[OSM-talk] Google Street View copyright question

[Jonathan Bennett]

Anthony wrote:
> Eh, I'd take on Google pro se (or with the help of free EFF lawyers or
> the like) over the issue of the ToS, and based on US law I'm pretty sure
> I'd win.  However, I'm aware that other users of OSM don't have the
> benefit US-jurisdictional copyright law with respect to factual data, so
> I won't do it, for their sake.

As it stands, the OSM database is in the UK.

> Still, I can't get my head around what the rules exactly are.  If I read
> a newspaper article which says that Main Street has been renamed to
> Independence Blvd, can I use that, or do I have to go out there myself
> and check?  It makes no sense.

There's a difference between using one fact from a newspaper article,
and systematically extracting data from a database to reuse in another
database. It's the same principle that allows Wikipedia to get away with
getting co-ordinates for individual articles by taking them from a map,
and us doing the same for every point of interest on the map.

-- 
Jonathan (Jonobennett)