On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 1:09 PM, Ed Avis<e...@waniasset.com> wrote: > Richard Fairhurst <rich...@...> writes: >>It is worth noting, of course, that the Ordnance Survey believes fervently >>that every single right possible subsists in their data: > > Yes it's fun isn't it? I think it is a bit dishonest to claim all sorts of > rights which don't really exist. But still, that is the lawyer's job: claim > everything you can, the other side claims the opposite, and the courts will > reach some sensible position in the middle.
so, by that logic, if you claim none then the courts will reach a non-sensible position. >>>It's a simple collection of facts - street names and geometries - arranged in >>>an uncreative fashion, and Rural vs Feist tells us that this doesn't merit >>>>copyright. Therefore CC-BY-SA will not protect it. >> >>>Interesting. Do you mean only the map, or the underlying data too? >> >>The data. > > This sounds like good news. So street names and other factual information > about > US cities can simply be copied from existing maps, provided they were > published > before Congress introduced the database right in that country? we already have TIGER and GNIS. for all the wonderful work that richardf has done on the limits of copyright, etc... i still think it's preferable to use data sources which are clearly licensed for derivative work, or that we have explicit permission to copy or derive from. it's been said before, but it bears repeating: why bother? all the time wasted arguing about whether copying information from copyrighted maps is OK would be better used mapping, writing code or one of the other thousands of productive tasks out there in the OSM community. what happens if your printed map copyright holder decides it's not OK? hopefully they'll contact the data/vandalism working group and only waste many hours of several people's time. but they might get lawyers involved, which means OSMF might need to retain lawyers of its own - wasting even more time and resources. is it worth it? cheers, matt _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
