[OSM-legal-talk] INANAL - But these guys are

[Iván Sánchez Ortega]

El Lunes, 26 de Febrero de 2007 15:22, Nick Black escribió:
> So with a bit of arm bending, we've managed to get some CC guys to
> take a look at OSM's license situation.  What we need is a one or two
> page document that summarises OSM's current license,

CC-by-sa 2.0... no need to further explain that.

However, the mapping techniques deserve some explanations. Explain, for 
example, that the basis for the names of the features are taken from the 
public domain.

> points out the problems with it and summarises some questions that we have 
> about licensing.

I've been on the ITN thread on talk at osm, so I'll brainstorm for a while. And 
then, a small rant follows:


Abstract and general IP, copyright, and geodata questions:

- We have some doubts about geodata (as OSM understands it) is a form of 
intellectual property, and thus able to be covered by copyright law. (WIPO 
copyright treaties, etc)
    - Navteq/Teleatlas (of TomTom fame) license their copyrighted geodata. How 
were they able to put a (c) symbol on it?
    - Some people in the Creative Commons Spain mailing list weren't sure that 
geodata are covered by the spanish IP law - Are any other jurisdictions or 
international IP laws *not* fuzzy about geodata?
    - Can OSM derive/infer geodata from commercial data sources? (without 
explicit permission)
           - Comments on the OSM-Yahoo! agreement.

- During the map-making process, the (public domain) collected data is 
processed by people, and thus may become IP. When does it happen?
    - Is a WSG84 coordinate a piece of intellectual property?
    - Is a GPS trace (an ordered set of WSG84 coords) IP?
    - Is untagged OSM data IP?
    - Is tagged OSM data IP?
    - Is a render/print of OSM data IP?

- *Can* a CC license be aplied to OSM data? How well does it fit?
    - Transition from 2.0 to 3.0: Possible? Does it provide benefits to OSM?
    - Can OSM (as a whole) write extra clauses to the CC license? (to 
clarify "geodata", etc)

- Does there exist a CC-like license tailored to geodata?
    - Could OSM tailor the CC v3.0 license to cover OSM data?
    - Does CC have an interest to cover geodata (and OSM)?



Specific OSM questions

As far as I (Iván Sánchez) know, the spirit of OSM is to build a big database 
of geodata, using the viral aspects of CC licenses to encourage so. I 
personally think that:
- I'm concerned about the database being expanded/upgraded, and I not being 
able to get back that changes. That's the reason of the "share-alike" part of 
the license.Hey, I'm a pack rat, I can't help it.
- I, however, am not concerned about people/companies printing the data, or 
doing whatever they want, as long as it's not *add* or *update* information 
to the dataset. That poses a problem with the "share-alike" part of the 
license, as past experiences revealed that people are not capable of keeping 
the license along.

I feel that the CC license is right as long as the geodata is still geodata: a 
bunch of abstract points and lines, along with tags.
But, when the map is rendered to an image, or printed to paper, does it make 
sense to keep the CC-by-sa license? I mean, is keeping the CC-by-sa license 
on the printed map in the interests of OSM as a whole?

Possible ways to achieve this:

1 - Keep the CC-by-sa, but add the posibility of distributing *rendered* 
copies of the OSM data under a CC-by license, dropping the "share-alike" part 
as soon as the data is rendered.
    Problem 1 - Can this be done easily?

2 - Double license the data. Keep the CC-by-sa, and add another license along 
(i.e. CC-sampling) that allows things with rendered portions of the data but 
keeps people out of working with the geodata freely.
    Problem 2.a - Sampling is cool, but it's for music, not for geodata.
    Problem 2.b - How does the double licensing keeps through? Does 
double-licensed works remain double-licensed works as far as OSM want?

3 - Custom "open geodata"/OSM license. 
    Problem 3 - Drafting a new license is tedious work, and needs lawyers + 
money + time.

4 - Tweak the CC license to allow dropping of the share-alike clause when the 
data is rendered. The CC deed explicitly says "Any of the above conditions 
can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.", so from my 
point of view, it's not impossible.
    Problem 4 - I'm not very sure that point 8.b of the CC-by-sa can be 
tweaked/bypassed to allow this. And 8.b is more specific and thus more 
important than the deed.




Anyway, the license page on the wiki will need some work. And PLEASE lock it. 
Vandalism on the license page can be disastrous.



Hope this helps,
-- 
----------------------------------
Iván Sánchez Ortega <ivansanchez at escomposlinux.org>

http://acm.asoc.fi.upm.es/~mr/ 
Proudly running Debian Linux with 2.6.17-1-amd64-k8 kernel, KDE3.5.3, and PHP 
5.2.0-8 generating this signature.
Uptime: 17:25:51 up 5 days, 22:25,  1 user,  load average: 0.33, 0.55, 0.47
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/legal-talk/attachments/20070226/410354f3/attachment.pgp>