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

[ce-test, qualified testing bv - Gert Gremmen]

On Fri, 8 Jul 2011 02:18:46 -0700 (PDT), Richard Fairhurst wrote:
> Maarten Deen wrote:
>> Turn restrictions, maximum speeds, oneway streets, even the value
>> of the highway tag is not a geographical fact.
>
> Sure they are.
>
> If I walk about 20 yards from my front door, there's a "no entry" 
> sign at a
> certain lat/long. If I walk a bit further along, facing the other 
> way,
> there's a "one way" sign at another lat/long. From those two 
> geographical
> facts[1], I can deduce that a particular road is oneway. Therefore I 
> tagged
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/1058809 with oneway=yes.
>
> Same goes for turn restrictions, maximum speeds, and certainly over 
> here,
> highway tags. The one major exception in the OSM database is 
> administrative
> boundaries.

IMHO that's stretching the "geographic" bit very far. Sure, the fact 
that there is a sign is a geographic fact, but the fact that that 
signifies something for the road or object that's there is just 
convention.
And highway value is certainly not geographic. There is nothing about 
the location or presence of a road that makes it "motorway" or 
"tertiary". That is only because it is designated as such. That 
designation can change anytime, but by doing so you don't change the 
geography of the place.

----------
[<GG>] But these are facts, this copyright discussion is not about 
geographic facts only, and no list of facts can be copyrighted,
just the method of organization of facts can be copyrighted.

The discussion is also about if the inevitable limitation/deviation from
reality
(be it geographic or nomenclatural or other facts), that a geodatabase 
such as OSM  represents, can be characterized as creative work.

My opinion is that as we are not intentionally deviating from reality
with the intent of being creative, it cannot be a "creative work" and so
not
be copyrighted. This has been supported by a number of courts in
4-5 countries among Austria (and I think Netherlands, not sure)

Some of us think that any human activity on data results in 
creative work that can be copyrighted.

Note that this is just about the database, not about the resulting
tiles or printed maps.
--------

Regards
Gert

Regards,
Maarten


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