[OSM-talk] Linky to geograph/OSGB
Paul Dixon
paul at elphin.com
Sat May 13 14:49:20 BST 2006
I'm one of the Geograph developers, and following this thread with
interest.
> Lars Aronsson wrote:
> What it doesn't explain, and I guess this is what Richard meant, is
> that if we could have the resulting website mashup deemed to be a
> derivate work of the copyrighted OS maps and the CC-licensed photos,
> and that the derivate work gets contaminated by the CC license, this
> might reflect back on the maps.
The website as a whole is not CC licenced, i.e. we haven't licenced the
whole thing to visitors as a derivative work. The site is a collective
work of individually licenced contributions.
I'm not sure this idea of "infection" holds water. To act as a licensor,
you must hold the copyright in your contribution, and the right to
sublicence any elements of your work if creating a derivative. A single
"geograph" is a photograph and metadata contributed by an individual,
with a particular datum, an OS grid reference, derived from an OS map.
If that instance of a grid reference, e.g. TL0532, could be deemed to be
OS copyright, then the licensor does not have the right to include that
in their CC licenced work. The licence becomes void, and the Geograph
site concept disappears in a puff of legal smoke :) The only possible
escape is to deem that the geolocation of the photo is NOT a part of the
CC licenced work, but this would hamper the re-usability and long term
future of the archive.
I understand the problem from an OSM perspective, where you must avoid
the use of copyrighted map data to build your open map, but there's no
real reverse path with the CC licenced metadata in Geograph - you can't
rebuild an OS map or gazetteer with it.
That said, I am aware that there are issues with the copyright status
of OS grid references, and we're seeking clarification from the OS to
ensure the site concept can remain intact!
> Perhaps we should begin now to upload lots of our own photos to
> www.geograph.org.uk, so we sue these guys for their mash-up, as
> soon as we find out that it violates our copyright and CC license.
I realise that's probably said with tongue-in-cheek, but sue for what?
If there *is* a problem with grid references, then you didn't have the
right to add them to your CC licenced work in the first place. We can
only violate your copyright by doing something which breaks your licence
terms.
> That should teach the Ordnance Survey. Then we can offer the
> website to use free OSM maps instead.
I support the OSM concept, but Geograph really needs the geographic
content of OS maps to really work (never mind the fact it's organised
around 1km grid squares!). It was conceived as an educational archive,
and we're being sponsored by the educational unit of the OS to further
that aim.
All that said, I'm not a lawyer. A roomful of them down at the OS HQ in
Southampton have examined what we we're doing in the 6 months it took to
reach a deal with them though. I'll get some clarification from them
next week, it'll be interesting to see how this develops!
Paul Dixon
Geograph Project
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