[OSM-legal-talk] Warning about not mapping military areas

[Tom Hummel]

Hello list,

some things come to mind

1) The Foundation is bound by laws that govern its own jurisdiction. (obligatory?) Other laws shall be respected to the extend the Foundation chooses to. (facultative?)

2) There are 3rd party rights,  that the Foundation observes globally. Under its Contributor Terms¹ the Foundation: “respect[s] the intellectual property rights of others.”

3) I have found nothing else at first glance. I have also found no rules concerning classified material under facultative law.  There is a a catch-all element that allows the Foundation to remove “incompatible” data¹. I would argue that this is mostly concerned with license compatibility or grossly misplaced contend which could not be viewed as a contribution to a map at all.

Provided disputed data is not protected under some intellectual property right (I see us pretty deep into fanatasy-land already), we probably might not want to burden the Foundations guardians with becoming the wikileaks-of-maps.

I do not think OSM or the Foundation should intervene and forbid the mapping of military installations, that are publicly announced and quite probably public knowledge. The argument to disallow mapping them is a very abstract threat or danger. There was no concrete way stated in which a publicly known military base would be actually vulnerable through its presence on a public map.  No specific risk was named nor assessed. The abstract possibility of unknown danger is no ground to intervene, no matter how afraid or concerned one is. Such rules would be a) irrational and b) probably violating constitutional rights and the rule of law in many democratic states. Privately you may behave as irrational as you want to, but to justify common rules there’s only reason we have. Unless there is a specific danger or a substantiated request by an recognized authority, we should not intervene.

4) I agree with the notion, that the purpose of the Foundation or OSM is /not/ to advise as to possible legalities that do not concern the laws the Foundation observes (see 1) Such an advise (i.e. a warning) could be viewed as an endorsement of such laws or a certain reading. Given the multiplicity of laws around the world and the diversity of opinions about them such advice would overstretch OSMs cause greatly. I have serious doubts if any agreement could be reached about the contend of any advice.

5) I would even go so far and claim that the general advice to “stick to the law when mapping” is contrary to OSMs cause. Because OSM is about freedom. Freedom is what allows us agency. In other words: freedom allows you to state yourself as the subject and originator of our own deeds. I consider OSM to be an exercise in freedom, as sports are an exercise in equality, fairness and the principle of achievement. OSM is an endeavour to identify what freedom may look like, if taken seriously. Since Kant this freedom includes the freedom to reject a law, if considered unjust. His formulation of autonomy concludes that rational agents are bound to the moral law by their own will². Kant did not prove and did not claim to have found the free will within human beings, he states it as an aspiration, as something we wants to believe in, to view ourselves as the makers of our own history, not its victim or bystander. GWF Hegel even goes so far as to claim, without the presumption of the freedom of others, we are unable to perceive ourselves as free. To be truly free, OSM must respect the autonomy of its contributors as long as OSM itself is not in violation of the law it is bound to and its own rules.

Thanks

Tom

¹ https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Contributor_Terms
² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kantian_ethics