David Groom writes: > > But all theories of law aside, as a practical matter, if someone > > hasn't bothered to decline, they're not going to bother to sue. You > > The argument "hey, we understand we don't know if we have any right to use > this data, buts lets leave it in and hope no one complains" doesn't sound a > particularly moral one to me. It also seems to set a rather dangerous > precedent.
Copyright isn't property. It's a bargain. We agree not to copy a work for a period of time, unless the copying is not for profit, is educational, is limited in quantity and/or a number of other nuances that don't fit into "not particularly moral." > Your worse case sounds so harmless. Of course it's possible to sketch an > alternative worse case scenario: > > At some time in the future after being asked to delete the offending data, > the data is deleted and ... ... > > a) all those contributors who had made edits to that data after 1 April > 2012 get very annoyed because they see the results of their work deleted., You are describing the current case, more or less. "We had to kill OSM to save it." We already are finding that swathes of data are contaminated and will be deleted, e.g. most of the west coast of the U.S. and most of the Great Lakes, which also means going up a fair ways into the continent because the larger rivers are considered coastline. That was a gotcha for me. The Racquette, the Grass, and the Oswegatchie were all going to be deleted because they were coastline, public domain data imported by a user we cannot ask to sign onto the CT, but who supposedly might sue us even though they can't even be bothered to decline. I'm FINE with preserving the anonymity, and I'm even FINE with allowing anonymous users to decline. I'm NOT FINE with allowing unnamed people to hold a copyright without bothering to decline. There's a REASON why copyright notices have to contain the name of the copyright holder. This situation has just gotten ridiculous. The OSMF is saying that it cannot use: o public domain data, o which may have been edited, but which shows no signs of having been, o which has been modified until it is not recognizable as the original. o imported by a user whom nobody can contact, o who has not bothered to decline acceptance of the OdBL, o a license nearly identical to the existing license. And people are trying to defend this, against all logic, because they think copyright is inviolate, and that judges are just computers, executing the law as if their JUDGEment cannot come into play. -- --my blog is at http://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
