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

[Nic Roets]

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.

On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 8:48 PM, Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemed.net> wrote:
> Pieren wrote:
>>> Anyone round here ever seen the film 'Groundhog Day'?
>> If you mean it's a desperate fud which will never end, I understand.
>
> Yes. If we separate the horrid neologism into its three component parts -
> Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt - then I'm entirely with you on that.
>
> We are Uncertain as to what exactly copyright law and Google's (IMO
> deliberately[1]) ambiguous terms allow. We are Doubtful at what point Google
> would start suing people. We are Fearful that the world's biggest technology
> company

Richard, would you be any less fearful if it turns out that Google is
in fact 4th by market cap and is quite far from the the largest by
revenue ?

http://www.google.com/finance?q=apple
http://www.google.com/finance?q=microsoft
http://www.google.com/finance?q=ibm
http://www.google.com/finance?q=google

> could, with one carefully publicised nastygram, undermine the
> promise at the heart of OSM - "you can rely that this data is legally safe
> to use".
>
> Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. That's exactly why we don't do it. If you are a
> world-beating copyright, database rights and contract lawyer with a
> billion-pound fortune you don't mind pissing away, then maybe you can
> elevate the debate beyond that. But I doubt it (not least because it's
> pretty clear there's no such thing as a world-beating database rights
> lawyer).
>
> Come on, Pieren, you are smart enough to know all this. IIRC you were among
> the first to comment on my long Bauman vs Fussell posting way back when,
> which was pretty much the same issue. We know the parameters of the debate:
> all we can do is rattle around inside them, Groundhog Day-style.
>
> cheers
> Richard
>
> [1] I actually think Google is being depressingly smart on this. They
> purposefully don't elucidate what you can and can't do. On the one hand,
> they want people to build geo apps and create indexable geodata on the
> Google Maps platform - even though some of this might well infringe their
> data/imagery suppliers' copyright. On the other, they don't want anyone -
> like OSM - to leverage their data to build their own platform. So they just
> say nothing. It's best for their business that way.
>
>
>
> --
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>
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