[OSM-legal-talk] feedback requested

[Simon Poole]

Am 21.12.2011 14:15, schrieb Ed Avis:
> Simon Poole<simon at ...>  writes:
>
>> If you take an existing tainted way and move it they way is still going
>> to go, so what is your point again?
> Are we not talking about the following situation:
>
>     - mapper A (who has agreed to the CTs) creates a way
>     - mapper B (who has not agreed) adjusts the way's geometry, creating
>       some new nodes
>     - mapper C (who has agreed) adjusts the position of those nodes
>
> In this case the third edit would have to be reverted because the new position
> of the nodes is still based on work contributed by mapper B, even though they
> have been moved since he created them.

IMHO no, if we assume that C is editing in good faith and actually 
improving the geometry (we might want to have a minimum distance 
requirement for a move to be considered ok).
>
>> You are using derived in a common language sense, please argue why this
>> is a derived work in the IP/legal sense (choose any jurisdiction you
>> would like).
> That is a question for lawyers.  I do not know whether it is a derived work under
> copyright law or sui generis database rights.  Normally the approach of the
> project is to not import data from sources that do not have permission, and if it
> gets into the database, to delete it (reverting the changeset) as soon as
> possible.  We don't get into the business of judging whether we might get away
> with including it anyway, because we are not lawyers.  So we have to use the
> common-sense judgement of whether one piece of work builds on another.
>
In general we have assumed that for example tracing from aerial imagery 
and similar sources does not create a derived work in which the creator 
of the imagery has rights (not that I necessarily agree with that). The 
requirement has always been that we have had permission to trace at the 
point in time that the tracing happened (forgetting about special cases 
like NearMap) .  The argument of the proponents that IP exists at all in 
ways and similar objects has been that the tracing (regardless of 
source) was an expression of creativity and that that expresses itself 
in, among other properties,  the placement of nodes where it is found 
aesthetically pleasing.

So why is one a derived work and the other not?

Simon