data sharing/commercial value

[Curtis Clark]

At 09:05 PM 12/8/98 -0800, Karstad-Schueler wrote:
>  The problem here, is that within our own system we have
>to give out data freely, and we don't have any automatic mechanism for
>excluding what evolutionary behaviourists or game theorists call
>'cheaters.'

I think what Hugh and others are saying is that we don't have to give out
data freely; we can abandon the potlatch economy. While I'm certainly not
in favor of this, there are plenty of pressures to do so. But it's a lot
more complicated than just changing "economic systems".

First, the "cheaters": Not just data users, but also administrators who
rely on our potlatch ethics to teach and study beyond our job descriptions,
but strangle us for funds and expect us to generate outside support (I'm
sure there is a museum equivalent).

But both the cost and the value of the data are also complex. I wrote an
editorial once about the endangered-plant computer database being sold by
the California Native Plant Society (CNPS). It was clearly a value-added
project: assembling the data, coding the database, etc. But the original
data had been generated by long hours of unpaid field work by volunteers
(some of whom were paid by their employers, but essentially none by CNPS).
The volunteers were working in a potlatch economy, as had the CNPS before,
but they decided on commerce for two reasons: they needed the money (always
a consideration), and people (mainly environmental consultants) were
willing to pay it. I think it is important to ask whether the donators of
the data would have been as generous had they known the data would be sold.
In a potlatch system, CNPS would be obliged to do something even more
generous for the donors. In a commerce system, the donors have to pay the
same as everyone else. What would have happened if the data providers had
expected to be paid for their contributions?

And the value of the data is based on the requirements of environmental
protection laws: scientists could never afford to pay as much for it as
environmental consultants. But a change in laws could cause the value to
plummet. That volatility makes it difficult for a museum to get predictable
income from selling data, but it poses no difficulty at all for bureaucrats
who expect the museum to do it anyway.


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