[Talk-us] Tiger Street Names and Copyright

[Chris Lawrence]

One issue here is that while U.S. law does say that facts aren't
copyrightable (I believe the original case dealt with copying of names
and numbers from phone directories), that does not mean that every
jurisdiction in the world agrees (notably, I am pretty sure that
Britain's courts ruled differently in a similar case also dealing with
phone directories).

I think OSM is probably on the safest legal ground by stating that you
shouldn't copy anything from any map (at least no map that isn't under
a compatible license or in the public domain), and to the extent
individual contributors deviate they probably shouldn't advertise that
fact and probably should field-verify their changes if at all
possible.


Chris