with a project called "Tales of Things"  to allow people to leave messages for each other (or just for  
the world) at the bus stops. Scanning the QR code now allows people to see not just the bus  
timetable, but also the notes other travelers have left on that stop, including "what's nearby, who's  
waiting for whom, what number can you call for a good time. It's a cross between bus stop  
Facebook and digital graffiti", that happened thanks to the openness of the original bus stop data. 
The Social Life of Data Project will study instead how particular datasets have been used, who used  
them, how those people are connected and what conversations happen around Open Data. 
3.3. Legal issues remain crucial
Proper licensing of Public data is essential. The more Open Data activities continue, the clearer this  
rule becomes. What distinguishes Open Data from "mere" transparency is reuse. Paraphrasing  
Eaves, until a government get the licensing issue right, Open Data cannot bring all the possible  
benefits in that country. If there are no guarantees that public data can be used without restriction,  
very little happens in practice, and when it happens it may be something against the public interest. 
Canadian Company Public Engines Inc, that is paid by local police departments to collect, process  
and  analyze official crime data, also publishes online, with a proprietary  license, anonymized  
summaries of those data. When in 2010 another company, Report See Inc, scraped those data from  
their website to reuse them, Public Engines sued. 
Reporting this, D. Eaves rightly points out that both companies are right: one is trying to protect its  
investment, the other is simply trying to reuse what IS public data, by getting it from the ONLY  
place where it's available. This is what happens when public officials leave the ownership of public 
data to the third parties hired to collect them. Please note that, in practice, it makes very little  
difference  whether  those  third  parties are  private,  for-profit  corporations  or  even  other  Public 
Administrations. Unless, of course, there are national laws already in place that define in advance  
what is the license of all present and future Public Data, no matter how they were generated and by  
whom, those data can be lost in any moment for society. In all other cases, the legal status of data  
will be either officially closed and locked, or uncertain enough to prevent most or all reuses. In  
February 2011, the  news came  that, even if they weren't the original copyright holders, Public  
Engines had been able to put together enough legal claims to convince Report See to give up. 
Disputes like this should not happen and would not happen if all contracts regarding collection and  
management of PSI clearly specified that all the resulting data either go directly into the public  
domain  (after  being  anonymized  if  necessary,  of  course)  or  remain  exclusive  property  of  the 
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Copyright  2011 LEM, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna. This work is released under a Creative Commons attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)