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

[Francis Davey]

On 21 March 2011 14:53, David Groom <reviews at pacific-rim.net> wrote:
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Collinson" <mike at ayeltd.biz>
> To: "Licensing and other legal discussions." <legal-talk at openstreetmap.org>
> Sent: Sunday, March 20, 2011 4:23 PM
> Subject: [OSM-legal-talk] Someone ought to do something ... dealing with
> violations of OSM's geodata license
>
>>
>> - A member of the OSMF board or LWG  takes up the particular issue. This
>> depends very much on personal enthusiasm. It requires initial tact - most
>> instances are neglect/cannot be bothered rather than purely wilful. It
>> requires persistance and follow-up,  - we generally get an "oh we will fix
>> it immediately" ... and then they don't. It requires careful coordination
>> within the OSM/OSMF community to provide a united front. It may require
>> research - for example, how exactly should a TV ad provide a CC-BY-SA
>> atttibution? And lastly, future cases may involve bumping up to formal legal
>> help and legal action.  Not easy for one person to do.

I certainly agree that taking legal action should be low on any list.
It can be expensive, risky and time consuming.

If you want to prevent unattributed uses and so on, having a dedicated
team of volunteers to work out the best approaches (and different
approaches will work in different ways in different circumstances) is
probably best. Whether you want to do that is another matter.

[snip]

>
> Ignoring the practicalities above, once someone has agreed to the CT's they
> effectively assign the majority of their rights to OSMF in respect of data
> held by OSMF, with that assignment of rights I question from a legal point
> of view who but the OSMF are actually able to follow up legal breaches.

They don't assign their rights. The CT's don't operate like that. This
isn't just a pedantic observation, but quite important when it comes
to enforcement in the UK (it will differ in other jurisdictions of
course). Here the copyright owner or owners must eventually join in
any claim, although a licensee may, in certain circumstances, be able
to obtain interim relief such as an injunction. There are ways around
this with the permission of the court, but it would require some care
to bring a claim.

There's also a possibility that some IP is jointly owned or (in the
case of the database right) owned by OSMF.

Certainly if someone contributes substantial IP to OSM they don't lose
the right to sue for an infringement of that IP. That is why talking
of an "assignment" is misleading.

-- 
Francis Davey