[OSM-legal-talk] Okay to trace from public-domain USGS DOQs?

[Russ Nelson]

On Feb 11, 2009, at 3:27 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote:
>   you're basically asking whether a PD source retains its PD status
> even if channeled through a number of probably non-PD services.
>
> This is no different from the question: If the OSM database is  
> licensed
> "X", and if I put some data in there which is PD, can someone else  
> then
> extract this from OSM as PD, or will he extract it as "X"?


OSM could claim a collection copyright on the data, especially if it  
exerts editorial control (in a sense it does, by choosing to present  
only the latest version of the data).  On the other hand, if you're  
only extracting PD things, then you're not violating the collection  
copyright.  OSM could claim a copyright on the XML schema in which the  
results were returned (that way lies lunacy), but if you reformatted  
the data, that copyright falls by the wayside.

A work doesn't *leave* the public domain merely because you claim that  
you have a copyright on it.  You only have a copyright on your  
creative works; not the public domain.

I may be wrong; I'm not a lawyer; this isn't legal advice.

--
Russ Nelson - http://community.cloudmade.com/blog - http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:RussNelson
russ at cloudmade.com - http://openstreetmap.org/user/RussNelson