All CLARIN resources and services are offered according to formal legal terms and conditions, which include:
- The general terms of service regulating access to CLARIN resources
- The end-user licenses further specifying the access conditions for each resource
- The deposition agreements that are signed by resource providers when depositing a resource to a CLARIN centre.
These are formulated in a number of legal documents that have been made available by the Finnish CLARIN consortium (see links below).
Note: For general information on legal issues and copyright, please visit the Legal Information Platform.
Terms of Service
The general conditions under which end-users may access the resources distributed by CLARIN are stated in the CLARIN Terms of Service.
The model document CLARIN-TOS-v1.0 includes the legal terms and conditions holding between a CLARIN centre and its end-users with regard to resource access.
End-User Licenses
All resources distributed by CLARIN are accompanied with licenses, which may include more specific conditions than those stated in the CLARIN Terms of Service. In fact, the same language resource can be distributed with more than one license, depending on the end user's role or intended use.
In order to facilitate the management of language resources, CLARIN uses a classification system (see below), according to which licenses are divided into three main categories:
- CLARIN PUB ('public use')
- CLARIN ACA ('academic use')
- CLARIN RES ('restricted use').
In addition, CLARIN uses a set of labels (aka 'laundry tags') that correspond to conditions of use that are frequently associated with the distribution of language resources.
A detailed overview of well-known standard licenses classified according to the CLARIN system can be found at: License Categories.
Although the use of standard licenses is recommended, the following model documents can also be used as end-user licenses, if needed: CLARIN End-Use License Agreements (EULA).
Deposition License Agreements
When a resource provider (aka 'depositor') wants to include a new resource into the CLARIN domain, a specific deposition license agreement must be made between the depositor and the CLARIN centre that will host the resource.
In the deposition agreement, the depositor also specifies the license(s) with which the resource will be distributed to end-users. Depending on the category under which the selected end-user license falls (see previous section), a minimal set of access conditions have to apply. These conditions are stated in the following three model agreements; additional or more specific conditions can also be agreed upon between the centre and the resource depositors. The minimal model agreements below can be used as checklists.
- CLARIN-DELA-PUB-v1.0 (for public use resources)
- CLARIN-DELA-ACA-v1.0 (for academic use resources)
- CLARIN-DELA-RES-v1.0 (for restricted use resources).
To help depositors select the most appropriate license(s) for their resource, the CLARIN License Category Calculator suggests the most fitting license category based on a series of user-made choices relating to the contents and the intended use(s) of the resource.