[OSM-talk] Okay, this is just cool (Lockport, NY)

[Russ Nelson]

andrzej zaborowski writes:
 > On 1 April 2011 00:59, Nic Roets <nroets at gmail.com> wrote:
 > > One more argument in Pieren's favour: OSM is not for profit. On
 > > Slashdot a court case was recently mentioned where the judge ruled in
 > > favour of a non profit who copied a complete article from a
 > > copyrighted journal.
 > 
 > Right, but I think we can stop discussing copyright as in this case
 > Google is using their Terms of Use which is more like contract than
 > copyright license.

Oh? When did you ever agree to a contract? What are the terms of this
contract? At what point had you not agreed to a contract and then a
moment later you had? Please describe the details of the execution of
this contract. Did you sign a piece of paper? Add your digital
signature to a document? Click a checkbox and submitted a form?
Clicked on a link that said "By clicking this link, you are agreeing
to a contract"?

All of these questions a judge is going to ask Google, should Google
ever attempt to enforce their contract of adhesion.  As a general
rule, judges don't like contracts of adhesion, because they tend to be
one-sided contracts. And the interpretation that people are taking
here, which is that any and ALL information gained from looking at
Google imagery belongs to Google, is not likely to be
enforcible. Copying information out of a photograph, without any
portion of the photograph appearing in the final result, is not a
derivative work -- not when those photographs are not manipulated in
any way, are not creative, and the same exact information may be
gotten from other imagery, from photos on photo-sharing sites, or from
a site visit.

I understand that people are trying to keep OSM free of copyright
infringement, but first there has to be a copyright to be infringed,
or a contract to be violated. Absent a contract, copyright
applies. Copyright applies to creative works. All of the value of
geographic imagery exists solely because it is non-creative -- a
perfect model of the world.

Finally, STFU and map. Jesus.

-- 
--my blog is at    http://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  |     Sheepdog