[OSM-legal-talk] legal FAQ license

[Richard Weait]

On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 4:05 PM, David Groom <reviews at pacific-rim.net> wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard Weait" <richard at weait.com>
>>
>> David, what would you suggest?  Can you see a situation where
>> discarding the data is not required in the case of non-response?
>
> My first suggestion would be that the wiki is corrected so that it does not
> contradict itself.

[ ... ]

Let's improve that wiki page.  Let's clarify exactly which edits need
permission to be promoted to ODbL.

>> For example, a 'bot that does nothing but fix spelling in keys,
>> changes Amenity to amenity, but the 'bot does not answer the mandatory
>> relicensing question.  Should we revert their changes back to Amenity?
>>
>> As another example, a user adds one POI, perhaps their business, to
>> OSM and nothing else.  They never respond.  Do we remove the data?
>>
>> As another example, an editor makes many mass edits around the planet,
>> arbitrarily changing keys/values to match their recent wiki postings,
>> then answers "no" to relicensing.
>>
>> What do you suggest is the right answer for each of these situations?
>> Would your answer have universal support from the community?  Can you
>> create some other situations and responses that will find universal
>> support from the community?

Is there some OSM contribution or edit that is so mechanical and/or so
insignificant that it need never be considered for copyright or
database right?  If so how do we recognize it?  How do we recognize
the boundary between insignificant and significant?  Copyright law
suggests that there is a minimum size for a work to gain copyright
protection. It's my understanding that a book title is too short for
copyright protection, while a chapter, page or even paragraph would
gain copyright protection.

European Database Directive suggests that there is some insignificant
amount of data that can be used from an otherwise database right
protected database without violating that database right.

Where do you suggest that these lines be drawn?  Take a position.
Let's run your ideas up the flagpole and see if we can get the
community to salute.