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

[Ed Avis]

Frederik Ramm <frederik <at> remote.org> writes:

>Any license that tries to use this patchy copyright protection of data 
>is bound to be unfair at the very least, and more likely a pain the 
>behind of anybody who wants to use it. The legality of OSM use cases 
>would depend on whether you execute a project from your Australian or 
>American office. We might be divided on some issues but *that* can 
>surely not be our aim.

In fact, personally I disagree with that.  I think it is important to
respect national decisions on the scope of copyright and not try to
overrule them with contract law or other means.  So, for example, if the
parliament of Canada decided that all maps and map data should enter the
public domain, then it would be possible to do more things with OSM
in Canada than in other countries.  This is one of the reasons why we have
more than one country in the world!

It is for each country to decide on its own copyright and other 'intellectual
property' laws, and we should not try to export more-strict regulations from
one country to another.  The CC licences are carefully written to avoid doing
this.  The ODbL, sadly, seems to take the opposite approach.

-- 
Ed Avis <eda at waniasset.com>