<div dir="ltr"><div>Hi Kathleen, all,<br></div><div><br></div><div>Just as a bit of reference, the original intellectual property law from 1924, back when the Philippines was a territory of the United States, didn't have this commercial-with-prior-approval second sentence and was basically modeled after the U.S. law (government works are fully in the public domain). This additional sentence was added in 1972 and was retained in the present law of 1997. Previous analysis of the current law by Wikimedia volunteers with respect to copyright can be seen here and which concludes that this second sentence is some sort of additional non-copyright-based government right: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Template:PD-PhilippineGov">https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Template:PD-PhilippineGov</a></div><div><br></div><div>This situation actually raises a lot of questions especially in the context of OSM. For instance, if a government agency published a dataset of polygons of places, it would probably be best to get the agency's prior approval to import such dataset in order to waive the requirement of "prior approval [...] for exploitation of such work for profit" because end users of OSM should not have to ask the agency for approval if they want to use the data that was included in OSM for profit.</div><div><br></div><div>On the other hand, if an OSM mapper <i>derives</i> new data from such a dataset (for example, generating a representative point for each polygon, maybe at the centroid, or maybe at at the "admin centre" if the polygon represents settlements and the mapper used their best judgement and research to place such points), then this new dataset is no longer the same as the government dataset. If the OSM mapper added the new derived data to OSM, then one could perhaps argue that prior approval from the government agency is no longer needed because the very act of mapping in OSM is not "for exploitation of such work for profit". And furthermore, end users of OSM would also perhaps not need to seek "prior approval" as well since they are not exploiting the original government dataset but rather a derived dataset (ex., points), and which cannot be used to reverse engineer the original government dataset (ex., polygons).<br></div><div><br></div><div>Regards,</div><div>Eugene</div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, Jul 16, 2020 at 10:57 AM Kathleen Lu via legal-talk <<a href="mailto:legal-talk@openstreetmap.org">legal-talk@openstreetmap.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div>A few thoughts:<br></div><div><br></div><div>I'd want to talk to a Philippine lawyer, because frankly, these two sentences seem to contradict each other: <i><u>No copyright shall subsist in any work of the Government of the
Philippines. However, prior approval of the government agency or office
wherein the work is created shall be necessary for exploitation of such
work for profit</u><br></i></div><div><br></div><div>What would be the consequences of not getting permission? A violation of the government's non-copyright rights? Rights of what? I didn't think the Philippines had database rights, but there could well be some other non-copyright law.</div><div><br></div><div> Looking online, I found this on the National Mapping authority's website:<br></div><div>
<span style="color:rgb(102,102,102);font-family:siteFont,Tahoma;font-size:14px;font-style:normal;font-variant-ligatures:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:400;letter-spacing:1px;text-align:justify;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;text-decoration-style:initial;text-decoration-color:initial;display:inline;float:none">Can I edit and use the NAMRIA maps for business? Article III of NAMRIA Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) states that "the second party shall use the digital data acquired from NAMRIA only for its own authorized purpose and not for commercial purpose. If digital is sold to other parties, the Second Party shall pay the full cost of the digital data and its royalties". This applies only to digital maps (scanned/vector) purchased from NAMRIA.</span>
</div><div>
<a href="http://www.namria.gov.ph/faq.aspx" target="_blank">http://www.namria.gov.ph/faq.aspx</a>
</div>
</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div>So one question I would have is whether the data source in question is digital data acquired from NAMRIA?</div><div><br></div><div>I also found this list
