[OSM-talk] An example of the complications inherent in determining tainted ways

[80n]

On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 12:30 PM, Jean-Marc Liotier <jm at liotier.org> wrote:

> On 15/12/2011 13:17, David Groom wrote:
>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Jean-Marc Liotier" <jm at liotier.org>
>> To: <talk at openstreetmap.org>
>> Sent: Thursday, December 15, 2011 11:59 AM
>>
>>> But what if the source changes ? When I use high-resolution imagery to
>>> improve areas formerly mapped from low-resolution imagery, I change the
>>> source tag - i.e. from "Yahoo low resolution satellite" to "Microsoft Bing
>>> satellite". Since my edit is correlated with a change of source, shouldn't
>>> it be considered a break from being a derivative ?
>>>
>> Yes it should be considered a break, because in that case you know what
>> the
>>
>> source for moving the nodes was.
>>
> Good. Now do the license change impact auditing tools currently take that
> into account ? Should they only take the object's source tag into account
> or also mention of a source in the changeset commit comment ?
>
> I think there may be a need to better understand how copyright works in
this respect in the real world.

The location of individual nodes probably has no copyright component,
however the shape of a way probably does [1].  If several people have
adjusted the shape of a way then they most likely all have joint ownership
of the copyright of the whole of that way [2].

Joint ownership is an important principle to understand.  If someone edits
a way then they are making a derivative of that way and inheriting *all* of
the joint copyright ownerships.  Even if their changes are to remove the
effect of a change by one of the previous contributors it does not, as far
as I know, delete that contributors copyright.

If this is true, then the only way to disinfect a tainted way is to revert
back to the version prior to the infection and applying subsequent changes
to that version.  Simply negating changes does not delete copyright
ownership because the ownership extends to the whole work.

Does anyone know of any precedents that show how copyright, once gained,
can be deleted from a work?

80n


[1] Section 1 (b) (i) of
http://membled.com/work/osm/Map_Project_Memo_public_FINAL.pdf

[2] Section 2a of
http://membled.com/work/osm/Map_Project_Memo_public_FINAL.pdf
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