Feb/1013
Who Owns CPD Alerts & Data?
Chicago Police Superintendent Jody Weis announced yesterday that the CPD would be providing free safety alerts, crime trends, and CAPS meeting info through Nixle.com. According to the Chicago Tribune, Weis stated, “We’re just trying to get as many ways out there that you can look at what’s going on at the Police Department.”
Excited at the prospect of more accessible data about crime and safety issues, I signed up for the service this morning and received my first alert later this afternoon. It had this text at the bottom.
That last line, which claims Nixle, LLC owns the copyright and has “all rights reserved”, is both confusing and troubling. The information contained in the alert was provided by CPD and, unless Nixle.com is actually creating the text of each one, belongs to the CPD and the residents of Chicago. It’s possible that Nixle.com has hired the CPD to create alerts for their customers and as such would own that work product, but given that the service is entirely free I find that hard to believe.
I hope to confirm this soon, but it’s reasonable to assume that the CPD is paying Nixle, LLC to provide this service to Chicago – which is a mistake. EveryBlock.com already provides the same service, and had the CPD asked them for help I’m certain they would have provided it, for free. The CPD should have simply created a set of feeds (would have taken them all of one afternoon to set up) and let others handle delivering that data to consumers in new and interesting ways.
As it stands now, there is no way to access the data outside of Nixle and – if the footer of the e-mails are to be believed – no way to legally use any of the content. So much for the concept of government-as-platform and Weis’ goal of getting information out there in “many ways”.
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Updated:
Hugh’s comment prompted me to review their TOS. From their site’s Consumer Terms:
Intellectual Property Rights
All text, software (including source and object codes), visual, oral or other digital material, photographs, information, data, graphics and all other content of any description included in the Services, including any Communications, (collectively, the “Content”), and all copyrights, trade marks, service marks, patents, patent registration rights, trade secrets, know-how, database rights, and all other rights in or relating to the Services and the Content (collectively, the “Intellectual Property”) are owned by us or by our licensors, and are protected by copyrights, trademarks, service marks, international treaties or other proprietary rights and laws of the United States of America (“U.S.”). The Services and the Content are also protected as a collective work or compilation under U.S. copyright and other laws and treaties. No Content or Intellectual Property may be copied, modified, published, broadcast, or otherwise distributed without our prior written permission.You may only use the Content, the Services, or the Intellectual Property as expressly permitted by these Terms of Service and for no other purposes. Any reproduction permitted under this Terms of Service must contain the following notice: “Copyright 2009 Nixle, Inc. All rights reserved.”
And, from their Agency Terms:
As a authorized user of Nixle, you are granted a personal, nonexclusive, nontransferable, non-assignable, revocable, limited license to access and use the Web Site, Services and Content for Authorized Use only and not for commercial purposes. “Authorized Use” means your use for non-profit or informational purposes, but DOES NOT include (a) using the Content, or parts of the Content, to create your own database for the purposes of communicating with Recipients without using the Nixle Services…
and,
You may not use any robot, spider, other automatic device or manual process to monitor or copy the Content. Any violation of the foregoing provisions constitutes unauthorized use and may result in immediate suspension or termination of the Services, as well as civil or criminal liability.
They are clearly asserting copyright over the content that is created by the CPD and going so far as to assert that the CPD is prevented from sharing any of this data directly with anyone outside of Nixle.com. I wonder what AG Madigan will think of this policy in light of her recent FOIA work.
Looking forward to the details showing up on www.citypayments.org.
Jan/104
PUMS areas? We got ‘em.
After some great brainstorming and the helpful feedback of folks at CityCamp, I’m happy to report that the core concept of MCIC’s first web service is now emerging.
There are tons of APIs that will return the zip code, neighborhood, city, county, or state of a lat/long or address, but none that also offer police beats, police areas, wards, community areas, census tracts, census block group, and PUMS areas as well. These geographies are at the core of many MCIC data sets, and such a service would not only be useful in and of itself but at the heart of the still-in-the-works data service.
What has excited me the most about working with MCIC is the care and feeding provided to the data they work with. After they’re done, it’s not uncommon to see a 7-8% improvement in geocoding success. These are the folks who meticulously clean the boundaries of every arcane geography, ensuring that the each side of a street is in its proper place and overlaps/gaps are removed. And they’re excited to see what you will do with it.
Your thoughts and comments on the details are welcome:
-What formats to you want to see?
-What additional information should we provide?
-How can we design the API and write documentation to make your lives as developers easier?
-What kinds of data should we prioritize next? (vote here)
We’ll be testing this API soon; if you’re interested in early access please let us know in the comments.
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Jan/101
Supporting Public Purpose Applications
This month, I began working with the Metro Chicago Information Center (MCIC) to help them figure out how to share their treasure trove of data about the Chicago region with the rest of the world – more than 100 data sets covering more than a decade. They’ve seen the promised land on the horizon, a rich world of “public purpose applications” powered by data and empowering all sorts of folks to make better decisions in a wide variety of contexts.
But MCIC knows that without access to quality data and technical assistance to understand what the data can and can’t ’say’, the dangers Lessig has pointed out will limit the impact of this emerging field. Developers should be free to focus on building rich, engaging, and useful applications rather than poring over non-standard metadata or trying to match seasonally with non-seasonally adjusted data sets.
MCIC is uniquely situated to provide both data and technical assistance for many of these applications; from their boilerplate description:
Metro Chicago Information Center (MCIC) is an independent, non-profit organization that provides the highest quality data collection, analysis and consultation to institutions dedicated to investing in communities and enriching lives. Though MCIC does not advocate specific public policies or policy choices, we strive to provide critical information and insight necessary to support human services, cultural programs and overall economic growth. MCIC was founded in 1990 by a consortium of regional business and philanthropic leaders at the Commercial Club of Chicago. MCIC works from a fundamental philosophy that better information produces better decisions.
As a self-described ‘legacy organization’, MCIC has a great deal of work to do in order to start sharing their data library. Figuring out the various licensing requirements based on their sources, standardizing all of the metadata, and building and creating documentation for an API will take a while. There’s also the matter of figuring out how to pay for this new and as of yet unfunded program (suggestions welcome).
MCIC is actively seeking your feedback on what to share, how to share it, and how to provide technical assistance. Below is a list of the data keywords from their catalog – please vote for which you think should be shared first.
Additionally, please leave a comment about how you think the mechanics of this sharing should work; as a developer of public purpose applications, what would make your life easier? How should we provide technical assistance on using this data? Finally, if you have a specific data set you’ve been searching for, drop us a line. If we have it and can, we’ll be happy to share.
Dec/090
posterity
When James becomes the next mayor of New Orleans, I will totally brag about this.
