[OSM-legal-talk] license change effect on un-tagged nodes

[Stephan Knauss]

Hi, 

John Smith writes: 

> On 4 July 2011 22:44, M∡rtin Koppenhoefer <dieterdreist at gmail.com> wrote:
>> IMHO the node position is never a derived work when it is updated. So
>> for the case of the untagged node (if isolated an not part of a way,
>> i.e. unlikely) we could keep the whole object.
> 
> The position of nodes are often derived from the position of other nodes.

so assume the nodes are part of a way that is not available under new CTs. 
The mapper who agreed did not only move part of the nodes replacing their 
information with new one and confirming the existence. He also adds new 
nodes in the middle of the way to have it look eg more smooth. 

You suggest, that because the way is not clearly licensed all nodes of that 
way have to be deleted, ignoring the individual license state of the nodes 
because they could be derived? 

I'm not a lawyer but as this is legal talk I'm sure someone can explain why 
this is the case. I always thought that to claim a copyright you need some 
minimum threshold of originality.
OSM is a project about data collecting not about art. I have serious doubts 
that the individual "painting" of the shape of a road is high enough to 
claim a copyright. So why should a single node do? From the original 
created node is nothing left but an automatically generated id for which 
only the server could claim a copyright for the high creative effort of 
generating the id. 

The way containing the nodes is replaced by a new way (different shape) 
that is licensed as CC-BY-SA as it is a derived work. Only the shape was 
modified. The original author could still hold parts of copyrights (if they 
exist). 

But back to the question: what about the nodes? 

Stephan