[Osmf-talk] OSM and open data global aerial/sat images

Jaak Laineste jaak at nutiteq.com
Tue Jan 16 08:22:36 UTC 2018


> Use in OSM would maybe create a derivative work and be subject to share alike, or maybe extracting “facts” (which are not copyrightable) doesn’t fall under the license anyway.
> 
> In the second case, we could maybe use any imagery regardless of licensing, as long as the owner doesn’t forbid it.

Creating digital vector map from imagery (or from any other sources) is obviously much more than mechanical extracting/documenting facts, there are a lot of subjective and creative decisions involved: what features to map, where to map, which tags to use and add, what should be shape of the feature (where exactly put nodes), what sources to be used as ‘ground truth’ etc. I would say it is much more a new creative work than e.g. taking a photograph. 

Another interesting question is whether taking photograph of a man-made creation (e.g. building, sculpture, clothing, painting etc) is creating derivative from another’s work. In some countries (EU?) it is legally so, therefore even if you take picture of a building and possibly sell it, you need to share some money to the architect. There is some logic behind it, even if it sounds stupid and usually impractical. It seems to me that aerial/satellite imagery should then also obey rights of architects whose buildings are photographed from the top, and there are land art creators who are specialised to this. So, if someone has created really interesting building shape, then your derivate drawing for digital map could be illegal copy of it.

Jaak


More information about the osmf-talk mailing list