[OSM-legal-talk] Mass import of TeleAtlas data

[Frederik Ramm]

Liz,

> OSM needs a protocol in which suspect material is reported in a particular 
> manner; contact is made with the mapper involved; a small time period is 
> given for reply; all suspect material removed until resolution.

But in this case, as related by Albertas, the person who supposedly 
imported copyrighted material has, after being challenged, repeatedly 
created new accounts to upload data.

It must be assumed that the person has the technical means to do this in 
an automated fashion.

This means that suspending an account and/or deleting data of 
questionable provenance would not help. It would help in the sense of 
demonstrating that we try to do something (so if Tele Atlas complain we 
can at least say "but we're trying"), but it would not help to actually 
protect us.

It will be very difficult to create technical measures to make us immune 
against such acts; and many potential measures fall into the category of 
we-do-not-want-to-go-there-nannyism and create undesirable barriers of 
entry for new users. We have to be quite careful.

The OSMF board meeting minutes of 23 December contain a passage saying:

"Mikel confirmed that he had established a goggle doc covering vandalism 
and abuse and encouraged all to comment."

It would be interesting for us to have access to this document, as the 
potential measures against repeated copyright infringement are probably 
similar to those against vandalism and abuse.

Bye
Frederik

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