[OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-dev] Bittorrent

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Francis Davey wrote:
> No, but nevertheless no. I'll review go over the posting history. Thanks.

;-)

If you use Google to search the legal-talk list for the words 
"browsewrap" and "clickwrap" (sometimes hyphenated) you will find a lot 
of the relevant discussion.

I'll try to put it in as little words as possible:

1. If we could be sure our data was copyrighted then we would not really 
have a problem since, as you point out, everybody would have to adhere 
to our licensing terms to legally use our data.

2. We're pretty sure that we cannot be sure our data is copyrighted, so 
we try to enforce our license through the concept of database rights 
which is reasonably well established in Europe; even un-copyrighted data 
gains a protection comparable to copyright, and again, our license has 
to be adhered to by users.

3. Headache comes from places without database rights (like the US) 
where anyone getting hold of our data could simply do anything with it. 
Even for those who think that our data should be put in the Public 
Domain anyway (e.g. me), this is undesirable because it would create a 
wholly different situation in the US than we have in Europe.

4. Because of this, the ODbL tries to be a contract and a license at the 
same time, forcing users in places like the US to adhere to our 
"license" through contract law.

5. It is somewhat unclear, and one of the questions posed on 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Open_Issues, what 
legal consequences would arise from some "bad guy" stripping away the 
contract information and republishing our data in a non-database 
country; the worst case for us would probably be if this would lead to 
third parties being able to use our data totally unrestricted with 
impunity, even if they know the data comes from OSM.

Bye
Frederik

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