[talk-au] tagging the source of edits

[Ben Last]

On 29 July 2010 09:37, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

> Heh, I'm glad you do, because it's far from obvious to me. Street
> names are not copyright. And certainly the copyright holders of street
> names are not map providers such as Google or Ausway. There is a very
> weak provision in some copyright jurisdictions to protect databases
> from wholesale copying, but I have a lot of trouble seeing how it
> applies here.

Indeed; the entire subject is shrouded in what I'd call "complexity", and
what lawyers would call "my retirement beach house fund" :)  I look at it
this way; imagine an eager Nearmap user buys a house in some newly developed
area (such as Clarkson in WA, where the OSM streets frequently have no
names) and sees that her street needs naming.  Enthusiastically, she clicks
on the Edit button on our site, ready to help out.  What we don't want to do
is present her with some long complex explanation of copyright and how it
might or might not apply to her, the country she lives in and the source of
her knowledge.  Instead, our thinking is that we present a simple "don't
copy from existing maps" message and leave it at that.


> Has Nearmap had any legal advice on this point? Could
> you share it?

Hmm... I'll ask that question internally :)  But it would be valid within
Australian only, and (as is disclosed in our latest ASX release), our
ambitions lie wider than that :)

Cheers
b

-- 
Ben Last
Development Manager (HyperWeb)
NearMap Pty Ltd
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