[OSM-legal-talk] Is CC-BY-SA really so ineffective?

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Ed Avis wrote:
> Frederik Ramm <frederik at ...> writes:
> 
>>> If it is the settled view of the OSM project, based on legal advice,
>>> that copyright plus CC-BY-SA does not protect the Openstreetmap
>>> geodata from being copied and incorporated into other works, can an
>>> official statement be made to this effect?
>> No, because we play the same game as everyone else does. We don't know 
>> if there is copyright but we claim there is, just to be on the "safe" 
>> side, i.e. at least instil some fear of potential lawsuits in those who 
>> would use our data without adhering to our license.
> 
> I think this is a very sensible policy, and quite enough deterrent to stop
> companies using OSM map data without following the CC-BY-SA share-alike terms.
> I cannot imagine any map company wanting to take the risk.
> 
> So I still don't understand why some people are so keen to drop CC-BY-SA and
> start a legal arms race by using an EULA instead.  If it ain't broke, don't
> fix it.

I was talking data. Our data is CC-BY-SA and will remain so, 
unless/until we decide to switch to ODbL or soemthing else.

Nobody is saying that the web site terms and conditions, which we don't 
yet have any of and a lawyer suggested we should - would replace that 
license for the data.

The lawyers's stance, supported by Russ Nelson et al., is that even 
though we didn't have Ts+Cs before to govern the use of the web site, 
this should be characterised as "broken" because it exposed us to risk 
and we were only lucky that nobody sued us for some stupid reason which 
Ts+Cs would avoid.

Bye
Frederik