[OSM-talk] Frederik declares war on data imports...

[Matt Amos]

On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 11:22 PM, Anthony <osm at inbox.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 6:09 PM, Matt Amos <zerebubuth at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 10:52 PM, Anthony <osm at inbox.org> wrote:
>>> Can we get a collection of quotes from those lawyers that you say
>>> "think otherwise"?  Exact quotes of what they said?
>>
>> unfortunately not. apparently legal advice can't be publicly shared
>> without making the lawyers in question liable for it. given that our
>> legal advisors are acting for us pro-bono and have asked that we don't
>> quote them publicly, i don't think it would be nice to do that.
>
> Then can you at least stop referring to what they said, especially
> referring to it as though it's in any way authoritative.  Without the
> ability to see the exact quote, let alone ask questions, "many lawyers
> said you're wrong" is useless.

i'm simply saying that there are people out there who know what
they're talking about. some lawyers have gone on the record about
ODbL. see http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/odc-discuss/2009-August/000181.html
and http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2009-December/045170.html
and http://blog.iusmentis.com/2009/07/15/open-source-databanken-de-opendatabanklicentie-versie-10
and http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Database_License#ODbL_reviews_from_lawyers

>>> Also an example of licenses which distinguish "the whole database"
>>> from "the individual contents of the database" would be helpful.  How
>>> does that make any more sense than releasing a book under "CC-BY-SA,
>>> for the book, and CC0 for the individual words of the book".
>>
>> the ODbL is the only example i know of.
>
> That's certainly a reason to be wary of it.

not really. it's on the cutting edge, but that's because we're trying
to do something that no-one else has done before: an attribution,
share-alike license for factual data.

>> and your example is good: it's
>> not possible to copyright individual dictionary words, as far as i
>> know, but the collection of them is protectable. releasing the words
>> as CC0 is simply a tautology in this case, as the DbCL is in many
>> jurisdictions by waiving copyright in individual data.
>
> If that's really all this is, it's awfully confusing and unnecessary.
> As I say in my other post, it's not even clear what "the individual
> contents" means.  If it means a single changeset, that's one thing,
> and something I would *not* like to release under DbCL.  If on the
> other hand it means just an individual node...  Who's going to copy
> just a single node?

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Substantial_-_Guideline

we've been discussing this for a long time.

> Is there any way in which releasing "the individual contents" under
> DbCL is *not* redundant?  If it *is* redundant, is there any way to
> have it removed?

it makes it legally explicit what's going on. although it might seem
redundant, or confusing, it adds legal clarity.

cheers,

matt