Joint HGS-GSH-SIPES Ethics Lunch Meeting

Seismic data is increasingly part of the everyday work of geologists and geophysicists, particularly in the petroleum E&P industry. This data is often accessible from company servers and from personal computers. It is easily copied into PowerPoint presentations, e-mail documents, or saved as screen capture or raster image files. Most scientists have never read the contracts that underlie licensing of seismic data, and have a range of understanding about the ownership agreements and appropriate uses of this data.

This presentation will focus on the ethics of using, reproducing, and presenting non-exclusive geophysical data. The types and uses of data, and its ownership and licensing, its history and inherent risk-reward trade-offs will be explained. Specific attention will be given to the ethical obligations by users of non-exlusive geophysical data namely, what are users generally free to do with data, and what are they not free to do with it. When must permission be requested to present and reproduce the data, and when is this unnecessary? The intent is to avoid misunderstanding and ethical conflicts. 

An industry code of practice for the use of licensed geophysical data will be described, including specific, practical guidance to users to help them ensure that common license terms and conditions are met. Elements of the typical data use license agreement will be identified around which non-exclusive data owners commonly experience misunderstanding, further clarifying these areas using actual examples.