[OSM-legal-talk] Using description from wikipedia text (Tom Gregorovic)

[Simon Poole]

It is simply a very complex subject with lots of grey and very little
clarity.

While nearly everybody will agree to "fact(s) are not copyrightable" in
the singular, in the plural it becomes tricky, from UK sweat of the brow
doctrine to EU database rights.

Now the WMF has consistently supported that facts are not copyrightable,
so there should not be any danger there, historically however OSM has
been careful about copying from wikipedia nonetheless because wikipedia
sources have been questionable. Likely this is not an issue in this
specific case.

Simon


Am 18.10.2014 21:00, schrieb Tom Lee:
> Tom, 
> 
> Licenses like CC and ODbL can only apply to copyrighted material, which
> must generally be a specific creative expression in a fixed medium. You
> can't copyright facts, nor opinions. 
> 
> Assuming you don't have some crazy natural language processing workflow
> in mind, you'll only be using the ideas expressed in that Wikipedia text
> rather than their specific expression. These are not protected by
> copyright nor any derived license, so you should be free to use them. I
> am not a lawyer--by all means listen to the wisdom of others on this
> list--but I believe that there shouldn't be any licensing considerations
> present.
> 
> (also) Tom
> 
> On Sat, Oct 18, 2014 at 8:00 AM, <legal-talk-request at openstreetmap.org
> <mailto:legal-talk-request at openstreetmap.org>> wrote:
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>        1. Using description from wikipedia text (Tom Gregorovic)
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>     ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
>     Message: 1
>     Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2014 16:15:50 +0200
>     From: Tom Gregorovic <tomtombo at gmail.com <mailto:tomtombo at gmail.com>>
>     To: legal-talk at openstreetmap.org <mailto:legal-talk at openstreetmap.org>
>     Subject: [OSM-legal-talk] Using description from wikipedia text
>     Message-ID:
>            
>     <CADETX0_BZrj3-iPj7iXHfYsb5PtnP754Mw=hsxfmMk-tcaiHKw at mail.gmail.com
>     <mailto:hsxfmMk-tcaiHKw at mail.gmail.com>>
>     Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> 
>     Dear all,
>     I just want to ask here, if it is legal and does not violate the OSM
>     license to map
>     mountain ranges according to text description of its borders from
>     wikipedia articles (e.g.
>     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelengora#Topography). I would combine it
>     with contours/relief map of OpenCycleMap and mentioned rivers and peaks
>     from OSM to approximately estimate area of the mountain range.
> 
>     Thanks,
> 
>     Tom Gregorovic
> 
> 
> 
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