[OSM-legal-talk] Potential huge License violation - anyone know anything about this?

[SteveC]

That's actually a pretty bad way to resolve the issue, since the publisher is liable for damages and you can absolve them of that and make things far worse by individually contacting or publishing these infringements pre-emptively. Unless you have a law degree.

Individuals enforcing infringement cases will long term be a big mess because

1. of the above (you really have to have a clue about litigation and copyright law). If you send a infringement notice to them, then they can go to a judge and ask that the accusation be nullified. If you don't show up to the hearing, you lose and so can everyone else in OSM and they can be exempted from further prosecution. That's just one thing that can go wrong. Honestly - you need to know what you're doing.

2. it will give people the idea that the project is dangerous IP-wise because any Tom, Dick or Harry on the internet might try and claim infringement. I don't think we want to give that impressions.

3. it's nice to assume everyone has good intentions and doesn't mean to infringe. But that's not actually very likely once it hits the desk of the infringers legal team. They will make a bunch of legal assessments and also weigh the cost of settlement (financial and PR) and may well decide that a fight is better for the bottom line and negative PR on blogs is worth it, or means that we are unreasonable. So, it's best to start these things as a backchannel via a lawyer.


Anyway. WSGR, our counsel have offered to train those who volunteer to work on these cases. As soon as the LWG is able to start this, I suggest a bunch of people sign up for that training. It'll most likely be remote - a bunch of slides/documents and a phone call or two. That way we will have the right skills to do this stuff.

have fun,

Steve Coast / stevecoast.com




On Jun 2, 2010, at 2:32 PM, Grant Slater wrote:
> On 2 June 2010 21:03, Phil Monger <philm94 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> So I was looking through some cycle books, as you do, when I came across
>> this one (i've hosted the images 3rd party and avoided HTML, if
>> they don't work let me know. I had to snap them on the iPhone - so sorry for
>> the lack of a close focus!!) :
> 
> Hi Phil
> 
> This has already been address and the publisher has promised to make a
> correction.
> 
> Complaint:
> http://compton.nu/2010/05/how-not-to-credit-openstreetmap/
> 
> Resolution:
> http://compton.nu/2010/05/well-done-new-holland-pubishers/
> 
> The current edition does have a tiny attribution at the back inside
> cover if I recall.
> 
> Regards
> Grant
> 
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