[OSM-legal-talk] Shuttle Radar Topography Mission

[rob at robmyers.org]

I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.

Quoting Peter Miller <peter.miller at itoworld.com>:

> "NASA material is not protected by copyright unless noted. If copyrighted,
> permission should be obtained from the copyright owner prior to use. If not
> copyrighted, NASA material may be reproduced and distributed without further
> permission from NASA.

If the data is public domain and any attribution is just a *request*  
rather than a licence (which might clash with BY-SA) then there should  
be no problem mixing it with BY-SA work.

A quick scan of the project web site doesn't show any licence or  
rights claims.

If in doubt, OSM can try to contact one of the responsible officials  
listed at the bottom of the project page.

> If we are not sure about integrating this height data into OSM does anyone
> have the capacity to generate a separate data table giving the following:
>
> OSMNodeID, lat from OSM, long from OSM, height from NASA
>
> (The lat and long from OSM are used avoid using height data when the node
> has been moved since the association was done.) This could then be used by
> individuals wishing to merge them as a 'collective work' without integrating
> the data itself into OSM.

If merging the data in OSM would break the licence then merging the  
data outside OSM would break the licence as well, so this would not be  
a way around any problems.

- Rob.