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

[Andy Anderson]

These are not public records, they are records held by a government entity with the permission of the copyright holder or under license. This is clearly one of those cases where the records custodian should claim an exemption. It’s possible they might make a mistake, hence the “precaution”, but the chance that this would result in any action is pretty darn slim.

I bet there’s a ton of leaked data in OpenStreetMap right now, and without a pattern that can be nailed down the they have no way of knowing if you independently came up with the data. Trap streets? We correct them!

— Andy

On Dec 22, 2016, at 10:53 PM, Greg Troxel <gdt at lexort.com> wrote:

> 
> 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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