[OSM-legal-talk] Progressing OSM to a new data Licence regime

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Richard summed up the CC position:

> Creative Commons' position is this
[...]
> A contractual approach could work in theory, but is only binding on  
> those who sign it, and CC believes any "bad guys" wanting to find a  
> way around the licence would do so.

and then proceeded with the OSMF position:

> OSMF disagrees significantly with this assessment of a contractual  
> approach. Commercial geodata (TeleAtlas, Navteq etc.) is protected  
> this way.

I think it is incorrect to make this comparison. Commercial geodata
has a market value (the price at which it sells). If someone breaches
the contract he may be sued for "damages", i.e. the money lost to the
provider because of that breach.

But how is this going to work for us? For what damages are we going to
sue?

And then:

> We also believe that the experience of free software/open  
> source licences is that enforcement is largely achieved by public  
> pressure: the GPL is enforced more through bad publicity for alleged  
> violators (or "bad guys") than by actual legal action.

So the foundation sees this weak point about the damages, and says
that at least we're morally superior if someone steals our data, even
if we cannot do them any harm legally?

But isn't that exactly what the CC guys try to implement with their
CC0 stuff and the "protocol"? Saying that they expect attribution but
conceding that there's probably no legal handle for them to enforce
it?

I would hope that this is made clear to everyone. People still seem to
assume that we could go after violators with "lawsuits" but this seems
rather naive to me now.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00.09' E008°23.33'