[talk-au] [OSM Fork] Geoscience Australia Gazetteer 2010

[Ian Sergeant]

On 22 February 2012 10:01, Andrew Harvey <andrew.harvey4 at gmail.com> wrote:

> > I've certainly seen
> > scans on Wikipedia that have been copied directly from the library sites
> in
> > direct contravention of the policies on the web pages themselves, I guess
> > under the banner of the WMF policy you state people feel free to ignore
> the
> > legals on the page.
>
> Yes, especially as Wikipedia claims such notices aren't enforceable anyway.
>

I get the feeling WMF wouldn't mind taking on this fight in the U.S., at
least.  They do run a bit of a political agenda towards information freedom.

However, I've personally always believed the philosophy of OSM is to be
whiter than white, if we don't have clear permission from the owner/website
for the area in question, then we survey.  However, I wasn't much involved
much during the nearmap/import flurry that has been going on for the last
few years, so perhaps that has changed a bit.

Once we start ignoring the terms and conditions of usage of a site, in
favour of putting our own overriding interpretation, it's then a slippery
slope, greased by the all those keen to play amateur lawyer.

Having said that (and I hope I'm not now being hypocritical in saying
this), I'm of the firm opinion that the online "out-of-copyright"
historical maps at the National Library and State Library are freely
available for reference use.  They are identified as out-of-copyright on
the website, and the only restriction placed by the conditions of use is
for copying them.  Using them for reference (for geographical names, etc)
is clearly within the range of intended use, and not explicitly prohibited
by any condition.  Applying the appropriate source tag allows such edits to
be quickly identified if there ever is a problem.

It would be nice to have definitive statements from lands and the libraries
as those who host the out-of-copyright information.  They may have less
objections than I think.

Ian.
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