[OSM-talk] Illegal activity

[Anthony]

On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 2:36 AM, Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemed.net> wrote:
> Anthony wrote:
>
>> "Unless you have received prior written authorization from Google (or,
>> as applicable, from the provider of particular Content), you must
>> not:"  "(b) copy, translate, modify, or make derivative works of the
>> Content or any part thereof;"
>
> Yes. It is quite clear that tracing aerial imagery is not
> copying/translating/modifying/making derivative works of the Content.
> Read the case law or, if you don't have time, the blog posting.

What case law?  It's a contract dispute.  It has nothing to do with
copyright law.

Tracing is copying.  It may not be a copyright infringement, because
the part that is being copied may not be copyrightable, but it's
definitely copying.

If I trace a picture of Donald Duck, is that copying?  Of course it
is.  Tracing is copying, and Google's ToS says you can't copy the
Content or any part thereof.  Even if the work is not copyrightable,
you wouldn't be in breach of copyright law (which is irrelevant to
Google since Google doesn't own the copyright anyway), but you'd be in
breach of the terms of service.

On Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 8:33 AM, Peteris Krisjanis <pecisk at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yahoo is another matter. They have stated several times - and probably
> are asked questions about this all the time - if it is right. I think
> public statements from Yahoo about this already protects you in case
> if someone in Yahoo goes high-wire and wants everyone to sue about it.

The concern would be that someone from i-Cubed, who whatever company
owns the copyright on the image itself, decides to sue.

There are two separate issues.  There's the copyright issue, which is
a legitimate concern because once copyright is infringed it has the
potential to taint everything else that touches it.  And there's the
ToS issue, which is fairly irrelevant - worst case scenario you remove
the contributions of the particular user that got caught.  A ToS
violation likely doesn't even taint the contribution itself - it
certainly doesn't taint everything that touches it.

With Yahoo, the ToS issue is well resolved.  The copyright issue is
completely unresolved.