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

Brendan Morley morb.gis at beagle.com.au
Sun Dec 13 10:41:34 GMT 2009


Oh, and I realised one of the main reasons the Australian Government lawyers are happy about CC* licences is that they prefer CCBY only, therefore  
avoiding the whole Sharealike-enforcement question.

--Original Message Text---
From: Brendan Morley
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 2009 20:31:59 +1000

Well I RTFM (i.e. the CCBYSA and OdbL licences) and this is what I got:

CCBYSA only compels you to share the derived work, not the steps you followed to create the derived work.

i.e. CCBYSA never asked people to share "the steps they followed".

So John, given you wish to "don't want commercial companies just sucking up all the data and not giving hardly anything back in return if they extend the 
map" - 

- CCBYSA (in "mature" copyright jurisdictions like Australia) will compel them to share the published work, also under CCBY(SA), therefore there is some 
data interpretation and re-entry involved to get it back to the OSM schema. This is probably little different to "tracing" off a paper map or image.

- OdbL intends to compel them to share "the steps they followed" e.g. the modified database before rendering. Mind you, there was nothing I saw in the 
OdbL that compelled the modifying body to share back in the same database *schema*, so we could still have a big data re-entry problem - the only 
difference being that there is a hope of a scriptable solution.


The interesting bit (that I couldn't satisfy myself by a first read of the licences) is enforcement.

Given the fear of a 10^100 "just sucking up all the data" ...
OdbL intends to exploit copyright, database and contract rights.
Since it seems the US is a "weak" copyright jurisdiction when it comes to factual data. It would seem OdbL will not compel 10^100 by copyright law.
Database law only applies to European Union, right? So that mechanism is out too.
So then we appear to rely on US contract law, such that it may exist in a form that supports OdbL.

Well that's my amateur analysis. Has anyone actually done a "desk check" to see if OdbL can compel 10^100 or other US-domiciled corporates to follow 
the spirit of the licence?

The OdbL FAQ also seems to allow you to choose the jurisdiction that enforcement is carried out under. So as an Australian citizen perhaps you can persue 
10^100 in the Australian copyright law context. This doesn't help our US bretheren however, so I'd hope if they wanted to enforce "SA" on their edits, that the 
OdbL plays well with US contract law.


Hope this helps,
Brendan


On Sun, 13 Dec 2009 15:12:34 +1000, John Smith wrote:

>2009/12/13 Anthony <osm at inbox.org>:
>> On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 10:56 PM, John Smith <deltafoxtrot256 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> That's the issue I have, I have no problem giving back to the
>>> community, but I don't want commercial companies just sucking up all
>>> the data and not giving hardly anything back in return if they extend
>>> the map, it's not fair to me or anyone else who chooses to donate our
>>> time for "the greater good".
>>
>> It's perfectly fair. You agreed to license your contributions under
>> CC-BY-SA. CC-BY-SA doesn't require that you give anything back to anyone.
>> It only requires that you give credit to the authors and license any
>> derivative works that you distribute under CC-BY-SA.
>>

>That isn't the debate, the debate is if CC-BY-SA can enforce it or
>not, some people claim it can't in some countries even Australia to
>some extent or other, so ODBL is being presented as an option to close
>loopholes that CC-BY-SA has.

>_______________________________________________
>talk mailing list
>talk at openstreetmap.org
>http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk




-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20091213/69dae8e5/attachment.html>


More information about the talk mailing list