[OSM-legal-talk] Attribution

80n 80n80n at gmail.com
Mon Jul 9 10:57:46 BST 2007


On 7/9/07, Peter Miller <peter.miller at itoworld.com> wrote:
>
>
> Thanks for the background Frederik, however I really don't think it is
> acceptable for us to duck this issue and reading the SA2.0 licence
> agreement
> this morning it seems that a perfectly acceptable and robust legal
> mechanism
> is available within the SA2.0 licence agreement allowing OSMF to publish
> the
> Work on behalf of the community and to define an appropriate Attribution
> (even if it cannot get agreement from all copyright holders prior to
> publication).
>
> Firstly: does the community want this problem resolved? My company does
> because it wishes to use the data, but does the community wish it? And if
> the community does then can it agree on a 'practical' wording for each
> publishing scenario and can that 'practical' wording be supported by the
> licence agreement?:
>
> Proposed wording...
>
> Web presentation:
> "(cc) OpenStreetMap, some rights reserved"
> With both the phrases 'OpenStreetMap' and 'Some Rights reserved' linked to
> appropriate places on the OSM website.
>
> Paper presentation:
> "(cc) www.openstreetmap.org some rights reserved"
> Or
> "(cc) www.openstreetmap.org some rights reserved (CC-BY-SH)"


Correction:
 "(cc) www.openstreetmap.org some rights reserved (CC-BY-SA)"

The OpenStreetMap web site would contain a full list of current copyright
> holders who are contributing to the current Planet.osm (real names or
> pseudonyms). I believe that this method of publication can be justified as
> 'reasonable' given the constraints of the medium and the large number of
> individual copyright holders.


As publishers of the data the OpenStreetMap.org web-site violates the BY
clause unless it provides attribution (where practical).  The current data
stats page lists the top contributors.  Can a version of this report be
extended to list all contributors (somewhere between 1000 and 8000 users I
would guess), except those who have opted to keep their identity private?


If this is desired by the community then I propose the following legal
> strategy for implementing it:
>
>
> I note that the Licensor needs to be an 'Individual or Entity' (1f). The
> only 'Entity' that comes to mind to publish the whole thing is the OSMF so
> I
> propose that OSMF formally publishes planet.osm as a Collective Work.


In that case should it be "(cc) OpenStreetMap Foundation" rather than "(cc)
OpenStreetMap"?  OpenStreetMap is not a legal entity.


OSMF provides License terms (identical CC-BY-SA) for the use and attribution
> of this Work (planet.osm) having first used 'reasonable means' to get
> agreement from the current active email community to the proposed
> mechanism
> (a combination of a short phrase where OSM data is used and a link back to
> the website for full details).


No special agreement is required from the original authors to publish a
collective work.  All the data has been provided under creative commons and
cannot be revoked.


> If at the time in the future an individual copyright holder complains
> about
> the arrangement  then OSMF will have the choice to either accommodating
> that
> person's wishes or removing that persons Work from the Collective Work 'to
> the extent practicable' (4a). In practice this could be interpreted as
> meaning removing that individuals Work from future releases of the
> Planet.osm.


Actually I think (4a) refers to attribution for the work, not the work
itself.  There is no mechanism for a contributor to request that their work
be remove from a contributor (unless it violates some other copyright - but
thats a different matter).

There is already a mechanism for each user to indicate whether their
identity is private or public.  I think this does the job already.  If they
make their work public they should be listed on the attribution page, if
private then their identity is not disclosed.


Regarding liability, OSMF will receive significant protection from
> subsequent litigation from clause 5, however it should probably have some
> legal insurance anyway if this is possible. To quote Clause 5 'UNLESS
> OTHERWISE AGREED TO BY THE PARTIES IN WRITING, LICENSOR OFFERS THE WORK
> AS-IS AND MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND CONCERNING
> THE
> MATERIALS, EXPRESS, IMPLIED, STATUTORY OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING, WITHOUT
> LIMITATION, WARRANTIES OF TITLE, MERCHANTIBILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR
> PURPOSE, NONINFRINGEMENT, OR THE ABSENCE OF LATENT OR OTHER DEFECTS,
> ACCURACY, OR THE PRESENCE OF ABSENCE OF ERRORS, WHETHER OR NOT
> DISCOVERABLE.
> SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OF IMPLIED WARRANTIES, SO
> SUCH
> EXCLUSION MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU."


In my experience, liability is a very tricky area.  We should not even think
about messing with this clause without professional legal advice.  Anyway,
it is relatively separate from the CC-BY-SA stuff and we should not get
distracted by it at this stage.

80n

Regards,
>
>
>
>
> Peter
>
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Frederik Ramm [mailto:frederik at remote.org]
> > Sent: 08 July 2007 23:39
> > To: Peter Miller
> > Cc: legal-talk at openstreetmap.org
> > Subject: [Spam] Re: [OSM-legal-talk] attribution
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > > Any thoughts on my previous posting (5^th July) re attribution; I
> really
> > > think we need to agree some published guidance on the matter sooner
> > > rather than later.
> >
> > I think the problem is that we are neither the authors nor the licensors
> > of the data so we cannot tell people how to attribute; technically, the
> > attribution would have to list all individual contributors, "where
> > practical".
> >
> > We could give them sort of a blanket absolution and say "we generally
> > consider it impractical to list all individual contributors and we
> > suggest you just attribute <text>", but strictly speaking we are not in
> > a position to do so unless we solicit the ok from our contributors.
> >
> > What we'd have to do in the first place is ask our contributors to
> > transfer their right to be identified as a co-author to us (OSM/OSMF).
> > Then we could decide what we'd like that attribution to look like and
> > then we could tell third parties to use it.
> >
> > This is very impractical since it is highly unlikely for us to get the
> > ok of every individual contributor. Some may be simply unreachable.
> >
> > We can give out a suggestion now, but technically any contributor could
> > still request to be identified individually, "where practical", and we
> > cannot override that. Worst case, someone could incur financial damage
> > by first trusting our suggestion and then having to re-print something
> > because of the claims of an individual contributor, and then try to
> > reclaim the cost from us...
> >
> > It's a jungle out there. (Says a non-lawyer.)
> >
> > Bye
> > Frederik
> >
> > --
> > Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00.09' E008°23.33'
>
>
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