[OSM-legal-talk] What should be considered legal?

[rhn]

I'm a mapper for more than a year, and I know a little bit about intellectual property, but some questions have been puzzling me for quite some time.

First of them - how much is allowed when referring to proprietary maps? Is it right to look at the street names to see whether I got them right? Or can I compare topology of the streets with the external map? See if I got the village placement right and adjust it?

The second I've been wondering about is copying the other way around. Suppose I'm working for a mapping company who has to trace satellite data to make a vector map. Not all roads are visible through trees and sometimes, the streets look similar to footways. Can I look at (printed, not overlayed) OSM maps to see where streets are to avoid mapping footways and paths as streets? Is my work a derived work of OSM if I do that? There is no tracing over OSM involved.

I hope someone could explain it to me :)

Cheers
rhn