[OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] Users whose contributions are in the public domain

Frederik Ramm frederik at remote.org
Tue May 6 20:23:17 BST 2008


Nathan,

   I'm 100% with you as regards PD; I also think that it would cause
much less hassle, make OSM a better project and be morally superior
along the way.

However there are many people who think differently, and you may
encounter some of them on legal-talk to which I'm CCing this, with
full quoting:

> This mirrors my feelings exactly. When I found out about this project,  
> I was really excited. I am writing a geotagging program that could  
> greatly benefit from a worldwide feature set, and it seemed like OSM  
> would be a great match. Now I'm not too sure. I live in the US, and  
> have seen the benefits of (and perhaps come to take for granted) a  
> significant body of Public Domain, free-as-in-WTFPL geographic  
> datasets.

There are people in OSM who say that the TIGER data may have been
free, but it was also dead because there was no community taking care
of it - OSM to the rescue, we add a community on top and our price is
that we take the stuff out of PD and slap a few restrictions on, only
of course to protect that community. 

You can probably better judge the bit about the community; for me,
looking from the outside, it seems not entirely false.

> Obviously on the other side of the Atlantic, you have seen  
> the opposite: an overbearing monopoly that wants to keep this data  
> under lock and key.

> Now what has been done to remedy that situation? I read things like  
> "but aha! that pub's location might be a derivative work of a  
> ShareAlike street!" and it sounds an awful lot how the OS claims  
> copyright in everything from the Soviet topo maps to random tourist  
> brochures. Except instead of insisting on big fees for use, it seems  
> some parts of the community instead insist on big "freedoms" resulting  
> from use.

That's my problem as well. We are not much better than other owners of
geodata. They say:

1. Geodata is very valuable and takes a lot of work to collect and
   those who do all the work should be the owners of the data and
   dictate under what rules it may be used;
2. So we charge an arm and a leg for it

And we say

1. Geodata is very valuable and takes a lot of work to collect and
   those who do all the work should be the owners of the data and
   dictate under what rules it may be used;
2. So we give it away free of charge but force everyone using our 
   data to comply with our license.

I would much more like to see an approach that says: Geodata should be
free, and whenever I have used my GPS to measure the position of
something, I have "liberated" it; nobody will ever have to do someone
else's bidding to find out about this position.

> How is that better? I'm worried that if my users geotag their photos  
> against OSM data, someone will come out of the woodwork insisting that  
> the photos "could be considered a derivative of their work", and I can  
> either hire a lawyer versed in International IP law [implying that  
> they wouldn't mind me ignoring what they really want done with their  
> data, provided it looked like I could get away with it]. Or I could  
> just play it safe and pass the virus to my (fleeing) users.
> 
> It doesn't hurt the US Census Bureau when someone takes their public  
> domain TIGER data and turns it into a proprietary product, or one with  
> an arguably more restrictive (or "more libre") licence. However, think  
> of how much less useful the TIGER data would have been to both these  
> "evil corporations" AND the open source community if data sets like  
> that had to be used under a particular license instead of public  
> domain (with attribution often requested).

It's unfair somehow, isn't it - we take PD stuff, put it into OSM,
make it more attractive to a point where nobody wants to use the
original PD stuff any more - everyone is more or less forced to use
our version that comes under our license. But then again that is
exactly what Copyleft advocates say is the fate of every PD data set
and the very reason that we are not PD... lest an evil commercial
company just takes our data away, makes it more attractive and puts it
under their license. 

(I find it morally questionable of us to do this but it is undoubtedly
legal. Some Copyleft advocates even manage a smile when they tell me
that I'm free to collect data under PD but of course they'll gobble it
up under Share-Alike and not give anything back - "You're asking for
it".)

> I understand that some feel the cause would be hurt if their data  
> could ALSO be used in proprietary datasets. Obviously I have a  
> different opinion on this matter, as do several others. What bothers  
> me is that those in favor of viral licenses are able to even trump  
> those who would rather have their data in the public domain -- and  
> this by the same sort of "derivative work" FUD that makes a free set  
> of map data so important in the first place.

True. I don't even think that there is a majority for Copyleft in this
project, but it isn't pure numbers that count. There are a number of
people who have said they won't comply if the Foundation were to go
along with the recommendations of the the Science Commons folks and
ask everybody to re-license their stuff under CC0 (=essentially PD).
The same is not true the other way round, because PD advocates have
mostly already said their data is PD so it can be put under any new
license without even asking them.

But someone on this list has recently said that there is hope that
during the move to the new license, when everybody will be asked
whether they re-license, people will at least be given the option to
re-license PD. This would mean that while the whole project won't
steer away from Copyleft, the PD cause would at least gain a bit more
visibility, and if we come to a point where 80% of our data is
contributed by PD sources then claims like a pub derived from Copyleft
data will perhaps lose some of their theeth.

Thinking of it, with the TIGER data in our belly, we may already be at
80% PD globally. But TIGER doesn't have pubs.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm ## eMail frederik at remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33"





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