[Openstreetmap] London locations

Daniel Haran chebuctonian at gmail.com
Mon Oct 10 06:19:04 BST 2005


<RANT>
Lars,

It seems stupid to me too. UK copyright law seems outrageously absurd
to me, and disobedience seems like the only moral thing to do. For
crying out loud: even their electoral boundaries are copyrighted. Last
I checked, copyright was there to protect creative expression, not
facts.

Their laws are shamefully archaic (it's nearly as bad in Canada!). I
wouldn't mind government agencies copyrighting maps as long as the
layers were free.

Yet as Steve said, I think it highly unlikely Google will try to sue
anyone over this type of use.

I think we all agree that the UK interpretation of the law is rather
sucky (as Richard put it)... where we differ is in our tolerance for
rule-breaking. I would have no problem contributing to Placeopedia and
yourhistoryhere even if I were a UK national.

Hoping your laws are saner,

Daniel.

On 10/10/05, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> Richard Fairhurst wrote:
>
> > Steve is right. If you georeference a place by using a
> > copyrighted map, such as Google Maps, you are creating a derived
> > work from that map. [1] Ergo the data is not free. [2]
> >
> > [1] ...under the prevalent interpretation of UK law. You are of
> > course welcome to pay a lawyer to come up with a less sucky
> > interpretation. :)
>
> What sources do you have for this statement?  It sounds highly
> improbable.
>
> Look at the information in this box:
>
>  +--------------------------------------+
>  |  Glasgow is a city, centered around  |
>  |  the coordinate 55.858° N, 4.243° W  |
>  +--------------------------------------+
>
> Was that information "georeferenced" from Google Maps or some
> other source?  How is my distribution of the information in that
> box a violation of anybody's copyright to some old (or new) map?
>
>
> --
>  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
>  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
>
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