[OSM-legal-talk] ODBL enforcement: contract law and remedies

[Ed Avis]

Matt Amos <zerebubuth at ...> writes:

[CC-BY-SA unclear, or not permissive enough?]

>>>We know for a fact that a number of people (especially people that have
>>>asked their lawyers for an opinion) have indeed decided not to use our
>>>data for this reason.
>>
>>That is certainly a good reason to switch to a simpler and legally
>>unambiguous licence.  Have these same lawyers reviewed the ODBL and given
>>it the thumbs up?
> 
>Several lawyers have looked at ODbL and commented.

Yes - specifically what I was asking about was whether these same people
who decided they were unable to use OSM data under CC-BY-SA would be
happy to use it under ODBL.  (Myself, I suspect not!)

>you say simpler and legally unambiguous, but it's become clear to me
>from my work on the LWG that it is impossible for something to be
>simple, unambiguous and global in scope. copyright law is sort-of
>harmonised across the world by the Berne, Buenos Aires and Universal
>Copyright Conventions, which makes it easier to write licenses based
>on copyrights. there's just nothing like that for mostly factual
>databases yet.

Agreed.  My inclination would be to keep things simple and stick with
copyright - with an additional permission grant of the database right
in countries where a database right exists.  ('You may use and copy
the database as long as you distribute the result under CC-BY-SA, and
grant this same database permission to the recipient.')

Clearly there is a tradeoff to be made between simplicity and covering
every possible theoretical case where somebody in some jurisdiction might
possibly be able to persuade a court that they can copy OSM's data.
It seems that the ODBL optimizes for the latter.

>here is my rationale for moving away from CC BY-SA
>http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/License/Why_CC_BY-SA_is_Unsuitable

Thanks.  Those are indeed problems with the licence.  But only the first
one is a reason to *drop* CC-BY-SA; the remaining ones are just as easily
addressed by dual-licensing under both Creative Commons and some other,
more permissive (and acceptable-to-some-lawyers) licence.  I would happily
support such a move.

-- 
Ed Avis <eda at waniasset.com>