[OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] ODbL vs CC-by-SA pros and cons

[edodd at billiau.net]

> On 29 August 2010 00:40, Nic Roets <nroets at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Mike, my understanding (and I think Grant will agree) is that copyleft
>> is an
>> idea: I publish something in such a way that coerce others into sharing
>> their work with me. The implementation details of that idea (copyright
>> law,
>> contract law, unenforceable moral clauses etc) is left to the lawyers
>> and
>> the managers.
>
> Just a point of information (I don't have a view on what the right
> thing to do is concerning re-licensing nor should I): there is a
> fundamental difference between licensing a property right (such as
> copyright) and contract, and that is that the contract will only
> protect you against a breach by the immediate end user.
>
> As follows: if X uses your data under a contract with you that
> requires use in a particular way (eg to mimic something like the GPL)
> and X, in breach of that agreement, passes data to Y then barring
> certain special circumstances (such as X and Y colluding) it will be
> virtually impossible to prevent Y from using the data in any way they
> please.
>
> In the context of the web, Y scraping X's data where X has failed to
> require that not happen would probably be sufficient and not an
> unlikely circumstance at all.
>
> Of course if there's an IP right as well Y might be breaching that,
> but then you wouldn't need to use the contract, only a licence.
>
> Contract doesn't get you what IP licensing will get you, but that
> maybe the best you can do. Don't imagine that its just an
> implementation detail.
>
> --
> Francis Davey
>

Thankyou Francis for an erudite explanation. My example was the data stick
left on a train (popular a couple of years ago in the UK) and any person
picking up the data stick, who is then not bound by the contract.