[OSM-legal-talk] License Cut-over and critical mass

Anthony osm at inbox.org
Sat Jul 24 14:56:24 BST 2010


On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 8:44 AM, Rob Myers <rob at robmyers.org> wrote:

> On Fri, 23 Jul 2010 23:33:59 +0200, andrzej zaborowski <balrogg at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > However, the end result is effectively the same: with no copyright
> > statement, the default is "All rights reserved", so the only way the
> > finder can do anything whatsoever with the work is go to www.osm.org
> > and establish a contract.
>
> Assuming the copyright (or database right) applies in that jurisdiction.
>
> In the absence of those, there are no rights to reserve.
>
> Which is where contract law comes in (in theory).


If you've been following this thread, the whole point is that *contract law
won't work in the absence of copyright law or database right*.  The contract
is only binding on OSM users, if anyone.  It doesn't bind anyone who finds
the database on a bus (or, more likely, downloads it through a P2P
filesharing service).

Now's the cue for SteveC to say 1) but commercial providers use contract
law; and 2) I've got a lawyer who doesn't like you and lawyers are never
wrong.

Well, 1) commercial providers don't make it easy to download the entire
database (or they make it so incredibly expensive that there are very few
people to police); furthermore, it's likely that they use some sort of
watermarking on those few high profile users who *do* have access to the
entire database; a few mistakes unique to the individual can catch them if
they leak the data, and these are likely to be high net worth corporations
who can be sued for enormous sums for the leak; none of this works with OSM;
and 2) feel free to have them explain in detail what's wrong with this
analysis.
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