[OSM-talk] How is there not any creative-type (US) copyright in OSM data?

[Anthony]

On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 11:52 AM, Michael Barabanov <
michael.barabanov at gmail.com> wrote:

> Really, considering how many discussions about how to map things (just
> recall all those footway/cycleway discussions) have been on these lists, at
> least tagging seems to be a creative process right now.
>

But if it's copyrighted, who owns the copyright on it?  Each person who uses
the tag?  The people who participate in the list discussion?  The OSMF?

If the OSM database were a work for hire, and all of us mappers were
employees, it'd be one thing.  Then, I think a thin copyright would probably
be meaningful.  But it isn't a work for hire, so whatever copyright there is
is spread out among 100,000 different people.

Arguably, if there is a copyright on the OSM database, it is collectively
owned as a work of joint authorship with 100,000 or so joint authors.  That
means any one of the 100,000 authors can use the OSM database any way they
want, and all they have to do is split the profits 100,000 ways.  Of course,
that's ridiculous, so it's unlikely a judge would ever hold that to be the
case (unless maybe she'd recently read a book on jurisprudence written by
King Solomon).
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20091207/b0968a02/attachment.html>