[OSM-legal-talk] How does Google map maker handle copyright

[Erik Johansson]

After reading about the Lithuanian problems I really wonder how Google
map maker handles copyright violations, do they really care if someone
copies the street names from a local map maker, can they? Then again
not many Street names are mapped on google map maker.

Everytime I tell new OSM users "You can't copy street names from the
map" something feels really broken, and most people I talk to have no
understanding why they shouldn't copy names from other maps. One
response from a book editor was "But how can there ever be more than
one map if you can't copy the existing map".

My theory is that information freedom freaks such as CC, FSF, EFF,
Wikipedia and OSMF teaches us to be too paranoid about copyright,
because they want people to use their free stuff. Then again better
safe than sorry.

-- 
/Erik Johansson