[OSM-legal-talk] legal-talk Digest, Vol 19, Issue 1

[80n]

On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 5:11 PM, John Wilbanks <wilbanks at creativecommons.org>
wrote:

> I got a question from the list, did some research, and herein present
> the answers. That's it - as Steve noted early in this, IANAL, and
> arguments about the law between non lawyers can be as absurd as
> arguments about geospatial nodes between lawyers...
>

I appreciate the effort you have gone to.  It would be helpful if you could
elaborate on the reasons why each of these lawyers came to the conclusions
they did.

My suspicion is that you asked about GPS traces, whereas we are concerned
with geo-data that is derived, manually, from an aggregate of GPS traces,
aerial photography, human observation and a tad of cartography.  Theses are
two very different animals.  Can you confirm which of these your answer
pertains to?


> I suggest you sit down with some lawyers and pose these questions
> yourself - it's what I did, and I got the answer that you don't like.
> Apologies for that, but it's what (including one geospatial scientist
> who is also an attorney) the research turned up.
>

I appreciate that you are just the messenger in this, but it appears to me
from your responses so far that we've just been playing chinese whispers.




> > Ignore all the facts and focus please on just the non-factual, creative
> > easter eggs.  Suppose someone creates a series of fake streets with fake
> > names (suppose that they all rhyme, just to make sure that they pass
> muster
> > as creative elements - although the criteria is generally considered to
> be
> > very low).  If this collection of rhyming fake names is published then
> it
> > will be copyrightable.
>
> They will not necessarily be copyrightable. I again strongly suggest you
> talk to a lawyer about this and see what you find, rather than engaging
> me in argument. I posed this as a pretty generic query and got a strong
> set of answers back, and I talked to people with whom I quarrel about
> the law and freedom - just those with whom I agree - and the answer was
> unanimous.
>
> > Agreed, Feist v Rural is irrelevant here.  The fake entries were just
> used
> > for copy detection, they played no part in the case.
>
> Actually, I'm told it is indeed relevant here. The case considered
> whether or not the entire compilation was copyrightable, including the
> fake entries, which could very well have been rhyming or whatever you
> want them to be in terms of creativity. The entire compilation was found
> to be non copyrightable. That places the most important precedent of
> modern copyright law squarely on the side of easter eggs being
> irrelevant to copyright - and whatever you or I think of the wisdom of
> that, that's the precedent.
>

The fake entries in Rural's directory were random phone numbers.  There was
no claim that they were creative works.  If there had been then it would
have set a precedent, but the ruling rested solely on a consideration of
copyright in the directory as a collection of facts.

Indeed, if you read the case summary then you'll see that it does
acknowledge that a directory containing fact *can* be copyrighted if the
selection and arrangement is novel or creative (although the facts
themselves cannot).  But in this case, a listing of telephone numbers, it
failed on both these counts/ there was no selection, one of the conditions
of Rural's monopoly was that they were required to include *every* phone
number/ and the arrangment was not novel either - alphabetical order was
considered to be obvious and unoriginal.

80n


>
> Again, this is what my research turned up. Jordan, can you jump in here
> and give an educational viewpoint?
>
> jtw
>
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