[OSM-talk] Cracking the Secret Codes of Europe's Galileo Satellite

[Emil Vaughan]

>From what I understand, based on a kind of text book theory of
copyright, (without serious case-law research admittedly),  is that
you can't copyright basic physical facts - e.g. that Barnsbury St runs
between Liverpool Road and Upper St. Certain original presentations of
facts, such as the Guinness Book of records, are probably
copyrightable, e.g. the original facts are not, but the particular
selection of them is. However, with a map, (and more so with a
supposedly definitive one) there is no originality in the selection of
facts. There's been a lot of hard work gone in to obtaining them, but
that's irrelevant: copyright does not protect hard work, it protects
original creative work.

I think the case for being allowed to copy streetnames from an OS map
is particularly strong, as it is a definitive work - some would say
that if the street sign differed from the OS map then the real name of
the street would be the one in the OS map........ After all, when the
council puts street signs up, they surely consult an OS map to find
the name of the street..........

Having said all that I appreciate the wisdom of not copying names, or
anything else from OS maps.

Emil