Who owns language data in Language Cloud?

Short Answer #

Communities own and control their language resources. Language Cloud does not transfer ownership of community language materials to FNEF.

Expanded Answer #

This is one of the most common questions communities ask. The answer is simple. The community owns its language resources. Language Cloud is infrastructure. It is not a mechanism for acquiring community knowledge. Recordings, stories, dictionaries, transcripts, translations, educational resources, and cultural materials remain under community control. FNEF does not claim ownership of:

• Recordings
• Dictionaries
• Oral histories
• Stories
• Language lessons
• Cultural resources
• Community archives

The purpose of Language Cloud is to help communities organize and use these resources more effectively. Ownership remains where it belongs. With the community. This distinction is critical. Trust is difficult to build and easy to lose. Language revitalization succeeds when communities feel confident that their knowledge remains under their own authority.