[OSM-legal-talk] The big license debate - WHAT are we licensing?

[Ian Davis]

On 01/03/2007 06:38, Mike Collinson wrote:
> 
> (1) Geodata - OSM nodes, segments, ways and the annotation that goes 
> with them that is uploaded into OSM's database and can be retrieved 
> as .osm files.
> 
> This is database not a map, yes?  If so, don't we move onto much 
> better mapped ground legally (pardon the pun)?
> 
> (2) Maps as image files or hard printed, created exclusively using 
> automated programs such as osmarender or mapnik.
> 
> I suggest (rather than take the position) that these are simply not 
> worth protecting directly. Attribution may be an exception.
> 
+1 to all the above.

> 
> You can see where I'm going personally - the only important thing for 
> OSM to consider how to license is a generic database of information - 
> but the discussion may take other turns.

This is the core of the debate. The company I work for, Talis, 
aggregates lots of bibliographic data from libraries in the UK. A lot of 
this is purely factual data such as which library holds a copy of which 
book. As facts these are not copyrightable and I could easily envisage 
an OSM-like project to visit every library in the country with a barcode 
scanner to collect the facts of which books a library holds.

Licencing generic databases of information is exactly why I designed the 
Talis Community Licence. We wanted to give free access to the aggregated 
data but protect the efforts of the contributing libraries.

The licence is similar to a Share-alike CC licence but it uses Database 
Right instead of Copyright.

Basically the licence...
...grants freedom to use the data for any purpose including commercial
...grants freedom to modify and mix the data
...grants freedom to redistribute copies
...prevents any attempt to deny those freedoms to others

Full licence at http://www.talis.com/tdn/tcl

We're in discussions with CC both here and in the US to look at the 
creation of a broad data licencing scheme using the principles we've put 
into the TCL. The problem is that the laws around database right is even 
more fragmented than for copyright. The US doesn't have any notion of 
rights over aggregates of facts and the UK only got this right in the 
last 10/15 years. Other EU countries are harmonising on a database right 
and there is some WIPO clause that all countries have to have something 
in place at some time in the future.

The CC situation is also confusing because the Dutch versions of the 
licences _do_ include data as well as copyrightable works. That's seen 
as messy by CC making it harder to write licences across the board.

These issues aside, I really believe that the TCL, or something like it, 
is the right licence for OSM geodata. We've put a lot of effort into 
getting legal opinion on and validating the licence although it's a long 
way off being tested in court. We're also willing to put time, effort 
and money into getting more legal work done on the licence if the 
community thinks it's workable and important.


Ian