[talk-au] Few questions about tagging ways in Australia

[Ian Sergeant]

> 1) OSM policy is not to copy street names from any other source other
> than appropriately licensed ones, or from physical street signs.
> 2) IMHO, this particular aspect of OSM policy is IMHO excessively
> conservative with regards to actual copyright law. IMHO.

Australian copyright law recognises that copyright can subsist in
compilation of facts.   Once copyright subsists, the only test is
"substantial part".  If everyone copied just one street name, that's
around 200,000 street names copied.  Is that substantial?  In addition
to that we have the terms of service that attempt to prevent copying
any part of them, specifically prohibiting building a databases of
places or listings.  In addition to that, we have jurisdictional
issues, where OSMF and the servers are in the UK, which has a database
right.

I don't think the OSM policy is the slightest bit conservative.  OSM
is in a position to become a commercial threat to private mapping
companies. Legal action against OSMF is a arrow in the quiver of any
mapping company looking to protect their business. The law is not
settled enough for anyone to predict the outcome of such a case with
any certainty.  It is unclear if OSMF would have the resources to
defend such a case, and certainly I've never detected in the OSM
community a desire for a role in shaping this legal landscape.
Whiter-than-white is the only way for OSM to be.

Brett Russell <brussell237 at live.com.au> wrote:

> Just as an aside, more than a few copyright sources get things wrong plus even the authorities with the classic being different
> spelling of a location on the reverse side if a sign.  How do you check this?

Exactly.  Although street signs can be wrong, confirming with a
commercial map provider doesn't provide the definitive answer either.
In Australia, there may not even be a definitive answer. However, OSM
is a database, and the schema we use is expressive enough to encode
this information.

> Copyrighting town names does not sound legitimate even on commercial products.

You're probably thinking of trademarks.  Geographical names have
traditionally been hard to get trademarks over.  Colorado succeeded,
Strathfield, not so much.

The Australian Gazetteer from Geoscience Australia is CC-BY.  Has
anyone checked if they would object to us using this data for this
purpose?  I'm happy to send them an email to seek permission, if we
haven't tried already?  Would be a great source to check place names.

Ian.