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

[Ed Avis]

1. While a GPS track recorded 'by accident' while you're doing something else
   could be considered mere fact, if you expressly go out on a mapping trip
   and choose which streets to walk down and which to omit, there is some
   creative element.  (I know that I walk in careful patterns to make a good-
   looking trace.)

2. Obviously, waypoint text included on the track is copyrightable.

3. If OSM chooses to switch to ODbL, and attempts to assert restrictions over the
   redistribution of factual data even if not copyrightable, it would be
   inconsistent to treat other people's data with less than the strictness we
   demand for our own.  (This point is obviously an opinion.)

4. Sweat-of-the-brow and/or database right law would also argue against
   unrestricted use of GPS tracks outside the purpose for which they were
   originally contributed.

5. If GPS tracks were, in the end, considered unprotected and freely usable
   for adding to a non-CC-BY-SA data set, then most of the map data would be
   also, by the same argument.

-- 
Ed Avis <eda at waniasset.com>