[OSM-legal-talk] ECJ confirmed 96/9/EG for printed maps

[Tobias Wendorff]

Hi Christoph,

Am So, 13.03.2016, 12:18 schrieb Christoph Hormann:
> On Sunday 13 March 2016, Tobias Wendorff wrote:
>
> I don't think there has ever been any serious doubt that printed maps
> can be databases.

What? There has been a lot of discussions about this in the last years.
Do you have access to "Kartographische Nachrichten"? I could link you
to many blogs and professional discussions. Since the articles are
in the German language, they might be useless for most readers on this
list.

> I also don't see any immediate consequences of this for the ODbL and
> OSM coming from that.

See below.

> It has long been a widely accepted notion that if you use an ODbL
> produced work as a database, i.e. you extract semantic information from
> it and use it in a database-like way, you are subject to the
> derivative/collective database regulations of the ODbL, meaning you
> cannot whitewash ODbL data from share-alike by generating a produced
> work and reverse engineering data from it again.

I totally understand your expaination and I often used the same words
to describe ODbL. But the OSMF should release a notification to clearly
state the difference between other produced works (like artwork based
on OpenStreetMap) and printed maps.

For example, up to now, section 4.5 applied also to maps:
"Using this Database, a Derivative Database, or this Database as part of a
Collective Database to create a Produced Work does not create a Derivative
Database for purposes of Section 4.4;"

But this isn't valid anymore, since they're classified as (a kind of)
deritative database by the highest court, we've got in Europe.

So, what's he bad thing for OSM now? I'm seeing a problem in terms of
4.5 and OSMF's "horizontal layers". This section isn't valid for printed
maps anymore. So the community guidelines should be revised to fit to
ECJ's interpretation.

Best regards,
Tobias