<a href="http://www.geoportal.gov.ph/resources/PGPDataInventorywithSW&Trng.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.geoportal.gov.ph/resources/PGPDataInventorywithSW&Trng.pdf</a> which seems to indicate that at least some government geodata has no restrictions on it. With respect to at least those datasets, it would seem that *explicit permission with respect to OSM* is unnecessary. I didn't see a source for the letters mentioned in this list, but it's possible that some of the data restrictions would not be a problem for OSM, but they'd have to be examined on a letter by letter basis. <br></div><div><br></div><div>Best,<br></div><div>-Kathleen<br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Wed, Jul 15, 2020 at 6:17 PM Erwin Olario <<a href="mailto:govvin@gmail.com" target="_blank">govvin@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">Recently, some edits in the country came to the attention of the community and have been found to be derived from government data. Volunteers in the community, after advising the DWG of the process and action plan, are undertaking the rollback of affected edits.<br></div><div style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><br></div><div style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">In our community, the current practice follows the general recommendation, that no (Philippine government) data should be added into OpenStreetMap, unless explicit permission has been obtained from the originating agency/office/owners that the data will be added in OSM, under ODbL.</div><div style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><br></div><div style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">The relevant local law on government data, states <a href="https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/1997/06/06/republic-act-no-8293/" target="_blank">Republic Act 8293</a>, section 176:
</div><div style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">"<i><u>Works of the Government. ‑ 176.1. No copyright shall subsist in any work of the Government of the
Philippines. However, prior approval of the government agency or office
wherein the work is created shall be necessary for exploitation of such
work for profit</u>. Such agency or office may, among other things, impose
as a condition the payment of royalties. No prior approval or conditions
shall be required for the use for any purpose of statutes, rules and
regulations, and speeches, lectures, sermons, addresses, and
dissertations, pronounced, read or rendered in courts of justice, before
administrative agencies, in deliberative assemblies and in meetings of
public character. (Sec. 9, first par., P.D. No. 49)"</i></div><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"></div><div style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><br></div><div style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">In the discussions by contributors, there are some who expressed favor a more liberal interpretation of this section of the law, that government data is ineligible to copyright, hence no permission is necessary from the government. And if the end-user has commercial plans for said data, it is up to them to apply for said permission from the relevant government agencies.<br></div></div><div><br></div><div><div style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">However, this government permission requirement appears to oppose the OSM license, wherein OSM data users are only required to attribute, and not seek any additional permissions. Hence, our promoted practice of seeking the informed consent of data owners.<br></div><div style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><div style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif"><i><br></i></div><div><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">While the interpretation of the law is not a question of popularity, there's no doubt that a more liberal interpretation is desirable for our community but I'm wondering if somebody from the licensing WG can provide us specific guidance whether a liberal interpretation of this law is aligned with the OSM license.<br></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div><br></div><div><div style="font-family:tahoma,sans-serif">/Erwin</div><br></div><div><br></div><font face="trebuchet ms, sans-serif" color="#999999">- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - </font><div><font face="trebuchet ms, sans-serif"><font color="#999999">»</font><font color="#ff6633"> </font>email:<font color="#000000"> <a href="mailto:erwin@ngnuity.net" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)" target="_blank">erwin@</a></font><a href="http://ngnuity.net/" style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255)" target="_blank"><font color="#ff9900"><b>n</b></font><font color="#0066cc"><b>gnu</b></font><b><font color="#9900ff">it</font></b><font color="#ff9900"><b>y</b></font><font color="#000000"><b>.<font color="#ff9900">xyz</font></b></font></a><font color="#000000"> </font><span style="color:rgb(255,102,51)">|</span><font color="#000000"> <a href="mailto:govvin@gmail.com" target="_blank">govvin@gmail.com</a></font></font><div><font face="trebuchet ms, sans-serif"><font color="#999999">»</font><font color="#ff6633"> </font>mobile: <a href="https://t.me/GOwin" target="_blank">https://t.me/GOwin</a></font></div><div><div><font face="trebuchet ms, sans-serif"><font><font color="#999999">»</font><font color="#000000"> </font></font>OpenPGP key: 3A93D56B <span style="color:rgb(255,102,51)">|</span> 5D42 7CCB 8827 9046 1ACB 0B94 63A4 81CE 3A93 D56B</font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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