[OSM-legal-talk] Is tracing from Yahoo allowed under the CT's

[Anthony]

On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 7:45 PM, John Smith <deltafoxtrot256 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 18 August 2010 09:37, Anthony <osm at inbox.org> wrote:
>> By the way, all the images I've personally seen in the Yahoo API (this
>> isn't the same as maps.yahoo.com) are most likely USGS.  So there is
>> no license.  It's public domain.
>
> Maybe for the US, but what about the rest of the world? AFAIK they
> source their imagery commercially.

US government has worldwide satellite imagery.  I'm not sure if it's
strictly USGS, though.

In my experience the Yahoo imagery outside the US is fairly low
resolution.  But I haven't looked everywhere, so maybe I'm missing
some.

Apparently Yahoo gets the imagery from i-cubed.  I'm not sure where
i-cubed is getting the particular imagery that they let Yahoo use in
its API.  What I'm more confident of is that it doesn't matter.

>> Well, it's not *their* imagery.  But no, there's no explicit
>> permission to use the imagery.  Nor would I say there is there
>> anything in the OSM contributor terms which says there needs to be.
>
> Yes there is, section 1, the bit about being the copyright holder, or
> having explicit permission from the copyright holder.

That's for "Contents" you "add".  You aren't adding satellite images
to the database.

(Of course, it's pretty much impossible to make sense of the OSM
contributor terms anyway, since they're self-contradictory.)