As a developer and the founder of a social venture, I am less interested in restrictive definitions than in creating practical and usable tools that can foster and popularize the propagation of open data. Creative Commons is a great example of how to go about this.
I suspect we are still operating under the assumption that users have no interest in sharing their data or opinions. The success of social media proves otherwise!
Even in sensitive areas such as healthcare, end users can and regularly do waive their rights to data privacy by participating in commercial support forums, from Facebook to Inspire.com or PatientsLikeMe. But they do not have access to the data repositories they are contributing to, even when the value of that data is part of a for-profit company’s business model.
What would be incredibly beneficial to researchers, grassroots organizations, and journalists everywhere, would be a simple, standard license to attach to a survey ensuring that respondents know how their data will be used and stored, and giving them the option to include their contact information (or not!) for follow-up interviews and questions.
This type of legal infrastructure could pave the way for creating new open datasets, whether under public domain or another license. It also happens to be something that my company needs to fulfill our original mission, and we may be able to assist with the cost of creating such a standard.
Please feel free to reach out if there is interest.