[OSM-legal-talk] PD declaration non binding?

[Richard Fairhurst]

Andy Allan wrote:
> Never mind what Richard says

Always good advice. ;)

> 1) You can't actually put anything into the public domain in most
> jurisdictions. [...]
> 2) There's clearly not enough legalese there for it to be effective :-)

The BSD licence is pretty short and to the best of my knowledge has never
been challenged in court. Of course Potlatch 2's licence is shorter and more
awesome still...

> 3) I can "consider" my edits public domain to my heart's content, 
> but if they are based on other people's non-PD edits, then they 
> aren't going to be fully PD.

I think that's why it's "my edits" rather than "objects I have edited",
IYSWIM. So if there's a way with tag "highway=unclassified" and I change it
to "highway=unclassified;name=Spelsbury Road", then my edit is simply adding
Spelsbury Road. This is pretty useless, as the only information you can get
from it without using other data is that "there's a road called Spelsbury
Road somewhere", but hey.

Of course, at this point all the fun "substantial" stuff comes into play.
Let's say, for example, that you start with Tim's Yahoo tracing in London.
This is not qualitatively substantial and no rights exist in it (at this
point I really should emphasise IANAL in very big letters).

If you survey the area and add a big pile of street names, then the data can
now only be distributed under the SA licence, because that's what you
release your contributions as.

If I survey the area and add a big pile of street names, then the data can
now be distributed as PD or anything else, because there were no rights in
the original contribution and I disclaim any rights from my surveying.

Fun, isn't it?

cheers
Richard
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