Thank you.
If the employer is to give permission, do we have a way of capturing that
somehow? Is there a repository of PDFd emails authorising such things, for
example?
On the Talk-GB list it was suggested an organisation should create a
corporate account, but I don't know that that's any different from a
regular account and so I don't know whether it says clearly that the
employer (i.e., a corporate person) has opened the account, rather than it
being a 'personal' account of an individual employee (but whether *qua
*employee
on behalf of the organisation or *qua *private individual, we can't tell).
If the situation I have in mind goes to the scale it could, then I'm
wondering if it's safer to have a subscription service at £10 per year with
a very basic support portal for this network of (loosely speaking)
"federated" employers, with special support material for their special
mapping needs. It could be totally minimal, but provide an 'excuse' to get
an unambiguous corporate contributor agreement.
Sorry I can't be more specific at this stage about which employers I have
in mind, but if any thoughts can be usefully offered at this stage gladly
received.
Thanks,
Edward
On Sat, 19 Oct 2019 at 11:16, Simon Poole wrote:
> If it was outside of the UK it is very unlikely that the edits by the
> employee would be considered anything protectable outside of them adding a
> substantial extract of data from a database that is protected by EU
> database regulation.
>
> In the UK however I suppose there is a chance of the edits, assuming they
> are not totally trivial, being a copyrightable work, which would
> potentially require us to remove them if in the end they were not available
> on terms that are compatible with the ODbL. If they don't amount to that I
> don't see any recourse of the employer wrt the data being in OSM.
>
> That said, -don't use OSM behind the back of the employer-, get upfront
> permission to use OSM.
>
> Simon
> Am 19.10.2019 um 10:12 schrieb Edward Bainton:
>
> Ah and perhaps we should distinguish between the employee whose manager
> says, "Put this into OSM" and the employee who thinks, "My employer doesn't
> care how I get the job done, so hang this proprietary GIS she's given me,
> my job is so much easier on OSM and she'll thank me for using it."
>
> On Sat, 19 Oct 2019 at 09:07, Edward Bainton
> wrote:
>
>> Thank you both. To clarify, this is in the UK, where I am in discussion
>> with two organisations.
>>
>> From a purely legal perspective, can I simply plough on trying to invest
>> them in the usefulness of OSM on the basis that, if any employer became
>> unhappy, their remedy is against their employee for signing the Contributor
>> Agreement without authorisation - anIf it was d not against OSM, which can
>> keep the data?
>>
>> In other words, if later becomes a problem, it's not OSM's problem.
>>
>> Obviously, good practice may dictate a less "not my problem" approach,
>> but I'm trying to find the worst-case scenario before going further.
>>
>> On Sat, 19 Oct 2019 at 00:06, Kathleen Lu wrote:
>>
>>> Jurisdiction dependant, but here are two general concepts which I think
>>> are relevant:
>>>
>>> As the statute you quoted specifies, when copyright will belong to the
>>> employer, it tends to depend on if the copyrightable work was made within
>>> the scope of the employee's job. (If you're a software programmer, it would
>>> be difficult for your employer to claim ownership a romance novel you
>>> write, but easier to claim ownership of code you write.)
>>>
>>> When an employee signs a contract, whether that contract is binding on
>>> the employer depends on whether the employee had authorization to sign on
>>> behalf of the employer, and sometimes whether it *seems* like to a
>>> reasonably objective person dealing with the employee whether the employee
>>> had authorization.
>>>
>>> These two principles would be in tension with each other in the case of
>>> an employer who claimed, on the one hand, that their employee's job was to
>>> edit OSM, but on the other hand, the employee did not have authorization to
>>> sign the Contributor Agreement, which would have been required for them to
>>> do their job.
>>>
>>> Thus, while it would be easy for an employer to claim ownership of such
>>> edits, I think it would be difficult for that same employer to also claim
>>> the Contributor Agreement does not apply.
>>>
>>> -Kathleen
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Oct 18, 2019 at 3:04 PM Simon Poole wrote:
>>>
The question is rather complicated and if at all can really only be
approached on a per jurisdiction base as both employment regulation and
certain aspects of intellectual property law differ widely by territory.
So the 1st thing to clarify would be where this is taking place and
which law is relevant.
Simon
Am 18. Oktober 2019 19:41:59 MESZ schrieb Edward Bainton <
bainton@gmail.com>:
>
> Hi all
>
> Quick
