[OSM-legal-talk] legal FAQ license
David Groom
reviews at pacific-rim.net
Thu Oct 14 00:33:37 BST 2010
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Richard Weait" <richard at weait.com>
> To: "Licensing and other legal discussions."
> <legal-talk at openstreetmap.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, October 13, 2010 11:32 PM
> Subject: Re: [OSM-legal-talk] legal FAQ license
>
>
>
> 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.
>
My position would be simple.
If a user has not agreed to the relicencing then his/her edits should not
remain in the database after any switchover.
This has a number of advantages.
1) its morally correct.
2) its simple to understand
3) its easier to code for
Now some people will argue that "there some OSM contributions or edit
that..is so insignificant that it need never be considered for copyright or
database right". Well if it is so insignificant then not including it in
the database after any switchover will have an insignificant effect, and so
surely no one will worry if its not there. If people worry about the
absence of the data then that surely lends weight to the argument that it
was "significant" in the first place. Or can the data be insignificant
enough not to warrant any copyright protection, yet at the same time
significant enough that it should be left in the database.
David
> 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.
>
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