DataPortability
Encyclopedia
Data portability is the ability for people to reuse their data across interoperable applications - the ability for people to be able to control their identity, media and other forms of personal data. The DataPortability Project works to advance this vision by identifying, contextualizing and promoting efforts in the space.
The effort is run by a globally distributed team on a volunteer basis.
In January 2008, several major web industry players supported the workgroup: Google
, Facebook
and Plaxo
on 8 January 2008, followed by Drupal
, Netvibes
and Mystrands, and then LinkedIn
, Flickr
, Six Apart
and Twitter
, as well as Digg
and Microsoft
.
The Project incorporated as a 501c3 not-for-profit charity in 2009.
and End User License Agreement working group in 2008. The EULA/ToS group considered how to bring data portability practices and ideas into the contract between sites and their users. The group announced a model Portability Policy questionnaire and PortabilityPolicy.org in July 2010. Portability policies structure a communication to users, like a privacy policy
. The intent was to foster internal discussion within organizations about the role of data portability, to educate consumers about portability issues, to clearly disclose portability practices in a way that is comparable across sites, and to encourage a data portability race to the top.
The model policy, at launch, contained ten questions, each with a structured answer (yes/no, multiple choice) and a recommended narrative for the answer. The model questions in their May 2010 form:
There are numerous open standards that are considered to advance the vision, such as RDF
, RDFa
, microformat
s, APML, FOAF
, OAuth
, OpenID
, OPML
, RSS
, SIOC
, the XHTML Friends Network
(XFN), XRI, and XDI
.
. Members of the plenary
elect a Steering Group, who in turn have "sole authority to make decisions determining the operation, order, and good governance of the DataPortability Project."
In the 2010 operating year, the following people are members of the Steering group:
The effort is run by a globally distributed team on a volunteer basis.
Project History
The DataPortability Project was founded by a group of people that created a workgroup by inviting industry thinkers in November 2007 to explore the idea.In January 2008, several major web industry players supported the workgroup: Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
Facebook
Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
and Plaxo
Plaxo
Plaxo is an online address book and social networking service originally founded by Sean Parker, Minh Nguyen and two Stanford engineering students, Todd Masonis and Cameron Ring...
on 8 January 2008, followed by Drupal
Drupal
Drupal is a free and open-source content management system and content management framework written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. It is used as a back-end system for at least 1.5% of all websites worldwide ranging from personal blogs to corporate, political, and...
, Netvibes
Netvibes
Netvibes is a personalized dashboard publishing platform for the Web including digital life management, widget distribution services and brand observation rooms.-History:The company was founded by Tariq Krim and Florent Frémont in 2005.-Technology:...
and Mystrands, and then LinkedIn
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a business-related social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. , LinkedIn reports more than 120 million registered users in more than 200 countries and territories. The site is available in English, French,...
, Flickr
Flickr
Flickr is an image hosting and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community that was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to...
, Six Apart
Six Apart
Six Apart Ltd., sometimes abbreviated 6A, is a software company known for creating the Movable Type blogware, TypePad blog hosting service, and Vox. The company also is the former owner of LiveJournal. Six Apart is headquartered in Tokyo and is planning to open a new, U.S.-based office in New York...
and Twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
, as well as Digg
Digg
Digg is a social news website. Prior to Digg v4, its cornerstone function consisted of letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. Digg's popularity prompted the creation of copycat social networking sites with story submission and voting systems...
and Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
.
The Project incorporated as a 501c3 not-for-profit charity in 2009.
Model Portability Policy
The Project commissioned a Terms of ServiceTerms of Service
Terms of service are rules which one must agree to abide by in order to use a service. Unless in violation of consumer protection laws, such terms are usually legally binding...
and End User License Agreement working group in 2008. The EULA/ToS group considered how to bring data portability practices and ideas into the contract between sites and their users. The group announced a model Portability Policy questionnaire and PortabilityPolicy.org in July 2010. Portability policies structure a communication to users, like a privacy policy
Privacy policy
Privacy policy is a statement or a legal document that discloses some or all of the ways a party gathers, uses, discloses and manages a customer or client's data...
. The intent was to foster internal discussion within organizations about the role of data portability, to educate consumers about portability issues, to clearly disclose portability practices in a way that is comparable across sites, and to encourage a data portability race to the top.
