental information
produced or received by a public authority, in order to achieve the widest dissemination.
The PSI Directive, instead, establishes a set of rules to regulate the reuse
of existing information held by public sector bodies. These documents can be reused
for commercial or non-commercial purposes, and public authorities may make available
their documents for reuse through a licence. Member States may adopt standard licences,
processed electronically and available in digital format.
56