[OSM-legal-talk] CC-BY-SA and T+Cs

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,


Richard Fairhurst wrote:
> Very often CC-BY-SA items will be conveyed with contractual
> restrictions: Andy A cited the other day that the cycle map has its own Ts &
> Cs, for example.

So has CloudMade; they say that you may access their site "solely for 
your personal use". It is an interesting twist of share-alike; you 
cannot, of course, say that the map tile you are serving is for personal 
use because that would violate the license. But it seems that you can 
restrict the way in which you deliver it (since making stuff available 
is completely outside the scope of CC-BY-SA - you must only allow others 
to pass it on, you need not pass it on yourself).

Grammatically speaking that's the difference between an adverb and an 
adjective - the map tiles are free, but they are not delivered freely. 
Once you have the map tile you can do with it what you want, but in 
order to *get* the map tile you have to agree to Ts&Cs.

It seems obvious that under CC-BY-SA you have no obligation to give your 
tiles to anyone. I could set up a tile server and only allow access to 
people whose first name begins with A, or to those who pay me.

The interesting question is, can I use this power to restrict how people 
use my tiles? Can I say "this is an open server that anyone can access, 
but if you plan to use the tile for a satanic ritual after you have 
accessed the server, then you do not have permission to access my site? 
Oh yes I cannot disallow that you use the tile for a satanic ritual but 
I can disallow that you use my site to access it... and by the way I 
also disallow anyone to access my site with the plan of giving the tile 
to you so don't you think of asking your friend".

Can I say "anyone can download this tile and it is CC-BY-SA, but if you 
want to print it, then you have to give me 5 pounds because *free* 
access to this site is only granted to those who don't intend to print?"

This is relevant (as long as we're still CC-BY-SA anyway) because the 
OSMF are planning to limit use of the Mapnik tile server as well; there 
is stuff about tile serving in the 2008-07-23, 2008-08-30 and 2008-09-24 
OSMF board meeting minutes 
(http://foundation.openstreetmap.org/officers-board/board-meeting-minutes/); 
the issue seems to be on hold for the moment but there seem to be people 
  on the OSMF board for whom scaling back OSMF tile serving is a high 
priority item. We'll see if and how the recent funding drive has maybe 
reduced pressure on this front, but I should not be surprised if OSMF 
one day says that they'll stop serving tiles to commercial users or "for 
commercial purposes" or whatever, which would also make them have to 
answer the above questions.

(For the record, even though I run a company that is set to benefit from 
OSMF reducing service because this would increase the market for 
commercial map data providers, I don't advocate such a move.)

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"