[OSM-legal-talk] Copyright status of OSM map data - publishable memo for USA

[andrzej zaborowski]

On 8 December 2011 15:30, 80n <80n80n at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 8, 2011 at 1:20 PM, Ed Avis <eda at waniasset.com> wrote:
> * If the map is considered to be a compilation then all contributors, as
> joint authors, have joint copyright ownership.
>
> The hanging question in my mind is, if we assume, for the moment, that every
> contributor has joint copyright ownership, what rights would they actually
> have?  Do they have full and unrestricted copyright in the whole
> compilation?  Are they bound, or limited, by any of the terms or conditions
> that they agreed to when signing up?  Are they in any way limited by the
> CC-BY-SA license grant?  Would the Contributor Terms deny them any of their
> joint ownership rights?

OSM, Wikipedia and other projects having joint ownership by its
contributors could have quite important consequences, personally I
think it's very unlikely that this is right.  The cost to acquire
joint authorship would be low and the rights acquired very broad.  In
my view it would effectively be a loophole in copyright which would
allow any other compatibly (e.g. share-alike) licensed work to be
imported into the database and then relicensed under any other terms.
Anyone could become a joint copyright owner in any (freely licensed)
work they wish.

I remember Anthony on the osm-fork list has previously explained why
OSM is not a joint copyright work and what would be required for it to
be one, have the lawyers considered that reasoning?

Cheers