[Tagging] [OT] Licensing of information from websites

[Andrew Guertin]

> I wonder that nobody so far did spell out a warning about adding
> information from websites. The simple key website=* is ok, but every
> information like address, prizes and all the amenities is most of the
> time not usable due to license problems.
>
> cu fly

I'm pushing this offtopic and this discussion should probably go to 
legal-talk (I've set reply-to there), but that paragraph does not match 
my understanding of copyright law (IANAL, etc.).

My understanding is that a piece of information like an address or phone 
number is a fact and is ineligible for copyright protection. If the fact 
has been collected into a database, though, the database is in some 
countries eligible for protection under a separate form of IP.

Thus if you go to a business' website to find their phone number and put 
it in OSM, everything is okay, but if you go to a phone book to find it, 
that's not okay and you could impact use of OSM in jurisdictions that 
have database protections.

--Andrew