[OSM-talk] [OSM-legal-talk] OSMF - OSM usage guidelines

Martijn van Oosterhout kleptog at gmail.com
Sun Nov 18 19:13:30 GMT 2007


On Nov 18, 2007 5:51 PM, Charles Basenga Kiyanda <charles at kiyanda.com> wrote:
> If I understand correctly copyright law (and I'm more aware of US and
> Canadian laws), facts are not copyrightable, only a particular
> expression of those facts. So if you read a map to look up the name of a
> street, nobody should be able to stop you from using the fact that the
> name of the street is XYZ. What you can't do is copy the visual
> appearance of the map, font, word placement, etc. I don't believe any
> law has the right to stop you from learning something from a copyrighted
> work.

Your argument falls on the assumption that what appears on the map is
a "fact". If it is plain wrong or an easter egg then it is
copyrightable, and just by looking at the map there is no way to
tell...

There's also database copyright, but that's somethng else entirely.

Have a nice day,
-- 
Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog at gmail.com> http://svana.org/kleptog/




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