[OSM-legal-talk] CC-BY-SA / Non-separatable combination of OSM+other

[Anthony]

On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 12:49 PM, Jonathan Harley <jon at spiffymap.net> wrote:
> On 02/02/11 17:05, Richard Fairhurst wrote:
>>
>> Jonathan Harley wrote:
>>>
>>> Clearly no rendering of any map is going to be unmodified in the
>>> sense of having identical sequences of 0s and 1s to the database,
>>> in which case there could be no such thing as a collective work
>>> based on a database, ever.
>>
>> For print, yes, that's about the size of it.
>
> I don't see what print's got to do with it.

Me neither.  I don't agree with using javascript and layers to try to
subvert the intent of the license.  I think Frederick is wrong when he
says "If the layers are separable
then you can have different licenses on each".

However...

> Any rendering, whether to paper
> or to a screen, changes the bits used;

One argument which could be used is that a rendering to a screen is
not "fixed", therefore it is not a derivative work.  For a US case
where this was successfully argued, see Galoob v. Nintendo
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Galoob_Toys,_Inc._v._Nintendo_of_America,_Inc.).

However, I believe there was a more recent ruling regarding website
"framing" which largely limited the application of Galoob v. Nintendo
to websites.

> if you take that as the meaning of
> modified, then there could be no "unmodified" renderings of any database,

I agree.

> which means in turn that there could be no collective works, so the
> conditions about being separate and independent would be irrelevant.

Did you read my earlier explanation?  The rendered map is released
under CC-BY-SA, and then *that* can be part of a collective work.

Alternatively, the database, as it exists on disk, is a collective
work with the other files on disk being other works which are part of
the collection.

There's no bar against collective works.