What is worrying me is that the LWG (=OSMF=COMMUNITY) requires any contributor (us) to sign up using a CT, where BING can get away with a simple blog page.
I *can* understand that, because it's not OSM that is addressed in this blog, but the individuals (us) making contributions. The permission to use BING imagery is given to us in a vague blog entry on the page below. http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/maps/archive/2010/12/01/bing- maps-aerial-imagery-in-openstreetmap.aspx We had better print this page and keep it's URL firmly ! In order to safeguard the OSM community, I want to suggest that the LWG pays as much attention to BING complying with our CT as to the us (=community) and demand a firm license addressing each OSM user, signed up to OSM to ensure it's legal position for the time he is using BING ! As I see it now, this blog is of no legal value, and any user might be sued for license violation. Not to speak about the consequences once BING imagery based data needs to be removed. The fact that Steve Coast actually pays his home with BINGS salary, does not create much of an insurance to us. Giant companies as Google and Microsoft are known to change their opinions fast as soon as their interest changes and no-one is there to protect us when things go wrong. GEODATA is a big business and I would not be surprised if MS one day decides that OSM is theirs, due to more then a substantial part is based on BING imagery, without sufficient legal foundation. I trust MS to have the legal force to make sure it takes less than a week to accomplish that. Gert On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 8:10 PM, Grant Slater <openstreet...@firefishy.com> wrote: > The official Bing blog: > http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/maps/archive/2010/12/01/bing- maps-aerial-imagery-in-openstreetmap.aspx > published by Brian Hendricks - Bing Maps Product Manager Oh, yes. That's right. I don't think it's perfect, but better than nothing. I think it could have been handled better at Microsoft's end though, i.e. directly posting the Terms PDF. >> But even if it is and can be proved to be authentic, unless Microsoft >> also state that OSM has permission to license traced data it out to >> others as CC-BY-SA, simply saying yes you can trace and upload to OSM >> isn't enough in my opinion. As this would be a license specific to >> OSM, and wouldn't allow others who use OSM data to use the bing data. >> > > The traced data is a new work and therefore untainted by the Bing > license. (NearMap doesn't see using aerial imagery this way.) > The license is also a specific terms of use grant to OSM with the > condition the derived data is uploaded to OSM. I can see that the assumption of "tracing aerial photography to create a vector representation of the data is creating an entirely new work" is potentially problematic. I'm not a lawyer, but I would think that you would want the copyright holder to state that they disclaim any copyright on such traced data just to be sure. Just take a look at this case as an example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_%22Hope%22_poster#Origin_and_c opyright_issues _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk