[OSM-legal-talk] Further Concerns about ODbL

David Groom reviews at pacific-rim.net
Wed Mar 4 13:18:50 GMT 2009


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----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tom Hughes" <tom at compton.nu>
To: "David Groom" <reviews at pacific-rim.net>; "Licensing and other legal 
discussions." <legal-talk at openstreetmap.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 04, 2009 12:50 PM
Subject: Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Further Concerns about ODbL


>
> David Groom wrote:
>
>> My current concerns are very specific, and hopefully may simply be down 
>> to my misreading of the licence, but:
>>
>> Section 2.2(a) states "The copyright licensed includes any individual 
>> elements of the Database, but does not cover the copyright over the Data 
>> independent of this Database."  The copyrighting of the data is covered 
>> by Section 2.2(b) and here states "Database Rights only extend to the 
>> Extraction and Re-utilisation of the whole or a Substantial part of the 
>> Data".
>>
>> I have real problems with the use of the word "Substantial ".  From my 
>> interoperation it would appear that extraction and subsequent use of any 
>> amount of data which is deemed to be "insubstantial" is effectively free 
>> of any copyright or database rights.
>
> I suspect the reason for the use of that phrase springs directly from the 
> EU concept of database right, which is limited in that it only applies to 
> a "substantial" extract of a database.
>
In which case I would suggest that the OSM database be stored in a country 
which is not subject to the database law, and that the "substantial"  clause 
in the ODbl license be reworked.

> So database right doesn't apply to extracts which are not substantial and 
> can't be used to protect them.
>
> Substantial in that sense is not limited to a pure percentage type of 
> consideration though - taking 2.25% that happened to be an entire country, 
> or all the motorways in the world, might be substantial while take 2.25% 
> of nodes at random might not.

I have a problem with "might", isn't the whole issue of moving to a new 
license supposed to do away with the "you might be allowed to do this with 
our data, and then again you might not" problem?  Yeas I realise all laws 
are subject to interpretation, and in the UK at least the statute law is 
backed up with case law, but to start with a license which is so open to 
problems doesn't seem a great step forward.

David

>
> Tom
>
> -- 
> Tom Hughes (tom at compton.nu)
> http://www.compton.nu/
>
> 






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