[OSM-talk] Soviet military maps copyright status

[Richard Fairhurst]

Quoting Kristian Thy <thy at 42.dk>:

> I've been looking at georeferencing some of the Soviet military maps
> floating around on the 'net (mostly from poehali.org)
> [...]
> I would really like to hear people's opinion on this. Of course, any
> data digitized from this would be attributed with a proper source tag so
> it could be easily removed in case of later legal issues.

Ok. As long as you don't mind that this really is just my opinion:

1. Copyright of Russian material (even discounting the UK stuff -  
covered well at jomidav.com) is so heavily disputed, and the countries  
of the former USSR so unpredictable in their governance, that there is  
without doubt a strong element of risk.

2. A proper source tag is a Good Thing, but nonetheless, some thought  
is still required; people may end up basing significant quantities of  
work on items which have to be removed.

3. If anyone is going to dispute the use of these maps, it will be the  
"successor" governments of the post-USSR states (notwithstanding the  
point on Wikipedia that the Baltic states are not strictly speaking a  
successor government). Therefore it is to these governments, or to  
case law in their countries, that we should look for guidance. If you  
can find a statement by the Estonian government, say, that says "we  
disclaim all copyright in Soviet military mapping of our country", I'd  
think you're safe.

It's therefore especially interesting to read the Georgia PDF cited in  
the Wikipedia flame  
(http://www.cipr.org/legal_reference/countries/georgia/Georgia_Copyright_ENG.pdf). I think that would give us/a lawyer enough grounds to come to a decision on using Soviet maps of Georgia. Note in  
particular:

II.5.3. "Copyright does not apply to ideas, methods, processes,  
systems, means, concepts, principles, discoveries and facts, even if  
they are expressed, described, explained, illustrated or embodies in a  
work"

but then there's a whole host of relevant, and possibly contradictory,  
stuff in II.6 (particularly points 1.j, 1.k, 1.l, 2 and 3).

Other ex-USSR states have similar PDFs on the same site:  
http://www.cipr.org/legal_reference/countries/ . I'd suggest these as  
starting points.

On a separate point: FWIW, Bridgeman vs Corel is not universally  
accepted by legal experts in the UK. _However_ neither is it  
necessarily directly relevant for what we're talking about here.  
Bridgeman vs Corel covered reproductions of an out-of-copyright work,  
not derivations of the factual information expressed in that work. The  
copyright status of a facsimile of an artistic work may not  
necessarily determine the copyright status of the facts related in  
that work.

cheers
Richard