12th April 2011, 06:09 PM
Here's a relevant case which brings up questions regarding archaeology and ownership. I will not name names or give specifics, for obvious reasons!
A volunteer organization completed a geophysics survey of a site. The data, in unprocessed format (the numbers, not resulting images) was given to an unaffiliated person involved in geophysics (for review, analysis or just to show them, it's not clear). This person used the results in a presentation and failed to acknowledge the organization who gathered the data -- apparently they even placed their own name on them.
The legality, copyright status, etc are not obvious in a case like this. The data is made up purely of observations which anyone with the equipment and access could get, and when it was (mis)used it wasn't taken from any published source, just the raw numbers. From what I've read, data like that is probably covered by database rights, but it's not altogether clear.
Which brings up the question: if an archaeologist makes an observation -- whether it be by digging, geophysics, or otherwise -- and someone else has access to the resulting information outside a published source, is it illegal to use it? Is there any way you can protect your observations from misuse, since they're not inherently protected by copyright?
A volunteer organization completed a geophysics survey of a site. The data, in unprocessed format (the numbers, not resulting images) was given to an unaffiliated person involved in geophysics (for review, analysis or just to show them, it's not clear). This person used the results in a presentation and failed to acknowledge the organization who gathered the data -- apparently they even placed their own name on them.
The legality, copyright status, etc are not obvious in a case like this. The data is made up purely of observations which anyone with the equipment and access could get, and when it was (mis)used it wasn't taken from any published source, just the raw numbers. From what I've read, data like that is probably covered by database rights, but it's not altogether clear.
Which brings up the question: if an archaeologist makes an observation -- whether it be by digging, geophysics, or otherwise -- and someone else has access to the resulting information outside a published source, is it illegal to use it? Is there any way you can protect your observations from misuse, since they're not inherently protected by copyright?