[OSM-legal-talk] Importing from an application's user generated content

[Michael Ledford]

On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 6:25 PM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
> Share-alike means that you have to make your derived database available
> under ODbL on request. If you regularly make sure your database contents
> go into OSM then you could potentially say, if such a request occurs,
> "it's all in OSM", but it would be legally clearer if your database was
> simply available for download from your server somewhere.

I thought this might be an interesting approach as I actually read
about it in the wiki at
<http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/License#What_do_you_mean_by_Share-Alike.3F>
where it states:

"In other words, if you improve our data and then distribute it, you
need to share your improvements with the general public at no charge.
A painless way to do that is to contribute your improvements directly
back to OpenStreetMap."

> Legal concerns could arise if your users, while *claiming* to make you
> the owner of whatever they contribute, don't actually have the *right*
> to do that (because e.g. they copied the data from a copyrighted source).

In an application where the user is actually visiting the POI I'm not
concerned that they have copied the data from a copyrighted source.

> Worst case, if the data you upload contains copyrighted material and we
> cannot easily enough identify which of your data is tainted and which is
> ok, then *all* data you uploaded might have to be removed again.

And this is why I am asking as it seems like this might be a good
method to improve some data inside of OSM while also gaining benefit
from it myself. In this I'm trying to help OSM and not hurt it. It's a
shame that one could potentially improve the data and not be able to
actually contribute that back to OSM. I don't foresee people obtaining
an OSM account so that the POIs could be uploaded directly.

So am I to assume that I should stay away from this line of thinking?

Cheers,
Michael