On Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 8:15 AM, Rob Myers <r...@robmyers.org> wrote: > Would removing the word "individual" from the CT improve it?
Sure, it'd make everything (except the database schema) DbCL, and DbCL is better than ODbL. > OSM ways aren't generally representations of artistic works, though. They're not artistic, but then neither are most other maps, or an encyclopedia article, or a newspaper article, or a police sketch, or a textbook. If you create a way representing the outline of a lake freehand from memory, it's hard to see how that's any less copyrightable than any other crude sketch of reality. Now most lake outlines are not done freehand from memory, but some might be, and I wouldn't feel too comfortable copying a way which might be copyrighted. > And even if any are copyrightable the DbCL will handle that. That's what I'm wondering. It's not really clear. If the "individual" in "individual contents" means a database row, and a way is copyrightable, then the DbCL probably doesn't handle that, because a way is a creative arrangement made up of many database rows. And having a single database row as the "individual" in "individual contents" fits best with the spirit of ODbL (which, oddly enough, seems like it was never adapted for something like OSM even though it was (*)). In a database of white page addresses, or a database of flickr images, or a database of baseball stats, or NCBI’s Entrez Gene database, the definition of individual is obvious: a single white page entry, a single flickr image, a single baseball stat, a single gene name or pathway or protein product, which is probably going to correspond to a single row. It would be interesting trying to convert OSM into an unordered collection of facts and then converting it back into a structured database, in a clean room type operation. You'd probably wind up with a public domain database in any jurisdiction without database rights or sweat of the brow, and possibly also in any jurisdiction with database rights but without sweat of the brow, if you can argue that no single person or corporation was first to make the "substantial investment in either the obtaining, verification or presentation of the contents" required to obtain database rights. Notwithstanding the ODbL, of course, since writing down what you want to be the restrictions on a database does not amount to creating a law allowing you to put such restrictions on that database. (You can only bind by contract people who want to be bound by contract.) (*) I guess because it was adapted under the premise that OSM was an uncopyrightable collection of facts. >> If such a database were released with "DbCL 1.0 for the individual >> contents of the database", would the way be DbCL, or would it be ODbL? > > The way would be DbCL, and use of it would be covered by the ODbL or not > like the rest of the database. That's not the way licenses work, though. If something is covered by two licenses, you can apply *either* license, you don't have to apply both. I guess that's one part I don't get. Because if you had to apply *both* licenses, it makes sense. But if you can apply *either* license, it doesn't. That said, I guess the answer is that the "individual" in "individual contents" is *meant* to mean any non-substantial extract (i.e. any extract on which the ODbL does not apply). Of course we then still have the question as to what is "substantial", but at least that's a question for which there is likely to be some case law (as opposed to "individual contents"). > It's a licencing stack, with each level (data, database, map tiles) covered > by an appropriate licence. It's certainly strange that the middle of the stack would be the most restricted level, isn't it? >> Would it make a difference if the way were split into 1,000 different >> connected ways? > > I wouldn't have thought so. If you can re-assemble the copyrighted work then > you have the copyrighted work (teleportation doesn't strip copyright, > remember :-) ). Yes, but my question was over the application of the DbCL, not the application of copyright law. 1 way, perhaps, is "individual content". 1,000 different connected ways isn't. If it were, then you could make substantial extracts and have them covered by DbCL. > Individual ways in the drawing might be too simple to claim > any rights over. But the DbCL means we don't have to worry about whether one > way is likely to be covered by more rights than another. Actually, it's not really clear what the DbCL accomplishes. The point, as was explained to me in another thread, is to accomplish nothing - saying that the individual contents are DbCL is like saying that the individual words in a Wikipedia article are DbCL. Trivial, obvious, and unnecessary. Maybe that's all it does. Or maybe there's more to it. I don't know. _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
