Is this attribution appropriate?

Hi

I need some help to know if I am doing the right thing.
I am making a regional directory serving about 6 countries.
To kickstart it, I imported some data from DMOZ, though I have my own category and subcategory structure.
Over a couple of months, I have been adding relevant links I get from different and very diverse sources I encounter, be it articles, ads and so on.
For country X for example, there are currently a total of under 300 links in DMOZ. I imported only those I considered relevant, probably totalling at most 250, but probably a good bit less.
My directory now for the same country alone has about 1300 links I have personally additionally collected and added, which in my opinion is no small fraction. For the other countries, I have not gone that far yet, but I am on the way.

For country X, mysteriously the number of links at DMOZ has been shrinking. About a year ago there were about 330, now under 300. Very few people there seem to know about DMOZ. Actually in the attribution, I encourage people to submit their sites to DMOZ ...

When the directory is finally launched, it'll be for free listings.

Regarding attribution, ...
Because of a different category structure and the fact that ultimately only a small fraction of links are/will be from DMOZ, I thought it would not be possible to use the attribution directly linking the categories I used to those I got them from at DMOZ. Some categories/subcategories have none, others an overwhelmingly large number of links not from DMOZ.

I added a box at the bottom which includes the words I thought fulfill the requirement on the license page 2. (c)

Help build the largest human-edited directory on the web.
Submit a Site - Open Directory Project - Become an Editor
------------------------------------------------
Our Directory uses SOME modified data from DMOZ

Click to expand...

on all pages. This directory still under construction is at http://www.simba.x10hosting.com/adp/ To get a better picture of what I am saying, please have a look at it.

My question to the community is, is that attribution appropriate or sufficient? If NOT, what should be done differently?

Is there a chance that it is not even necessary?

Thanks for your time.

This is not legal advice, nor is it an official response, and nor does it represent the views of AOL, etc. etc. ...

Unfortunately, as you've noticed, the current license agreement isn't very flexible when it comes to data uses other than taking a straight copy of the directory. My reading of the license agreement is if you show any ODP data at all on a page, you need to include the box with links to the category from which it was taken. So, technically what you're doing (mixing and matching categories) may not be possible without providing the appropriate links for each site's data that you use -- which may mean several boxes pointing to different categories on the same page.

However, I'd have thought it would be reasonable for you to provide just one box per page (that uses ODP data), and do the best you can with a category. In other words, find the closet / most similar category you can for each of your own pages -- replacing the current "$cat" in the link with that category. For many of them, I would imagine that you could find a reasonably close match somewhere under http://www.dmoz.org/Regional/Africa/Uganda/ for may of your pages. Not only is this following the spirit of the license agreement, but it will help your users find an appropriate category to which they can also suggest their sites.

Hi

Well I'm not a programmer and so some things that may be easily doable may be beyond my means.
I would not know how to customize the directory script to include the attribution box as you suggest only on some pages, etc as the directory pages are produced dynamically.
So it seems I may have to start in that case with my own around 1200 links I have so far collected from diverse sources in that case - unless some unexpected solution comes up.

Many thanks for your response.

I'll forward the question to our staff. Due to possible internal discussions it might take some time though, until a reply is available.

Nice of you.

Rushing to re-enable the site ... I had taken it offline.
Now accessible.
I will keep checking.
Regards

Hi windharp

Is it possible to pm you an alternative url or is there any other way to communicate it? I want to disable this current one so the site is not publicly accessible as I continue working on it.

Regards

Sure, no problem with that.

Alright, new link pm-ed to you

Vielen Dank & best regards

windharp said:

I'll forward the question to our staff. Due to possible internal discussions it might take some time though, until a reply is available.

Click to expand...

Hi

I appreciate and I am aware of the above statement, but if I may ask, is the time frame in terms of weeks, months or something else - just to help me plan?

Best regards

is the time frame in terms of weeks, months or something else

Click to expand...

Sorry to say but we don't know. The message has been sent to staff but they set their own priorities. I'm not aware that they've responded in any way.

Ok, thanks for responding.

I'll try to contac staff again and ask about a status.

Please check your PM.