[OSM-legal-talk] Houses of cards

rob at robmyers.org rob at robmyers.org
Thu Feb 21 11:56:55 GMT 2008


Quoting Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemeD.net>:

> In which case a) we've done our best, b) we still have the
> "norms"/"peer pressure"/"negative PR" (call it what you want) to name
> and shame the offenders.

Thinking about it, this *is* stronger than BSD/PD, because there is a  
deal that has been broken in order for people to get the "fenced" data.

> As you've noted, the most liberal regime is the US. Happily, the
> chance of any infringement there is much, much less because TIGER
> exists and is PD. A risk analysis on the part of the would-be
> infringer would probably say it'd be easier just to take/improve TIGER.

This is a very good point.

> If not, you then have the issue that the contract "chain" has been
> broken - which is not ideal, but a) and b) above are still relevant,
> ODC-Database does go a small way towards addressing this in 4.7, and
> we could always organise a hit squad.

I'll have another look at ODC-DB.

> Incidentally, I'm not sure that "Copyright doesn't apply because it's
> data" is necessarily the full story in the US. The data may not be
> copyrightable _but_ the arrangement could be if it's sufficiently
> original. In Feist vs Rural an alphabetic listing of names and numbers
> was, unsurprisingly, deemed unoriginal. But OSM - well, how many other
> freeform key/value collaborative geodbs are there? :)
>
> (see very roughly
> http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dltr/articles/2001dltr0017.html)

Rufus Pollock (the Open Knowledge Foundation) has argued that absence  
of copyright on data in the US isn't as clear as people assume, it  
might be worth talking to him if OSMF haven't already.

- Rob.






More information about the legal-talk mailing list