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

Anthony osm at inbox.org
Thu Nov 18 18:03:33 GMT 2010


On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 12:25 PM, Ed Avis <eda at waniasset.com> wrote:
>>Exactly. And the copyright (or DB right) in the original data is an
>>entirely separate issue.
>
> Yes - it's quite separate - you do not receive any licence to the original data
> but you do get a licence to all copyright interest in the small bit of map
> you received

As you have correctly pointed out with regard to the contributor
terms, you aren't allowed to grant a license on someone else's
copyright without permission.  So a license from, say, MapQuest,
granting you permission to use the tiles under CC-BY-SA, only covers
MapQuest's copyright, which only extends to the material contributed
by MapQuest, not to the preexisting material already in the work.

> since you have not even looked at the original data you cannot
> be infringing copyright in that (similar to 'clean room' rules)

Depends to what extent map data is copyrightable.  If I write a score,
and someone else records a piano rendition of the score, and a third
person converts that recording back to a score, that score is still
copyrighted by the original author.

Clean room rules involve using only uncopyrightable factual data.
There are arguments on both sides as to whether or not tracing a map
constitutes copying only uncopyrightable facts (personally I lean
strongly toward the side that says it does, but I wouldn't be willing
to bet my business on that without receiving substantial legal
advice).

In any case, clean room rules don't apply to database rights.  So if
you live in a jurisdiction with database rights, you can pretty much
throw away that argument.



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