[OSM-legal-talk] Starting Repository For Public Domain OSM Data

[Joseph Gentle]

On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 11:24 AM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
> Ok, I take back what I previously said to 80n about all PD advocates
> being on the same page ;-)

We're very close, and we don't have to agree. Data published with free
non-viral licenses can coexist peacefully. We're really arguing about
what the default license for contributors should be.

> Joseph, with PD you don't get to dictate how the data is used. You waive
> all rights, including the right to be identified as the author.
>
> If someone takes the whole TIGER dataset and says he drew it up himself,
> I don't think there is anything to stop him - just that he makes a
> complete fool of himself because nobody will believe him.

Thats not true. I don't think the US Government has waived their moral
rights regarding the TIGER data. As I understand it, placing work in
the public domain does not automatically waive your moral rights on
the work.

> Same with your contributions to a PD database. EITHER your contribution
> is marginal so that someone can realistically claim he did it all by
> himself, in which case nobody can prove him otherwise - and even if your
> license did contain a bit about not allowing him to lie about the
> provenance of the data, he could still do it and not be found out. OR
> your contribution is substantial so that anyone can see that someone has
> used your data, in which case it would be plain stupid of someone to lie
> because he would be found out and his credibility destroyed.

I don't understand the use case for people passing off my work as
their own. I am a huge proponent of public domain; but I don't see how
waiving moral rights ever helps.

I understand if people want to use my work for any purpose. I
understand them building it into their product, selling it, changing
it, publishing it, putting overlays, etc. I'm happy with all of that.
But if you waive moral rights they can also say "Frederik is a liar if
he said he made them. If you want these maps, you come to us because
they are ours!"

I have no problem with anyone using the maps. I have no problem
getting no attribution. But I have a problem with that sort of thing.

The Berne Convention says it best:
"Independent of the author's economic rights, and even after the
transfer of the said rights, the author shall have the right to claim
authorship of the work and to object to any distortion, mutilation or
other modification of, or other derogatory action in relation to the
said work, which would be prejudicial to the author's honor or
reputation."
(thanks wikipedia! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_rights )

Note that this does not say people can't change or mutilate your data.
It just says that the mutilation won't be attributed to you.

I would be happy to waive moral rights if you can provide a useful use
case for doing so. Until then, it feels dirty and I don't see the
point.

-J

> It would be his users who'd expect him to tell the truth about where
> he's got the data from - not us data providers.
>
> Bye
> Frederik
>
> --
> Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"
>
> _______________________________________________
> legal-talk mailing list
> legal-talk at openstreetmap.org
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
>