[OSM-legal-talk] Does importing data give you a copyright?

[Anthony]

On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 7:15 PM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
>   with my eyes firmly on the upcoming license change, I wonder how we are
> going to deal with people who have imported data which is suitable from a
> license point of view, but whom we cannot reach or who do not agree to the
> CT.

My understanding was that the OSMF position is that all contributions
fall into that category, and that the request to relicense was merely
out of courtesy.

On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 8:07 PM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
> The question is, how much do I have to do with that file before I can
> legally (or, if someone fancies going into that, morally) claim a copyright.

This basically boils down to the same question of when, if ever, and
to what extent, is OSM copyrightable.  My answer being sometimes, to
some extent, in some jurisdictions, probably.

As I've said before, I think the only way this relicensing can be done
cleanly and universally is by starting over with a blank database.
Then you can go directly to the sources of the imports.