The model policy, at launch, contained ten questions, each with a structured answer (yes/no, multiple choice) and a recommended narrative for the answer. The model questions in their May 2010 form:
- Are your APIs and Data Formats Documented? (Yes/No/Doesn't Apply)
- Do people need to create a new identity for this product, or can they use an existing one? (Fresh Start, Existing Identity, Doesn't Apply)
- Must people import things into this product, or can the product refer to things stored someplace else? Can this product work with objects and information whose "authoritative home" is another product, or can this product only work with things that it hosts directly? (Home, Visitor, Doesn't Apply)
- Can this site watch for updates that people make on other sites? In cases where the product tracks or manages things that the person has stored on some third party product, can this product automatically keep itself up to date? (No Imports, One Time Import, Watch For Updates, Doesn't Apply)
- If person updates something here, is that change stored only here or can it notify another product? Does this product provide a way for others to ask for updates? (Silent, Chatty, Doesn't Apply)
- Can the person allow other sites to use the things they've created or updated here? Does this product provide a way for third parties to authenticate a person and read or write? (No Access, Other Products Can Read, Other Products Can Write, Doesn't Apply)
- Can the person download or remotely access a copy of everything they've provided to this service? As part of their standard use of most products, people import or create things. Does this product provide an open, DRM-free way for people to retrieve or access via third party all of the things they've created or provided? (No Download, Some Download, Full Download, Doesn't Apply)
- Can the person download or remotely access information that others have provided to the product? In cases where the product allows download or remote access, can the person export or access all of the data to which they have access, or only data which they have directly created? (Provider Only, Full Access, Doesn't Apply)
- Will this site delete an account and all associated data upon a user's request? If the user creates a password or account for use with this product, does the product provide a way to cancel the account and erase all data associated with it? (Immortal Accounts, Data Expires, Accounts Deleted Upon Request, Doesn't Apply)
- Do you disclose where my data is being kept in the real world? If Yes, where can I learn where my data is kept? Can I request to have my data stored in one jurisdiction or another? (Yes, No, Doesn't Apply)
Technologies
Historically, the DataPortability Project has been associated with advocating open standards. Formally, the group does not endorse any specific technologies over another - but its leaders have said they support the broader concept of open standards because they help achieve the vision of data portability.There are numerous open standards that are considered to advance the vision, such as RDF
Resource Description Framework
The Resource Description Framework is a family of World Wide Web Consortium specifications originally designed as a metadata data model...
, RDFa
RDFa
RDFa is a W3C Recommendation that adds a set of attribute-level extensions to XHTML for embedding rich metadata within Web documents...
, microformat
Microformat
A microformat is a web-based approach to semantic markup which seeks to re-use existing HTML/XHTML tags to convey metadata and other attributes in web pages and other contexts that support HTML, such as RSS...
s, APML, FOAF
FOAF (software)
FOAF is a machine-readable ontology describing persons, their activities and their relations to other people and objects. Anyone can use FOAF to describe him or herself...
, OAuth
OAuth
OAuth is an open standard for authorization. It allows users to share their private resources stored on one site with another site without having to hand out their credentials, typically username and password.OAuth allows users to hand out tokens instead of credentials to their data hosted by a...
, OpenID
OpenID
OpenID is an open standard that describes how users can be authenticated in a decentralized manner, eliminating the need for services to provide their own ad hoc systems and allowing users to consolidate their digital identities...
, OPML
OPML
OPML is an XML format for outlines...
, RSS
RSS
-Mathematics:* Root-sum-square, the square root of the sum of the squares of the elements of a data set* Residual sum of squares in statistics-Technology:* RSS , "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary", a family of web feed formats...
, SIOC
SIOC
Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities Project is a Semantic Web technology. SIOC provides methods for interconnecting discussion methods such as blogs, forums and mailing lists to each other...
, the XHTML Friends Network
XHTML Friends Network
XHTML Friends Network is an HTML microformat developed by Global Multimedia Protocols Group that provides a simple way to represent human relationships using links. XFN enables web authors to indicate relationships to the people in their blogrolls by adding one or more keywords as the rel...
(XFN), XRI, and XDI
XDI
XDI is a generalized, extensible service for sharing, linking, and synchronizing structured data over the Internet and other data networks using XRI-addressable RDF graphs...
.
Governance
The Dataportability Project community formally recognises members with voting status as being part of the plenaryPlenary
Plenary is an adjective related to the noun plenum carrying a general connotation of fullness.Plenary may refer to:*Plenary session or meeting, the part of a conference when all members of all parties are in attendance,...
. Members of the plenary
Plenary power
A plenary power or plenary authority is the separate identification, definition, and complete vesting of a power or powers or authority in a governing body or individual, to choose to act on a particular subject matter or area...
elect a Steering Group, who in turn have "sole authority to make decisions determining the operation, order, and good governance of the DataPortability Project."
In the 2010 operating year, the following people are members of the Steering group:
- Elias Bizannes (Chairman)
- Steve Repetti (Vice-chair)
- Anthony Broad-Crawford (SecretarySecretaryA secretary, or administrative assistant, is a person whose work consists of supporting management, including executives, using a variety of project management, communication & organizational skills. These functions may be entirely carried out to assist one other employee or may be for the benefit...
) - Brady Brim-DeForest]] (TreasurerTreasurerA treasurer is the person responsible for running the treasury of an organization. The adjective for a treasurer is normally "tresorial". The adjective "treasurial" normally means pertaining to a treasury, rather than the treasurer.-Government:...
) - Daniela Barbosa
- Dan Brickley
- Willem Kossen
- Drummond Reed
- Phil Wolff
Former members
- J. Trent Adams (first secretarySecretaryA secretary, or administrative assistant, is a person whose work consists of supporting management, including executives, using a variety of project management, communication & organizational skills. These functions may be entirely carried out to assist one other employee or may be for the benefit...
) - Brett McDowell
- Chris Saad
- Christian Scholz
- Steve Williams
- Steve Greenberg