David Earl wrote: > On 28/09/2009 08:53, Nick Whitelegg wrote: > >>> Incidentally, as well as the possible OS contamination, the Council will >>> itself have database and content copyright in the data, so explicit >>> permission would be needed from them to incorporate and release it under >>> our CCBySA license. In obtaining that permission you could ask them to >>> assert that the data was collected without reference to OS or other >>> copyright base maps. >>> >> One council (West Sussex) referred to its data as "public domain" when I >> last looked. I'd guess that's the same for all councils. >> > > Well, their website has a clear copyright notice and the legal page says > you need to contact them to use any data. I imagine many councils would > be quite happy to give permission, but the default position is that > copyright persists in their data. > +1 > David > Most people, including people in councils, have a poor understanding of copyright. Council-produced, published documents are automatically Crown Copyright, which extends for fifty years. Only then are they public-domain. The council may choose to permit its use for OSM but you would need written permission to license it's use to fit with CC-by-SA and ODbL so we can show the Crown Copyright does not apply. We must be scrupulous about this to maintain a clean database.
Cheers, Chris _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
