[OSM-legal-talk] Someone ought to do something ... dealing with violations of OSM's geodata license

[Frederik Ramm]

Mike,

> There are now 1 to 2 reports every month of folks violating OSM's 
> license by using OSM's data or maps without any or without adequate 
> CC-BY-SA attribution and they take several weeks to fix on average.  

I agree that this should not burden the LWG.

We have this community-run "lacking proper attribution" web site which 
sadly got off to a bit of a wrong start, looking more like a witch hunt 
than a place for complaints, with vigilantes actively trawling the web 
for anything that might look like a license violation.

But basically I think this is something the community should do; and if 
they aren't interested then it shouldn't be done. I firmly believe that 
OSMF should *not* routinely get involved, and if ever OSMF were to 
involve lawyers then only in an extremely high-profile case (major 
mapping provider uses OSM without telling or so).

Anything else must be run by the (ideally local) community. I think all 
that is needed is a clear statement from OSMF saying that they don't 
feel responsible for chasing up violators, and outlining a suggested 
community process for dealing with the "problem" without being an 
embarassement to the project.

Personally I think that "name and shame" should be the utmost we do with 
violators, and legal steps should neither be threatened nor initiated 
except in very grave circumstances.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"