[OSM-legal-talk] feedback requested

[Frederik Ramm]

Robert,

    when I wrote that I

>> * treat any tags contributed by a non-agreeing mapper as harmless if
>>   these tags are not present any more in the current version

I did indeed mean that the edit is harmless if the *key* is not present 
any more.

This will still result in some harmless edits not being detected as 
such, but it is not as bad as you probably assumed it to be.

> In all these cases, the pertinent information in the new tagging can
> be derived entirely from the old tagging, without the use of any other
> source. So unless there's an explicit source tag for the new tagging,
> I think we would have to play it safe and regard the new tagging as a
> derived work of the old tagging.

This is indeed something we can discuss. My current scheme will sometims 
assume copyright where there isn't:

disagreer puts name=Fred's Bistro
agreer corrects to name=Robert's Bistro
-> way still flagged as "problematic" since the name tag was placed by 
disagreer and is still present (even if different value)

and will sometimes assume a harmless edit when it's not:

disagreer puts nmae=Fred's Bistro
agreer corrects to name=Fred's Bistro
-> way not flagged as "problematic" since tag placed by disagreer has 
been removed.

> Therefore if the original tags were
> added by a non-agreer, and an agreeing mapper made the type of change
> above, I don't think it can be argued that the object is now
> definitely clean. But if I've understood your proposed system, if
> those changed / altered tags were the only tags added by a non-agreer,
> the object would be automatically seen as clean.

Yes. I have no strong feelings either way; your argument is correct. 
However the question must be asked in how far you can claim copyright 
for facts that others have to extract from your prose. In my personal 
opinion, if someone wrote a note tag describing in colourful English 
what it is that he saw, and someone else then extracted proper tags from 
that text, then I'd be prepared to ascribe a copyright on the original 
prosaic note to the mapper but not copyright on the interpretation of 
that note made by someone else.

I'm sure it is an issue that we must watch, and maybe try and prepare a 
list with all cases affected, and make spot checks to get an idea of how 
many false positives/negatives we get.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"