[OSM-legal-talk] Please enable commercial use

[Gervase Markham]

Nathan Vander Wilt wrote:
> While I am not very familiar with IP law outside of the United States,  
> the fact is that since OSM is a database things get way more  
> complicated still. So we can pick a license that takes a three-way  
> (copyright, database, contract) approach to ensuing that users of the  
> data are liable to any one of the thousands of contributors who  
> interpret the Attribution or Share Alike components more strongly than  
> the user. 

In what circumstances has this proved a problem in the past in the many 
other circumstances in which Share-Alike licences have been used for 
many years (e.g. free software)? Where are the precedents for your 
company getting sued by an aggrieved author (as opposed to, say, quietly 
contacted and being told you are not following the terms of the licence)?

> Or we could pick a license that takes a multi-pronged  
> approach to putting the data as essentially as possible in the public  
> domain, while still expecting guidelines like Attribution and Share  
> Alike. Yes, the guidelines would not be *legally* enforceable, but  
> then again neither are database rights in many juridictions.

Which is why the licence has three prongs, as you say.

> If there were clear Community Norms I could follow as far as  
> Attribution and Share Alike, backed by a license that said "we've  
> tried our hardest to dedicate all these facts back into the public  
> domain" (ie http://www.opendatacommons.org/odc-public-domain-dedication-and-licence/) 
> , I would feel covered enough both ethically and legally to use the  
> data without fear of reprisal.

Why would you not feel covered ethically and legally if you followed the 
terms, as written, of the proposed new licensing scheme?

> The main ambiguity is "who am I and my customers liable to?", that is:  
> does each contributor reserve the right to determine things like  
> whether the license notice was "reasonably calculated" enough to make  
> users aware, or whether a greatly abbreviate form of such notices is  
> acceptable in certain circumstances (eg on a printout), what  
> constitutes a substantial extraction or derivative.

Do you really think the first action of someone aggrieved over this 
would be to sue you?

> The most pertinent example comes from the discussion alluded to where  
> someone who contributes a Share Alike street might want to claim that  
> a pub placed by a user who dedicates their work to the public domain  
> is would be infected by the viral license because it could be  
> perceived as a derivative work based on the street.

Why is that a problem if you are following the terms of the viral licence?

I agree that the idea of trying to extract a "PD subset" of OSM data so 
you can use it under PD terms is fraught with difficulties. I wouldn't 
recommend that route, and I don't think OSM does officially either.

Gerv