Simultaneously to the public and policy conversation about the importance of re-usable information and data to AI and other contemporary technologies, there is the question of whether the owners and authors of digital information and data are receiving a just and sustainable return in the age of algorithmic reproduction, and if not, how they might.
The OGL is closely aligned to Creative Commons CC-BY licence, a centrepiece of the open knowledge and culture movement. However, in June 2025 Creative Commons launched CC Signals, a proposal for a different model 'as to how machines (and the humans controlling them) should contribute back to the commons when they reuse and benefit from using the content'. The proposal noted that AI's usage of data has fundamentally changed the web, and the 'social contract' that underpinned machine use of it.
The public sector is, in many ways, no different. Digital information and data are unusual goods, in that they cost a lot to create, but carry the expectation that they will be made available for re-use for little (or nothing) given the marginal costs of their dissemination. But whereas private and commercial creators and rightsholders can withdraw their content from the web, or restrict its usage via technological and legal means, the public sector is obligated to make much of its information and data available to the public who paid for it via taxation in the first place, and benefits from information about public sector activities and policies being disseminated and re-used widely.
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UK Government preparing the ground to deprecate the Open Government Licence?
The link to CC Signals is disingenuous – that proposal advises *against* more restrictive licensing
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