[OSM-legal-talk] There is no copyright on way tags like street names

[andrzej zaborowski]

On 28 December 2011 01:49,  <FK270673 at fantasymail.de> wrote:
> Tomorrow, I am planning to walk along streets which have been marked in red on the OSM Inspector. Mainly for exercise, not only for legal reasons. These streets exist for about 100 years and everybody who walks there needs to add the same tags:
> highway=residential
> name=Parkallee
> maxspeed=30
> oneway=yes
> surface=cobblestone
> lit=yes
> There is no creativity in that, just the luck of being the first editor. In 2007, an anonymous editor was the lucky first one who noticed a street sign that has existed for almost 100 years now. In 2011, I have added some tags to v3. If I "created" (produced) a new way with a new number, but the same tags, it would be considered CLEAN. If I kept the old way for honouring history without legal obligation (as its tags are not covered by copyright), the same way with the same tags and the same last editor would be considered DIRTY.

Some reasons that I think it'd be risky to use that fact that there's
no copyright in some tags are:

* copyright works this way in many jurisdictions but in other
jurisdictions the creativity factor is less important and the amount
of work put into collection of data (sweat of the brow) is more
important, so effectively copyright works a little like database
rights in those places.  IIRC this includes UK.
* beside the copyright there are other intellectual property rights
that may apply.
* there may be some tags where there is some creativity, so if you
want to be safe you have to look at each piece of information
individually.

Cheers