[OSM-legal-talk] attributing cc by attribution data

[Robin Paulson]

On 07/01/2008, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
> > during a discussion [2] around this data, the problem of how to
> > attribute it has come up - is there a commonly-used method for
> > attributing data in osm?
> >
> > if not, does anyone have any ideas of how we might accomplish this?

> This also touches on the (legal) question what it takes to remove
> someone's IP from data. If I create a way from your data then it is
> your IP and if you specify a "BY" license I have to attribute you even
> if I make changes. But if the changes are so exhaustive that nothing
> of the original character of your data remains, then surely at some
> point you cannot ask to be attributed any longer (unless law is
> homeopathy in a way) - but where would that point lie?

well, to keep our noses clean, maybe that attribution should remain
there indefinitely?

> I think we could create a new tag "attribution=...", and modify
> renderers to include a list of all "attribution" values. For slippy
> map displays this would probably require an extra server of sorts that
> returns a nice concatenated attribution string for any area. That
> server could be populated by t at h clients as they have the data anyway,
> or it could load stuff from OSMXapi.
>
> For the reasons given above, it seems not viable to me to use the
> existing source tag OR the username of the user making the last edit.

that's sound

one possible problem i can see:
it is a legal requirement of OSM to display that attribution and if
the tag is editable by anyone, then it can be changed, either through
malice, clumsiness or otherwise. this could lead to troublesome legal
wrangles

it's been talked about regarding a couple of other issues that have
cropped up (the naming dispute over cyprus for instance) - maybe we
need to lock some information, and allow it only to be edited by
certain privileged administrators, who are held responsible for what
happens to it?