[Talk-GB] Copyright issues of checking details on other websites

[Tom Chance]

On 4 July 2011 14:05, Michael Collinson <mike at ayeltd.biz> wrote:

> On 04/07/2011 12:48, Donald Noble wrote:
>
>> Sorry if this has been covered before, but I was just wondering what
>> the copyright position is with checking details of, say a church or a
>> shop, on their website and then adding those details to OSM?
>>
>> I would have thought that this was fair use of the information they
>> are providing on their website, and if anything would help to promote
>> their business, but it would be good to get another opinion.
>>
>>
> I certainly do this all the time for a street address and other information
> since I consider fair use in the way you point out and the they are not in
> the business of trying to make money from listing locations, (such websites
> I avoid).  Also for information and to provide an implicit attribution, I
> also add their website as website=.


Unfortunately there is no concept of "fair use" in UK copyright law. We have
something called "fair dealing", which is much more limited and wouldn't
cover these cases:
http://www.copyrightservice.co.uk/copyright/p01_uk_copyright_law

So I suspect it's potentially breaching copyright, and a matter of judgement
as to whether it's worth the risk. For example, if you were copying in data
from a commercial web site whose business model was based around that data
(like a listing of pubs) you might get yourself and OSM into some trouble.
On the other hand, copying in some basic contact details for a local church
or restaurant off their own web site is unlikely to cause any trouble!

Regards,
Tom


-- 
http://tom.acrewoods.net   http://twitter.com/tom_chance
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