[OSM-legal-talk] California GIS data public domain?

[David Carmean]

I saw only the briefest mention of this in the archives; has anybody 
done any further thinking/research/deciding about this?

[ OK, I see that this was posted to the list back in February, but I don't find 
any further discussion about it... is there a way to search just the legal-talk archive? ]

Just found this article about an appeals-court decision on the Santa Clara County 
GIS brouhaha:

    http://gis.lacounty.gov/eGIS/?p=696

In particular, the analysis of item III of the decision seems to indicate that 
the court believes that government-produced data cannot be copyrighted:

    III. A. There is no statutory basis either for copyrighting the GIS basemap or for
    conditioning its release on a licensing agreement.

The decision can be found here:

    http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/H031658.PDF

The question is: has the Foundation considered this?  Can we begin to import California 
GIS data? :)



----- End forwarded message -----