Work Package 7: PSI as building block for User Generated Content (UGC)

RESPONSIBLE: Juan Carlos De Martin.

WP7 analyzes the opportunities offered by PSI as a building block for user generated content.
This analysis is – at least – twofold and it includes both cases in which public sector information is a direct input in the creation of content by end users and cases in which the exercise of the exclusive rights of Public Sector Information Holders and other public bodies has a significant effect on the chances for uses of generating and exchanging contents.
On the one hand, in fact, the public sector may favour the creation of relationships between PSI and information dispersed among citizens and/or local administrations. This information may encompass travel, but also historical and ethnographic data, as well as many other kinds of information. On the other hand, there are cases in which the public sector does not directly hold information, but controls physical goods and/or has the right of preventing the creation or use of user generated information. In particular, a relevant case concerns the relationships between the special legislation concerning cultural goods and landscape (and their reproductions and/or immaterial copies) and UGC.

OBJECTIVES: The overall objective of WP7 is to analyze specific legal and economic profiles concerning the re-usability of PSI as input in the creation of UGC and in particular in the context of Web 2.0 technologies. The WP will also coordinate its activity with the one of WP8 (POLICY) and WP9 (DISSEMINATION), in order to devise appropriate strategies to reduce legal uncertainty concerning the possibility of building on PSI in order to foster the creation of UGCs and/or devise appropriate proactive policies with the same aim.
A crucial point in making possible the interaction of a significant mass of users concerns usability and user-friendliness of platforms.
In legal and economic terms, this implies a careful analysis of transaction costs to access and re-use interoperability information, without experimenting complex situations of legal uncertainty and/or wasting significant amounts of time to conform to various kind of formal procedure or wait for authorizations or concessions.

ATTENDED RESULTS: WP7 will point out which, among the more significant PSI silos mapped by WP2, offer more significant possibilities of re-use as building blocks for UGCs. WP7 will also investigate, on the basis of the business models individuated by WP3 or on the basis of additional analysis of existing business models in the context of Web 2.0, what kind of obstacles may exist to the actual re-use of PSI to create UGCs.
In particular, WP7 will investigate, on the basis of a law & economics approach, whether existing legislations limiting the possibilities of generating new content on the basis of interactions with final users (for instance because of burdensome procedures, excessive transaction costs, cross veto powers, etc.) are sound in terms of social welfare or should be updated on the basis of Web 2.0 models of content creations.
To achieve the result of fostering the creation of UGCs (with the ultimate goal of increasing social welfare in economic and cultural terms), WP7 will analyze the actual consistence of obstacles to re-use like the aforementioned ones and, possibly, device potential solutions that could be taken at the level of local government. For instance, the possibility of automatically authorizing – through a local bill – the publication of pictures of cultural goods under a Creative Commons Attribution, Share Alike, Non- Commercial license could be analyzed