[OSM-legal-talk] Copyright Assignment and ability to sue

[Ed Avis]

Gervase Markham <gerv-gmane at ...> writes:

>From the Contributor Terms:
>
>"You hereby grant to OSMF and any party that receives Your Contents a
>worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable license
>to do any act that is restricted by copyright over anything within the
>Contents, whether in the original medium or any other."
>
>If the OSMF has the right to do "any act that is restricted by
>copyright" then they effectively have a joint copyright ownership.
>Except perhaps that they can't sue for copyright violation, although (as
>the article notes) that's not usually a big factor.

That is an interesting point.

If map data is covered by copyright, then without copyright assignment
the ability of the OSMF to enforce share-alike is weakened.

On the other hand, if map data is not covered by copyright, then the
assignment of copyright licence to the OSMF is not necessary.

Either way, having a blanket grant-of-licence in the contributor terms
without actually assigning the copyright seems a suboptimal choice.

-- 
Ed Avis <eda at waniasset.com>