[OSM-legal-talk] 'Fair Use'

[Peter Miller]

As you may know a number of us are focusing on mapping the Gaza Strip  
at present.

We have now collected a good body of information on Gaza that is  
copyright to someone or other. We have identified further sources that  
don't make any copyright statement. Details here:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Palestine_Gaza#Data_sources

What information can we use from these sources under 'fair use' rules?

Wikipedia has a good article on 'fair use' here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

I have already annotated the map of Rafah with some additional Suburb  
names taken from an OCHA map citing 'UN OCHA - fair use' as the  
source. To what extent can we add additional content from these  
sources without getting approval from the copyright holder? The  
wikipedia article gives general guidance on this.

Do people have an opinion what level of use would be acceptable?  
Personally I suggest that we now have a sufficiently mature map based  
on CCbySA data that we could add suburb names for Gaza and also major  
facilities on the strip from some of these other map sources without  
problem - especially as the source for much of this data is UN OCHA.

There is a discussion about this on the Gaza talk page, however do  
feel free to respond here and I will summarise our conclusions on the  
talk page
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:WikiProject_Palestine_Gaza

Should we create a 'fair use' page on the wiki and spell out our  
conclusions?




Regards,



Peter