[OSM-talk] Sourcing street names - what's the policy, and why?

[Anthony]

On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 9:58 AM, Richard Weait <richard at weait.com> wrote:

> The answer is, "We don't copy other maps at OpenStreetMap because we
> respect copyright law and related rights, even if we disagree with
> some aspects of them.  [....]
>

There's a difference between doing something which is clearly in violation
of copyright law and doing something which might be illegal according to
some people's interpretations.

Copying a small number of street names in a non-systematic fashion falls
quite squarely into the latter.

I don't know if that's what Steve was asking about.  In fact, I get the
sense that he was planning on being somewhat systematic about things, which
would be more of a clear violation of the law of some jurisdictions (whether
or not his jurisdiction is one of them, I don't actually know).  One
suggestion I made to Steve was to "Stick to the places that you're
interested in, and not only will you get the most benefit, but we'll get the
best maps."

On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 9:58 AM, Richard Weait <richard at weait.com> wrote:

> Or as the help page in Potlatch says: "Don't copy from other maps!"
> and "Did we mention about not copying from other maps?"
>
> Or as the JOSM message page says, "Don't copy from other maps"
>

Yep, it's all over the place, but that doesn't make it good advice, at least
not in the way some are interpreting it.

What would Wikinews be like if they had a rule which said "don't copy from
other news articles", and people interpreted that to mean that if they read
a news article which said that "Michael Jackson is dead" they still had to
go to the funeral and see it for themselves before they were allowed to
"copy" that fact?  You have to be able to "copy facts" from time to time.
And that means you have to use your own judgment as to what constitutes a
copyright infringement and what constitutes legitimate research.
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