[Tagging] [OT] Licensing of information from websites
Andrew Guertin
andrew.guertin at uvm.edu
Tue Mar 31 11:51:53 UTC 2015
> 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
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