[OSM-talk] Illegal activity

[Russ Nelson]

Valent Turkovic writes:
 > http://forums.x-plane.org/index.php?showtopic=40148
 > 
 > what to do with OSM mappers like these guys in this post?
 > 
 > They say that they are using Google Earth images :(

A couple of points:

  o Copyright gets infringed typically.  Criminal copyright is a much
    more serious matter, typically involving massive distribution of
    copied articles.  Thus "illegal" is not the right term to use.

  o It's dubious to claim a copyright on an aerial photo. Anybody else
    attempting to photograph the same thing would come up with
    *exactly* the same photograph (modulo season, weather, and changes
    over time).
  o It's *really* unclear that tracing an aerial photograph infringes
    copyright of the aerial photograph.  No portion of the photograph
    is included in the tracing, and tracing any aerial photograph
    would result in the same trace.

All of that said, current OSM policy is not to trace without
permission.

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