[OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] Unsetting CT flag

[Anthony]

On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 9:37 AM, Andreas Perstinger
<andreas.perstinger at gmx.net> wrote:
> As I understand it, there must be someone who "owns" the database because
> otherwise you can't defend it legally. Would you prefer a single person?

On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 11:07 AM, Andreas Perstinger
<andreas.perstinger at gmx.net> wrote:
> On 2010-12-08 15:46, Anthony wrote:
>>
>> I'm not sure what you mean by "owns the database".  The copyright?
>> The database right?  Something else?
>
> I mean the database right. For the european database directive (which is a
> protection for the investment into the database and not for the data
> ("Leistungsschutzrecht" in german)) you need someone who owns the database.

Then no one should own the database right.  The OSMF certainly should
not, because a very small portion of contributors are members of the
OSMF.  And it's not really any better for the OSM community as a whole
to own the database right, especially under a "one person, one vote"
scenario.  Why should two people who contribute one node a month be
able to override the wishes of one person who contributes 10 million
nodes a month?  So the only viable solution, IF the database right
cannot be held by the individual contributors, is to waive the
database right altogether.  This also has the advantage of creating a
situation where people in some jurisdictions don't have advantages to
people in other jurisdictions.

In any case, who would you say owns the database right *right now*?
How do the CTs change this?

>> Who "owns" Wikipedia?
>
> I think there is a big difference between a project like Wikipedia (where
> the single texts are copyright protected) and OSM (where most/all of the
> data is not copyright protected).

Agreed.  But that doesn't answer my question.