[Talk-us-massachusetts] New/expanded map for Elizabeth How / Echo Reservation, Ipswich

[Greg Troxel]

Andy Anderson <aanderson at amherst.edu> writes:

> http://www.sec.state.ma.us/pre/prepdf/guide.pdf

Thanks for the link.  Having been a public official, I've even endured
training on that....

I see that it talks about being able to obtain a copy, but it doesn't
address copyright law.

See page 29, the section on GIS, where it says there may be copyright
interests:

  While there are no Massachusetts court cases interpreting this issue,
  it is clear that the legislature did not carve out specific exemptions
  from the Massachusetts Public Records Law allowing protected
  intellectual property in the custody of a governmental entity to be
  withheld from public dissemination. The Public Records Law does not
  serve to preempt federal intellectual property law, nor does the
  Public Records Law exonerate those who violate intellectual property
  rights validly held by private individuals or governmental entities
  once the public GIS records have been released. As a precaution,
  records custodians of GIS records are encouraged to indicate on
  released GIS records that the information contained in the records may
  be subject to intellectual property protections.

so I don't follow the notion that public records are in the public
domain, just that the government has to give a requestor a copy.

(Sorry if people find this discussion annoying, but I think it's useful
to understand where our use-for-OSM boundaries are.)
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