[OSM-legal-talk] Q&A with a lawyer

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Frederik Ramm wrote:
> What I'm concerned with is mainly: How big is the risk of someone 
> "whitewashing" our data from the contractual part of the ODbL,

I should have explained: Such "whitewashing" would require someone to 
breach the contract by removing all licensing information and then 
passing on the data to a third party who then cannot become party to the 
contract. The important bit, to me, seems that said third party cannot 
be accused of any breach then.

I have compared this to "grey imports": Sony sells batch of TV sets to 
distributor with a contract saying "only for distribution in Ukraine"; 
distributor breaches contract and sells in Germany; if I now buy a TV 
set Sony has absolutely no legal right to demand that I return the TV or 
that I follow whatever contractual obligations they normally impose on 
German customers etc.; I am a perfectly legal Sony TV set user even if I 
*knew* that the distributor was breaching his contract.

(This is something entirely different from buying stolen goods, because 
Germany and probably many other jurisdictions have special rules that 
make it impossible to become the rightful owner of something that was 
stolen in the first place.)

Bye
Frederik

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