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

[Karl Newman]

Oops, forgot to copy list.

On Nov 18, 2007 5:10 PM, Ian Sergeant <isergean at hih.com.au> wrote:
> "Karl Newman" <siliconfiend at gmail.com> wrote on 19/11/2007 11:37:27 AM:
>
> > That argument could currently be used by the mapping companies against
> > each other, too.
>
> But they have the money and motivation to defend an action.  Does OSM?
>
> > For what it's worth, I think there will always be
> > some demand for commercial mapping, if only to provide QA controlled
> > releases and a chain of accountability. I certainly could see that for
> > outfits such as FedEx or UPS. It may well be that OSM data is higher
> > quality, but are you going to hold user7363's feet to the fire if the
> > data is wrong and it somehow caused you a material loss? Good luck
> > with that.
>
> I doubt you could do it with XYZ Mapping company either.  Most of them have
> disclaimers for any consequential loss in the contract for acquiring the
> data.  If the data is reliable, it will be used.

I'm just saying, there's no "consequences" if there's an error in the
OSM data. For customers of commercial mapping companies, there's
always the threat of changing to another mapping company, or there
could be a clause in the contract; who knows. That's what I mean by
accountability. It's the same deal as Wikipedia--it's generally
reliable, but you won't (shouldn't?) find academic papers citing it as
an authoritative reference.

>
> > So, the safe thing to do is to have an official OSM policy which
> > forbids using anything which might have ever been thought about by
> > anyone before. I guess that gets us to my point #2: how could anyone
> > ever detect it was going on, let alone prove it? Information wants to
> > be free, man. :-)
>
> Its not that hard to prove that some copying is going on.  There is a local
> street near to me which is wrong in google maps, yahoo maps, and it keeps
> on changing to be aligned with what is in google maps rather than what is
> on the ground.  And, conveniently all that history is in the OSM database.
>

Let's be clear. I wasn't talking about copying. I was talking about
looking at another source (likely copyrighted) to identify things that
are missing,  misspelled, misaligned or otherwise "different" that
need to be manually verified, in person, by visiting the location

> People are tracable, they can be subpoenaed to testify.  Granted immunity
> from prosecution if they testify against the system, etc.  The record
> industry law suits have shown that noone is anonymous, and the courts are
> quite happy to order access logs etc to be handed over to the
> multinationals.
>
> I don't think we need to go so far as to fobid anything that has been
> thought about before.  However, I think OSM should steer clear of using the
> resources of companies whose revenuw is directly threatened by the
> existance of OSM, unless it is on very solid legal ground.

I was exaggerating to make my point. If OSM has an official policy
forbidding anything which might be construed as infringement, then it
seems that should protect the *project* as a whole. The damage caused
by infringement of any one user should be then limited to removal of
that user's data.

>
> You may think all information should be free, but I would argue that OSM
> project doesn't want to be the vehicle for persuing that objective, it just
> wants a cool, free map?
>
> Ian.