[Talk-GB] Autumn Quarterly Project

Dan S danstowell+osm at gmail.com
Sun Oct 2 11:03:14 UTC 2016


2016-10-02 11:54 GMT+01:00 David Woolley <forums at david-woolley.me.uk>:
> On 02/10/16 10:56, John Aldridge wrote:
>>
>> Would one be breaking rules to copy that information to OSM? After all,
>> the text on the web site will be, AIUI, copyright.)
>
>
> The question would be whether or not there is a database copyright involved.
> The actual facts that you are likely to want will not be copyrightable, but
> their aggregation into a database will be.
>
> My take on this is that:
>
> - if you have to use a search engine to find the site, you could infringe on
> the database copyright of the search engine operator;
>
> - if the feature is part of a large chain, and they have a "store locator",
> you will be infringing the database copyright on the the locator (although
> some chains may be happy for you to do this);
>
> - if you use a business directory, that is basically just another search
> engine.
>
> However, if you have a direct link to a web page or even web site that only
> relates to that one location, and that site is maintained by the company
> itself, there will be no database copyright issue and the facts you would
> normally extract would not be copyrightable.
>
> Slightly more problematic would be if the business published a link to a
> business directory page about itself.  I would play safe and assume that the
> directory owners may consider it an infringement on their database rights,
> even though the business supplied everything on the page.
>
> Narrative descriptions may be copyright and will need to be paraphrased, if
> free from database copyrights.

For what it's worth I concur with David on this except his first
point. I don't think using a search engine to find a business's
website has any copyright implications for information you then
retrieve from the business's website! The remainder is good though:
"mere facts" like an address are usually not a copyright infringement,
but if in practice you're taking them from some database or
database-driven website then you need to be wary of database rights.
inal.

Dan



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