[OSM-legal-talk] A case for CT + CC-BY-SA

[Richard Fairhurst]

Ed Avis wrote:
> Interesting slip... of course I meant to say 'contacting'...

:)

> So are there cases where people are thumbing their nose at the licence, 
> but somehow if we used ODbL they would fall into line?

Couldn't tell you that without reading their minds! I honestly don't know
how many infringers are saying "let's use this data, they'll never know",
how many don't realise they're doing wrong, and how many just don't
understand the licence. It's probably a bit of all three. I slightly suspect
that ODbL's contract pillar makes it more enforceable than CC's
copyright-only approach (there are more contract lawyers than copyright
specialists). But even if that's true, and you'd need much finer minds than
mine to pronounce on it, that's not really my point.

Rather, it's this: in the absence of enforcement, good guys will comply with
the licence voluntarily, and bad guys won't.

Because ODbL's share-alike is more appropriate to data, it allows people to
create "produced works" - a freedom not afforded by CC-BY-SA. (It also
imposes additional requirements, of course, notably the "derivative source"
requirement.)

So let's assume neither licence is going to be fully enforced in every
single circumstance. (That's surely a given; there are only so many hours in
the day and so many things we can spot.) That means CC-BY-SA is restricting
the good guys, not the bad guys. ODbL, in the produced work case, is not
restricting the good guys. If you believe that produced works are a
worthwhile freedom to offer, and I do, then the current situation favours
the bad guys.

(Of course, if you follow this argument to its extreme, then you end up with
CC0+community norms... and though I was originally sceptical about that
approach, the way in which infringing use is spiralling beyond even our
ability to track it has made me rethink.)

cheers
Richard



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