[OSM-legal-talk] Future relicensing in the contributor terms and data imports

[80n]

On Mon, Aug 23, 2010 at 12:58 AM, David Dean <ddean at ieee.org> wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> I'm a little worried about the impact of the Contributor Terms have on
> the ability of OpenStreetMap users to import data. The Contributor
> Terms don't explicitly mention importing at all, and seem to be
> focused on the user-as-mapper rather than the user-as-data-importer.
>
> I'm concerned that even if a user-as-data-importer agrees to the CTs
> under the assumption that it is compatible with, for example, CC-BY
> data, then that data could become a noose around OSM neck if we want
> to perform a future relicensing (such as Mike's recent example about
> relicensing to release 10+ year old data under CC0 - this wouldn't be
> possible if any of the old data is CC-BY).
>
> If a user imports CC-BY data, having agreed to the CTs then the situation
is no different from any other contribution that does not conform to the
license terms.  It would need to be reverted.

It's no different from a user today importing incompatibly copyrighted
material.  If it is discovered then it has to be reverted.  And I don't
think there's really any difference, except in scale, between a
user-as-data-importer and a normal user.


Any significant future relicensing is going to find some data imports
> that, regardless of their importers agreement to the CTs, is not going
> to be compatible with the hypothetical future license.
>
> I'm not completely sure of the best way to deal with this, but it
> seems that two possible approaches come to mind.
>
> 1) Don't allow any imports from data that aren't completely compatible
> with the CTs (which would most likely just be explicit licensing under
> the CTs and PD)
>
> 2) Allow imports under licenses compatible with the current database
> license (CC-BY-SA/ODbL at current) provided that the import changesets
> are tagged appropriately (including a license= tag) and waive the
> relicensing terms for the imports.
>
> Of course, this means that some imports may have to be removed in a
> future relicensing, but legally it seems to me that was always going
> to be the case anyway.
>
> - David
>
> --
> David Dean
> Post-Doctoral Fellow, RP-SAIVT, QUT
> (me) http://www.davidbdean.com
> (saivt) http://www.bee.qut.edu.au/projects/saivt/
> (post) Room S1101, GPO Box 2434, Brisbane, Australia 4001
> (p) +61 7 3138 9329 (m) 0407 151 912
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>
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