[OSM-legal-talk] ODbL and duration of IP protection

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

TimSC wrote:
> 1) The duration of the lapse of OSMF's exclusive right is probably 
> different in various jurisdictions. This creates complexity in reuse for 
> PD and therefore legal uncertainty.

Yup. But then again, by the time data has lapsed it is very likely to be 
utterly useless. I am 99% certain that in 10 years time you *will*, for 
most use cases, be able to get data that is more current than OSM and 
has less restrictions. Nobody will be interested in x-year-old lapsed 
OSM data then. So I think this problem is of theoretical nature.

> 2) The duration claimed under the ODbL in some jurisdictions seems to be 
> perpetual, which is imposes an unacceptable transaction and license 
> interoperability burden on future creators.

A long while ago I suggested in the license discussion that we could 
easily be content with protecting our data for a year or so, because 
anything older than a year would be worthless to "serious" users anyway. 
But that idea did not have many friends.

> Btw, the solution that "OSMF will fix it later" is not really good 
> enough for me; what makes the future better for fixing problems when we 
> have the present? 

Sometimes it is good to do one step at a time, rather than trying to 
build up so much energy that you can jump 7 miles in one go. I'm worried 
that if we tried to fix all problems in the present, there will be no 
future because the present extends to eternity.

Also, as you must surely be aware, your recommendation would create a 
new incompatibility with any copyright-based license. As I understand 
it, LWG are currently considering how the contributor terms might be 
modified to accomodate CC-BY data sources (e.g. by saying that any 
future license change must be to an attribution license, whatever that 
is). - A clause in the ODbL that lifts protection after a period which 
is shorter than the CC-BY under which the source came would make the 
source inadmissible.

I like your idea but I don't think now is the right time for it.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"