[OSM-legal-talk] Implementing the licence change

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 01/19/2012 09:48 PM, ant wrote:
> So moving a way is not considered a modification of the way, but of the
> individual nodes.

Yes.

> And changing a way's references from ABC to ACB is not a modification at
> all, because no reference is created and no reference is removed. We
> cannot say that there was a modification in regard to any of the references.

No, the (relative) place of the reference in the list of references also 
counts. Changing the node list from 1,2,3 to 3,2,1 is a meaningful change.

> Next question, since according to your answers the approach is rather
> fine-grained, one might ask if single words within tags are
> copyrightable.

Our current approach is to take a tag value as a whole. This is 
certainly not always correct. Also, let me remind you that we don't 
judge what is copyrightable and what isn't; we're trying to do something 
that is *reasonable* with regard to copyright. This involves a lot of 
judgment calls.

> What about roles of relation members, are they separated
> from the members' references?

I'd treat them like a tag, so yes.

> Above all, we must not forget to consider whether the creation or
> modification of a single reference, a single role - i.e. anything we say
> to be atomic - can possibly constitute a creative work.

Some people have called for summarily force-relicensing the contribution 
of anyone who has added less than a certain amount of data.

Problem is, we're starting to get into the database realm. If you take 
the latest Harry Potter novel then no single word in it is 
copyrightable. But the combination of a significant portion of words is.

Our fine-grained approach (i.e. "let's simply try not to use *any* word 
from Harry Potter, that way we're sure that we won't infringe 
copyright") might be erring on the side of caution, but I'd prefer that 
over non-agreers raising a fuss after the license change because they 
spot something in there that isn't clean.

> I'm not demanding. I just want to help raising the bar of certainty, in
> order to prevent us from overseeing something.

Well if you find certainty, be sure to inform us since we'll be very 
interested ;)

Bye
Frederik

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