[OSM-legal-talk] PD declaration non binding?

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

TimSC wrote:
> Richard and Frederik observed that a database 
> right is probably owned by someone and that someone might be (partly) 
> OSMF. 

By the way, the database right exists - in certain jurisdictions like 
the EU - even if it is not asserted. That means, OSMF is likely to hold 
database rights over the database even today. But CC-BY-SA says nothing 
about granting somebody use of the database.

This means, and I'm not making this up, that some potential users have 
received legal advice against using OSM at this time because they 
percieve OSM to be protected by database law, and at the same time 
there's no license allowing you to use it under database law. Being 
allowed to use it from a copyright perspective, as done by CC-BY-SA, is 
not enough in the eyes of these lawyers.

Some localized versions of the CC-BY-SA were amended to include database 
law but insecurity remains about if and how that applies to OSM.

The problem has been addressed properly only in CC-BY-SA 3.0 (see 
http://wiki.creativecommons.org:8080/images/f/f6/V3_Database_Rights.pdf).

 > They were relatively optimistic that OSMF is nice and would not
> assert their rights, if any. Matija Nalis pointed out this is no guide 
> to their future behavior.

In this context, it is perhaps important to note that courts are not 
computers, and legal code is not program code. Just because it could be 
logically constructed that you cannot get your own contribution back 
without agreement, doesn't mean a judge will sign that off.

> We should also get an official 
> statement from OSMF that they will not assert their database rights on 
> our contributions.

Of course if OSMF were to say that they don't assert database right on 
any contribution made by PD people then that would be great. I am not 
sure if it is possible legally though, because the very nature of 
database right is to protect the whole database - once you deal with 
database right you don't deal with individual contributions or data 
items any more.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"