[OSM-legal-talk] New license status

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

James Livingston wrote:
> On 28/09/2009, at 11:16 PM, Gustav Foseid wrote:
>> Well... There is no copyright that expires after 15 years. Sui  
>> generis database rights expire after 15 years, but copyright is  
>> hardly very relevant for an OpenStreetMap database dump.
> 
> In Europe maybe - however there are countries where database do have  
> inherent copyright separate from the copyright over their contents,  
> for example in Australia. I think the copyright wouldn't expire for 70  
> years here, which is definitely more than the 15 for European sui  
> generis database rights.

I think we should try very hard to make conditions the same for all OSM 
users on the planet, as far as possible. If what you say is true then we 
should make sure (via the content license) that the content is not 
protected longer in Australia than anywhere else.

Personally, as I am opposed to us trying to dictate to our users what 
they may and may not do with our data, I would appreciate to see OSM 
data go out of copyright as quickly as possible. (I once tried to talk 
our share-alike hardliners into accepting one year, on the grounds of 
one-year-old OSM data being practically useless... but they wouldn't 
have it.)

Bye
Frederik