[OSM-legal-talk] Best license for future tiles?

[Rob Myers]

On 11/18/2010 02:58 PM, Ed Avis wrote:
>
> Yes, that's right, but I also wanted to ask about the other requirement that
> at times has been ascribed to the ODbL: that you cannot reverse-engineer the
> produced map tiles, so they cannot be fairly described as CC-BY-SA or CC-BY
> or indeed anything other than ODbL or 'all rights reserved'.

They can fairly be described as CC because you can exercise all the 
rights that the CC licence grants you over the CC-licenced work.

If you use a CC licenced work to recreate another, non-CC-licenced work, 
for example if you rearrange it to make the score and lyrics to a Lady 
Gaga song then record that, the work that you have "reverse engineered" 
still breaks copyright despite the fact that you have used a CC licenced 
work to make it.

Which if your theory is correct means that *no* CC-BY-SA or CC-BY work 
can fairly be described as anything other than ARR. ;-)

>> Systematically extracting data out of Produced Works to recreate the whole
>> database, or a substantial part of it, would trigger the Share Alike
>> obligation.
>
> Myself, I don't see how this can be enforceable; the ODbL licence text can say

It's enforcable for much the same reason that if you send ten of your 
friends a few seconds of a Lady Gaga song and they put them back 
together to make the original track, whether they realise it or not the 
copyright on it hasn't magically vanished.

> whatever it likes but if someone has received some tiles under CC-BY then they
> have not agreed to the ODbL at all (whether or not they are 'notified' of it).
> But I am not a lawyer and Jordan H. is.

Their agreement to the ODbL is irrelevant (except for the contract part).

> As a personal view, I don't like this no-reverse-engineering provision at all.
> It means making proprietary map tiles is possible, but CC-licensed ones is not.

It does not, for the reasons I have given.

And do look at Jordan's "Secret Sauce" explanation again.

- Rob.