[OSM-legal-talk] [talk-au] Statement from nearmap.com regarding submission of derived works from PhotoMaps to OpenStreetMap

[Francis Davey]

2011/6/18 John Smith <deltafoxtrot256 at gmail.com>:
>
> Nice try, but you also have to take into account the fact that the
> ODBL disclaims a lot of copyright on the data since it deems the
> database a composition of facts.
>

The ODbL states that it licences any copyright (or neighbouring
rights) in the database (at 2.1(a)).

So, for example, if I create a list of "1000 works of literature you
should read before you die" and expend considerable intellectual and
creative effort putting it together, that database is likely to
attract copyright (probably in any common law jurisdiction outside the
EU and certainly in the EU).

I can licence the database under CC-BY-SA or ODbL. Both licences would
permit the reuse of my list, though the contents of my list (which
might be whole poems or their titles, depending on how I have
organised it) might be literary works that are themselves protected by
copyright. When licensing under CC-BY-SA I'd have to make sure I'd say
that it was only the copyright in the database I was licensing (or
find myself at risk of authorising infringement of the in-copyright
poems or their titles in the list).

Now ODbL seems to think (in 2.1(a)) that copyright in a database will
tend to subsist in schema elements. It includes "data entry and output
sheets" which surely cannot be a part of a database as defined in
clause 1.0, or at least its not clear the definition covers such
things. My reading of article 1(1)(3) of the database directive is
that such things are certainly not intended to be thought of as a part
of a database within the meaning of the directive.

Now, equally, I could have written a list of (x, y) co-ordinates
which, because I am an odd sort of an artist, when plotted produce a
work of art. I just happen to compose that way (this is, I understand,
how one of Simon Patterson's works depicting an airline network was
moved from gallery to gallery). The list of (x, y) co-ordinates is
clearly a graphical/artistic work and also a database and subject to
copyright as both, but also, in the EU, subject to database right.

Now, if I licence the assembled graphical work under CC-BY-SA then I
almost certainly impliedly licence any infringement of the database
right there might be copying that work (in compliance with CC-BY-SA)
so there's no problem there.

I'm struggling to see what (if any) problem there is with all this.
Some of the questions being asked don't make sense.

-- 
Francis Davey