[OSM-legal-talk] ODbL, CTs and tracing GPS tracks

[Eugene Alvin Villar]

On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 5:54 PM, 80n <80n80n at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 8:58 AM, Jukka Rahkonen <
> jukka.rahkonen at latuviitta.fi> wrote:
>
>> TimSC <mapping at ...> writes:
>>
>> > Hi all,
>> >
>> > Apologies if this has been raised before, but I was wondering about GPS
>> > track data and licenses. Presumably we are using public GPS trace data
>> > under CC-BY-SA. By the way, it would be helpful to clarify that on the
>> > wiki. I'll ignore the problem of tracing other people's tracks and the
>> > resulting relicensing issues. At the moment, I am considering how GPS
>> > tracks work with the CT and ODbL (assuming they too will be relicensed).
>>
>> I have understood that uploaded GPS track logs that we have now are
>> effectively public domain. They are facts (even they do not allways
>> tell the truth) and they miss all the creativity so they are not
>> copyrightable.
>>
>
> Is this a correct understanding of what a fact is, from a legal point of
> view?
>
> A telephone number is a fact in the sense that it is it's own identity.  A
> copy will be identical.  And this seems to be the basis of much US case law
> in this area.  On the other hand GPS tracks are made up of information, but
> they are samples of a paths and no two sets of GPS tracks will ever be
> identical.  The stuff of GPS tracks is very different from the stuff of
> telephone numbers.
>
> Before using the "GPS tracks are facts" meme we really should have a better
> understanding of what constitutes a fact, in legal terms.
>

I think the "GPS tracks are facts" meme simply means that the tracks are a
recording of where the GPS device has calculated its position to be at
certain moments in time. The fact is not "this road is at so-and-so
coordinates", because the GPS tracks does not have to correspond to a road
or anything else on the ground at all, but rather, the fact is that  the
"GPS device has recorded its position at so-and-so coordinates at so-and-so
point in time".

It's no more or less factual than recording temperature and other
meteorological data at a weather station.
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