[Legal-general] The elephant in the room

[Sunburned Surveyor]

Things may work differently in Europe, but I don't think anyone in
there right mind would argue that a municipality in the United States
holds a copyright over the name of public roads and streets. An
assertion of that type of government power would likely lead to mobs
with pitchforks in the streets.

I'd be willing to wager (at least in the US) that the names of public
streets are in the public domain. If an OSM mapper walks around taking
pics of streets signes and then creates a list of all the street names
in the City of Stockton, he can do whatever he wants with that list.
He can sell it, or give it away for free, and I pitty the legal team
that tries to stop him.

Of course, you Europeans have quite a different idea of "government
ownership", so things may work quite differently there.

Landon

P.S - Even if a OSM mapper went around taking pics of private signs
posted by businesses, and derived a list of business from those pics,
I'm geussing he could still do whatever he wanted with that data. I
would think there is something about posting information for the
public use on a sign in the public view that would make the
information on the sign public. (At least in the US.)

On Sun, Nov 9, 2008 at 2:24 PM, Iván Sánchez Ortega
<ivan at sanchezortega.es> wrote:
> El Domingo, 9 de Noviembre de 2008, Gustav Foseid escribió:
>> > > Would then a OSM surveyor extract a substantial part of
>> > > this database after surveying street names in the entire municipality?
>> >
>> > Yes.
>>
>> In whioch case, there is not a single street name added legally to OSM.
>> There has to be a flaw in that argument?
>
> Nope.
>
> If there is a list of street names printed on paper and posted wherever, and a
> OSM surveyor copies some of them, that's an "extraction" of a database
> (depending on your jurisdiction).
>
> At least, in Spain, there has been one precedent of the application of the
> database directive related to extraction of a non-electronic database (i.e. a
> list on stuff in a book).
>
> So, while the street names might not have copyright over them, the act of
> extracting the names from a list is indeed illegal (depending if the township
> whishes to push for charges, that is).
>
>
> Cheers,
> --
> ----------------------------------
> Iván Sánchez Ortega <ivan at sanchezortega.es>
>
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