[OSM-talk] Illegal activity

[Peteris Krisjanis]

2009/10/30 Kirill Bestoujev <bestoujev at gmail.com>:
> You just got me wrong - I'm truing to say, that Google understands, that any
> court trial will fail - there is too much doubt about possibility to use
> copyright laws to space fotos. If they were sure that they will win - they
> would have done it. But they are not sure - so the fear to start the trial,
> cause loosing would meen that everyone will know they were wrong!
>

Do you know what Google as entity thinks or you just assume? Photo can
be and *is* copyright subject (PD only when specially noted). What do
you don't get about that? Grey area is - is tracing over sat/ortphotos
creation of derative works, or not? There are speculations that as
these photos shows 'facts', that copying 'facts' from these copyright
works aren't actually derative and therefore not a copyright
violation.

However, there is no clear legal indication about one situation or
another. And as someone pointed it - no serious company will touch OSM
if there will be that kind of doubt about legality of data.

I know it is frustrating and sometimes people want to do that in
spite, but this won't help anyone, especially OSM.

Cheers,
Peter.