[OSM-legal-talk] "A Creative Commons iCommons license"

[80n]

On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 11:34 AM, Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemed.net>wrote:

>
> 80n wrote:
> > It does have a share alike clause but it is different from the CC one.
> > As it gives the user fewer rights it's hard to see how it would be
> > compatible.
>
> In the analogue case, GFDL's share-alike is different from CC-BY-SA's, yet
> the relicensing happened. The point is that "compatible" can actually be
> decided by CC themselves.
>
> This thing about ODbL giving the user "fewer rights" is an absolute canard
> (quack). ODbL is not weaker copyleft than CC-BY-SA, it's simply expressed
> in
> a way that is relevant to data. It provides the user with protection in
> jurisdictions where copyright may not apply to data: CC-BY-SA doesn't. It
> requires the producer of a derivative to publish the source: CC-BY-SA
> doesn't.
>

I agree that ODbL does provide some additional rights, but it also removes
some rights and those are the ones that are are important to consider in the
context of an automatic relicensing.


>
> Against this, ODbL clearly defines where the boundaries of sharealike lie
> in
> relation to data. In some particular cases this could be viewed as "fewer
> rights".


Indeed it is exactly this case I had in mind, where the license gives the
contributor fewer rights.  It creates a class of derivative works, called
Produced Works, that are not share alike.



> I actually don't see it that way. CC-BY-SA's application to data is
> so unclear that the user effectively abrogates their rights in favour of
> the
> guys with the best lawyers, who can pay to have it interpreted their way.
> That isn't, by any stretch, more rights than ODbL - unless you're Google.
>
> > It does have an attribution clause but it is different from the CC one.
> > The attribution is not to the original author.  Again fewer rights for
> > the contributor.
>
> Again, that's not true. ODbL simply says in 4.2c that you must "c. Keep
> intact any copyright or Database Right notices and notices that refer to
> this Licence". That provides attribution to the copyright/db right holder,
> i.e. the original author.


The attribution is to the owner of the database, not the author of the
work.  There is no requirement in ODbL to provide attribution to the authors
of the database's content.  Indeed the ODbL asserts that it provides no
protection over any of the content, just on the database as a collective
whole.  It makes the provision for the database content to be protected by
some other mechanism, such as copyright, but we see that the proposed FIL
license doesn't provide that protection.


>
>
> > [...]
> > Database rights only exist for collections.  A single person's
> > contribution
> > may not, on its own, be a database.
>
> That's definitely not true. A single person's contribution may certainly be
> a database. The EU database right legislation makes no requirement for
> multiple authorship and neither does ODbL.


Let me clarify.  The database right applies to a collection of facts.  An
individual contribution may not qualify as a database if it is not a
significant collection of facts, not because it is just one person.  Most
individual contributions will be insufficient *on their own* to constitute a
database.

If someone were to spend a few weeks mapping a town and then contribute that
town in one shot then that may be a database and so could be submitted to
OSM under an ODbL license.  But I don't think we want to encourage that kind
of behaviour.

The average contribution, a single editing session with JOSM or Potlatch,
would not constitute a database.


>
>
> > The only proposal I've seen, and it
> > appears to be a bit of an afterthought, is that contributors assign away
> > *all* their rights by agreeing to FIL.
> > I wonder if we are all discussing the wrong license?  The FIL seems to be
> > a much more important consideration for contributors than the ODbL.
>
> I definitely agree (yay) that the ODbL/FIL relationship needs much more
> discussion than it's had to date.
>
> I believe Jordan's original intent (but he can say this much better than
> me,
> and contradict me if necessary) was that users' contributions could
> individually be licensed under ODbL.


If that were the case then the FIL license would not be necessary.

Your contributions would be ODbL. My
> contributions would be ODbL. OSM would aggregate them into one big ODbL
> database. The multiple-attribution question is answered either by "a
> location (such as a relevant directory) where a user would be likely to
> look
> for it" (4.2d) being www.openstreetmap.org - or by users agreeing, as a
> condition of contributing to OSM, that they choose not to place any
> copyright or database right _notices_ on their contribution other than a
> reference to ODbL.
>

Attribution to individuals is really really important to many contributors.
They give their time and effort, attribution is the *only* reward for these
people.  They want to be able to say "I did that".





>
> cheers
> Richard
> --
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