1.1 – Legal rights in aid information

1.1.1 – Why should aid information be made open?

0 In most cases aid information is protected by various legal rights which restrict what others can do with it. Permission must be given to allow others to reuse aid information, whether in new kinds of web applications, in interactive visual representations such as Gapminder, or in recombination with other data sources ¹.

0 Hence, if publishers of aid information wish to encourage innovative reuse they should use a license or legal tool to make their material open (this is discussed further in 1.2).

1.1.2 – Aid information is protected by different legal rights

0 Aid information can come in different forms – from official documents, reports and minutes of meetings, to spreadsheets of financial information and databases of geographical locations. These different forms can be protected by different kinds of legal rights.

0 Copyright is a property right that covers certain types of works, including most creative and artistic works. In many jurisdictions there may also be rights in data. For more on copyright, see Appendix I.

1.1.3 – Examples of legal rights in aid information

0 Following is a table of examples of different kinds of documents and datasets and the legal rights they may be protected by:

Example	Copyright	Rights in data
A document with text and images	Copyright in text and images
A document with text, images and an appendix containing tables of financial information	Copyright in text and images.	May be copyright in selection and arrangement of information in tables.
A spreadsheet detailing financial transactions, with fields for recipient name, transaction amount and date	May be copyright in selection and arrangement of information in spreadsheet.	May be protected by data rights in some jurisdictions.
A spreadsheet with details of donor organisations, descriptions of these organisation, and geographical information	Textual descriptions of organisations may be protected by copyright. May be copyright in selection and arrangement of information in spreadsheet.	May be protected by data rights in some jurisdictions.
A relational database with details of aid projects, project donors and project beneficiaries, including dates, amounts, descriptions, contact details, geographical locations and notes.	Textual descriptions and notes may be protected by copyright.	May be protected by data rights in some jurisdictions.
A website with text, photos, and video material, along with datasets available for download.	Copyright in text, images and video.	Datasets may be protected by data rights in some jurisdictions.