A completely unrelated aside > > I bought a copy of the part-PAF (that's just the street-level listing, > rather than individual addresses) once, as part of a project I was > working on. I didn't intend to use the data it contained directly (as > that would have been a breach of the licence terms), but I wanted to see > the data structure and also see if I could reverse engineer it from > genuinely open data (since it broadly overlaps with the OS Locator > database, which is OGL). > >
You have to be careful with using databases to recreate them elsewhere. We had a similar question in the realm of genealogy, about downloading commercial databases from places such as Ancestry.com just to check for completeness and data structures, and our legal people advised caution. http://www.out-law.com/page-5698 Also, at the time of writing, ECJ guidance has been sought by the German courts in respect of the concept of "extraction". The opinion of the Advocate General (AG), which is often (but not always) followed by the ECJ, is that "extraction" should be given a broad interpretation. The AG thought that extraction (which is defined as transferring all or the substantial part of the contents of a database to another medium) should not be limited to the physical copying of data, but should extend to situation where someone had consulted a database and then reproduced its contents elsewhere. The ECJ's ruling is therefore awaited with interest. ORG is in the process of contracting a Legal Officer to start a tech legal clinic, among other things.
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