[OSM-legal-talk] Database and its contents

[Anthony]

On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 6:15 AM, Ed Avis <eda at waniasset.com> wrote:
> Rob Myers <rob at ...> writes:
>>What seems to throw people when we are talking about geodata in a
>>database rather than a collection of poems/photos/songs is the
>>granularity of the contents. But it doesn't really matter whether we
>>regard points, ways, uploads or any other unit as the content of the
>>database. The content of the database is any pieces of data smaller than
>>the entire database.
>
> Anything - so a planet dump of Germany is the 'content'?  Or if that is too
> much, what about a smaller extract the size of your neighbourhood?

Has this point been addressed?  The way I see it, there are only two
possible interpretations of the DbCL license grant.  1) That it
affects all the contents, in whatever size the extract may be, and the
only thing that is *not* covered by the DbCL is the selection of the
contents, the metadata (e.g. table column names), and the indexes.  2)
That it affects only tiny extracts of data which are already public
domain anyway.

Is it okay to use the data to create a CC-BY-SA map of Germany?  Is it
okay to use that very same data to create, and release under CC-BY-SA,
an XML (or PBF) description of that very same map?  What about an SVG
map?

One key provision of the DbCL seems to be this.  The DbCL "does not
cover any Database Rights, Database copyright, or contract over the
Contents as part of the Database."  As I'm in a jurisdiction without
Database Rights, and don't plan to accept the ODbL contract, I'm
mainly concerned with what the part about "Database copyright" means.

Maybe it covers the selection of the contents, except to the extent
that the selection is obvious ("all roads", "all water features", "all
points of interest").  Maybe it covers the metadata and indexes,
except that this is already covered by the GPL license on the Rails
Port.  So most importantly for me is the question as to whether or not
it covers the copyright, if any, on the ways themselves.

If it does, if the copyright, if any, on the ways themselves, is
public domain, then I don't see how there are any restrictions at all
for people in a non-database-rights jurisdiction who refuse to accept
the ODbL.