[OSM-legal-talk] Copyright on layers

[Etienne]

On 7/10/06, Christopher Schmidt <crschmidt at crschmidt.net> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Jul 10, 2006 at 08:24:00AM +0100, Etienne wrote:
> > On 7/10/06, David Groom <reviews at pacific-rim.net> wrote:
> > >
> > >----- Original Message -----
> > >From: "Emil Vaughan" <emil79 at gmail.com>
> > >To: <legal-talk at openstreetmap.org>
> > >Sent: Saturday, July 08, 2006 2:52 PM
> > >Subject: [OSM-legal-talk] Copyright on layers
> >
> >
> > <snip>
> >
> > Ultimately, I am reluctantly coming to the conclusion that either:
> > >
> > >1) all OSM data should be released as public domain, and then we can
> all
> > >forget about licensing;
> > >
> > >or
> > >
> > >2)  have a license similar to CC-BY-SA, but allow specific exclusions
> > >where
> > >the use of OSM data combined with "something else" does not lead to the
> > >"something else" having to released under CC-BY-SA. These specific
> > >exclusions would then either
> > >
> > >i) have to be decided by the OSM Foundation on a case by case basis,
> > >dependent upon who was using the data, what way it was being used, and
> > >what
> > >it was being combined with; and / or
> > >
> > >ii) examples of specific uses could be given by OSMF which would not
> > >require
> > >the "something else" having to released under CC-BY-SA.
> >
> >
> > There is a third way.  OSM could allow multiple different
> licenses.  Then
> > each contributor can choose which license to publish under and each data
> > consumer can select the appropriately licensed data for the use they
> have in
> > mind.
> >
> > There are technical obstacles to achieving this - but we are all more
> > technically skilled than we are legally skilled.
> >
> > At the simplest level we would need a PD layer and a CC-BY-SA
> layer.  The
> > main difficulty would be to provide some method of linkage between the
> two
> > layers and some rules about how to link (eg a PD segment cannot link to
> a CC
> > node, but a CC segment can link to a PD node, etc).


I'm just suggesting that this possibility be explored.  It is not trivial to
do, but it might be easier than trying to invent some mythical new license
form.

The semantics of what is permitted would need to be worked out, I don't have
all the answers.

So, can I edit an existing node and make it CC once it's public domain?


If you start off with two layers that are completely separate then editing a
node in the PD layer would not change its license.  In other words elements
cannot be moved between layers - if you edit the PD layer then you are
agreeing to the PD license.  You could add a node to the CC layer that is
the same as one in the PD layer, but if the CC layer can "see" nodes in the
PD layer then you probably wouldn't want/need to.


What happens when I go through and do that for the hwole dataset?


You would end up with a CC layer that was a copy of the PD layer.

What
> if I put it under a CC-By-SA-NC license instead of just By-SA?


A different layer for each type of license (we would want to restrict the
number of license types to at most three or four else it would be crazy).

What if I
> go through and edit every node or segment to be public domain?


You can't put something that is under a CC license into PD, in the same way
that you can't put Wikipedia content into the PD.  A node that is in the CC
layer would stay in the CC layer.

Having mixed licensing is possible if you want to accept a secondary
> *dual* licensing per contributor -- but I do not recommend it in the
> same interface for the only license on the data. There are too many
> situations where the combination of multi-licensed data into a single
> interface lead to problems, in my opinion.


I don't understand what you mean here.  It is the data that is licensed not
the contributor.  When they add data they choose which layer to add it to
and that requires them to release the data under the license applicable to
that layer.

Imagine the OSM data for the whole of the US being PD, and the OSM data for
the whole of Germany being in CC-BY-SA.  This is easy to imagine and not
technically difficult or problematic.

But now imagine the data for Camden to be PD and the data for Islington to
be CC.  How do you deal with the roads that link the two places?  Somewhere
there is a boundary where a segment has one foot in Camden and the other in
Islington.  What license for that segment?  If we can work out the licensing
semantics for that kind of situation then it might be workable.

Etienne
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/legal-talk/attachments/20060710/ab2c540a/attachment.html>