[Imports] Permission Statement

[Mateusz Konieczny]

Mar 13, 2020, 03:16 by bmay at mapwise.com:

> On 3/12/2020 7:30 PM, Greg Troxel wrote:
>
>> Brian May <bmay at mapwise.com> writes:
>>
>>> We (OSM-US) should really have a state by state guide on open records
>>> laws per state. That would make the "license check" process
>>> easier. Look up the state, get an answer. At least a quick answer to
>>> start from.
>>>
>> Agreed in principle, but I think "open records" is off base.  The real
>> issue is copyright, not whether we have a legal right to demand map data
>> held by the government.
>>
> No, its not off base. Here's a reference for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdecisions,_Inc._v._Skinner
>
This decision appears to be about Florida specific copyright law. That makes 
Florida public records to be ineligible for copyright, unless law makes exceptions.

"The real issue is copyright, not whether we have a legal right to demand map data 
held by the government." is true. Though apparently in Florida legal right to demand
data directly affects its copyright status (unless exempt by other law).

There is plenty of cases where data is available and copyrighted using licence
incompatible with OSM.


>> Yes, but for the Massachusetts page (where I'm reasonably familiar with
>> the rules, having been subjected to mandatory trainign), it does not
>> mention copyright at all that I noticed.
>>
>
> This is the grey area and sounds like up for debate. However, as I understand it, the omission of copyright assertion is a waiving of copyright assertion. I am informed by the Microdecisions vs. Skinner case:
>
> "Additionally, the Court confirmed "Florida's Constitution and its statutes do not permit public records to be copyrighted unless the legislature specifically states they can be."
>
Not a lawyer, but Florida's Constitution rule is unlikely to apply in Massachusetts.

> So are you saying since MA public records laws do not specifically state that agencies can copyright data, that towns default to everything is copyrighted?
>
Yes, unless they have law saying otherwise (like law that you apparently found for in Florida,
though note that it may be changed since that court case - it was 16 years ago and law could
be changed before court case completed).

> Grabbing, aka writing code to extract data from a server. There has been previous discussion on this topic, specifically regarding OpenAddresses. I'm pretty sure they concluded copying data from a government server that is publicly exposed to the Internet means any copyrighting has been waived. That could be wrong, I don't know. Google is an obvious case as are most private companies. We're talking governments here.
>
"government server that is publicly exposed to the Internet means any copyrighting has been waived"
[ciatation needed]

AFAIK it is not how copyright works. Maybe it got confused with federal government work,
where data is in public domain and main problem is getting access to data?

> We should probably move this discussion to imports-us, since its US specific - agree?
>
It seems perfectly fine also here, at least I have no trouble with it.
Not sure whatever my comments (and maybe others who are not subscribed to local import list)
are useful at all but note that I am not subscribed to imports-us.
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