[Osmf-talk] Can we untick the Public domain checkbox from our initial choice done during OSM sign up?

[Christoph Hormann]

On Wednesday 02 October 2019, Kathleen Lu wrote:
> That use may or may not be infringing of third party rights (either
> copyright or database), but it is not a legal requirement that a
> person must either obtain a sublicense passed through OSMF or not
> involve OSMF at all (even physically). For example, suppose that a
> user extracted only the data associated with the TIGER import in the
> US from the OSM database and discarded the rest. That data is public
> domain. It's inclusion in OSM did not change the fact that no
> rightsholder has any rights to it. There is no legal requirement that
> a user must go to the original TIGER source. The user does not

It seems to me that we have a very fundamental difference in
understanding of the practical implications of database law or the
fundamental structure of the OSM data.

I find your idea of a persistent nature of PD in the way that PD data
retains its identity as a data set free of any rights when being
processed and combined with other data intriguing.  It would for example
mean that i could probably use a lot of data products generated from PD
data (think for example of Google or Mapbox satellite image layers at
low zoom levels) as a data source (in a similar way as your
hypothetical TIGER data user could use OSM as a source for TIGER data)
without these companies being able to prevent me from doing that on
legal grounds because the data in that interpretation continues to be
PD data.

In other words:  I don't think this interpretation works and i also
don't think it would be in the interest of the typical OSM data user
for this interpretation to work.

> > > In any event, why would there be any "damage for the OSMF" in any
> > > circumstance, in the hypothetical case of a contributor who did
> > > not intend PD or did not have authority to contributo PD vs a
> > > data user?
> >
> > I do not quite understand that question - could you rephrase?
>
> You said that "So unless a mapper has kept a
> separate record of their contributions before uploading to the OSMF
> servers and licensed that to the data user or when we are talking
> about a PD data import i see no basis for the claim for there to be
> less damage for the OSMF in a court case about use in violation of
> the ODbL." My questions are: Why would there be any damage for OSMF
> at all? Why would OSMF be a party to the case?

I can't follow your line of thought now.  You were the one to claim
that when a data use in violation of the ODbL involves data mapped by a
mapper who has checked the PD box that this might have an effect on
damages the OSMF could claim ("it would lower the possible damages that
could be claimed").

My statement was not for there to be any specific kind of damage that
could be claimed - it was that i think there is no basis for assuming
there to be a difference in that regard between a specific subset of
OSM data being entered by a mapper with the PD statement or not.

--
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/