[OSM-legal-talk] Easter eggs in the database

[80n]

On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 7:21 PM, John Wilbanks <wilbanks at creativecommons.org>
wrote:

> In response to some questions on whether or not the addition of easter
> eggs (false data) to the OSM database might make it a "Creative Work"
> and thus subject to copyright law...I asked around (5 lawyers, 4 of them
> practicing, one law professor). The answer held close to my
> expectations, which is that no answer would be found that gave this
> debate a magic conclusion.
>
> In the US, the answer is pretty clearly no - this is from the classic
> Feist v. Rural Telephone case
> (
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications_v._Rural_Telephone_Service
> ).
>
>

This case doesn't seem remotely relevant to the question of Easter-eggs.  It
rests on originality of the arrangement of facts.  In what way does it have
anything to do with this question?

80n




>
> In the UK and the EU, the answer is murkier. The UK and the EU give more
> credit to the sweat of the brow argument to protect a database, but that
> doesn't come from the fake entries - it comes from the work required to
> put together the good stuff, not the fake stuff.
>
> In short, I don't think it changes the contours of the argument either
> way. It's a way of figuring out if someone is copying, but it's not part
> of the legal decisionmaking.
>
> GSDI was an interesting event. In preparing my comments it was
> gratifying to see how much true public domain global spatial data there
> is. In some conversations where I referenced the OSM debates there was
> the idea that the OSM locational traces could be in the public domain
> while letting some of the higher level work sit under another license.
> That would put some minimal, and clearly factual, data into the PD under
> the banner of the project.
>
> Anyhow, as usual, YMMV.
>
> jtw
>
> _______________________________________________
> legal-talk mailing list
> legal-talk at openstreetmap.org
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-talk
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/legal-talk/attachments/20080229/3a5ac829/attachment.html>