[OSM-talk] Wikipedia POI import?

[Russ Nelson]

On May 5, 2009, at 5:59 PM, Iván Sánchez Ortega wrote:
>
>>> We don't push the legal envelope.
>>
>> Bullshit.  Sorry, but it's bullshit.  Okay, so I have a railroad  
>> map [...]
>> All you can do is close your eyes, let me import it, and hope that  
>> I'm not
>> infringing some railroad mapping company's data.
>
> Wait a sec - are you actually saying that OSM (and the OSMF) should  
> encourage
> covert copyright infringement? (Or database directive infringement,  
> for that
> matter). Geez, man!

No, I'm saying that you can't know that you're doing it.  And that, my  
friends, is *exactly* why the concept of innocent infringement  
exists.  In order to gain its protection, you must be able to show why  
you thought you had permission (and we *think* that everything  
uploaded to OSM is either copyright-free or licensed under the CC-By- 
SA because of the contributor agreement to which people subscribe when  
they join).  You must cease distribution when informed of the  
infringement.  And you must cooperate with the judge in the case to  
make amends.

> In case you haven't noticed, all licenses for online mapping and  
> data are
> still "wet on the page".

Sure.  That means that we're pushing the envelope.  We may not WANT to  
do so, but that's what we're doing, and we shouldn't fool ourselves.

>
>> No, I didn't think anybody was insane enough to worry about
>> copyright.  There are FAR more important issues in doing an import
>> from Wikipedia.
>
> So go ahead, but don't count on me paying your lawyer bill.


I believe that the legal risks are somewhere between zero and nil.   
Which is why I'm trying to tell people that the legal issue is a  
chimera, and that the technical issues are FAR FAR more important.   
But nobody wants to talk about the hard stuff.  Everybody just wants  
to be an armchair lawyer rather than exercize their brain.

--
Russ Nelson - http://community.cloudmade.com/blog - http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:RussNelson
russ at cloudmade.com - Twitter: Russ_OSM - http://openstreetmap.org/user/RussNelson