[OSM-legal-talk] Licensing Working Group report, 2009/01/22

[Richard Fairhurst]

andrzej zaborowski wrote:
> Also a different question is bothering me.  The old license is 
> the well known CC-BY-SA, so it is automatically compatible 
> with sources (and consumers) using the same license.  So, 
> say I've uploaded a lot of information based on wikipedia, 
> conscious that I'm uploading under an "alike" license. 
> Now that the license changes, I would be obliged to leave 
> even if I agree with the principles of the new license
> because I cannot agree to relicense data that is not my own 
> (derived works).

Depends on the facts/data in question. I'd be interested to hear what they
are, but strongly suspect that they would not be deserving of any copyright
protection in the first place, and isolated facts on Wikipedia are not
arranged in a sufficiently structured manner to merit EU database right
protection.

By the same token, I don't have any qualms about relicensing information
that I've found via CC-licensed photos on geograph.org.uk. If I see a photo
on Geograph of a road sign pointing west saying "Whissendine 5" with a
"National Byway" sign underneath it, I judge that the National Byway follows
that road. The act of taking a (CC-licensed) photograph of that sign does
not give copyright protection to the information expressed in the photo nor
restrict the extraction of that information, because the photographer has
not invested any creative/original work in placing the sign there.

("Consumers" of OSM data are a different matter because in most cases,
including Wikipedia, collective work provisions apply.)

cheers
Richard
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