> From: Frederik Ramm [mailto:frede...@remote.org] > Subject: Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Triggering ShareAlike in Government > > Hi, > > The interesting question is, and I don't know if Paul intended to hint > at that with his FOI reference: What happens if the information is > leaked, e.g. if the ME has to reveal the derived data as a result of a > FOI request - does the recipient (who made the FOI request) then gain > share-alike rights also? I presume they do but I'm not sure.
FOI and copyrights (or any kind of secrets) gets complicated. When you add in the complications from GIS data not being a well-explored area of copyright law it gets even murkier. So here you're combining FOI with copyright of GIS data with share-alike. As a local example, a contract that IBM entered into with the Crown locally (a copyrighted documented) was considered confidential by the contract. The FOI office disagreed, ordered its release, and a court case and some appeals later, it's now released under FOI. In this case the FOI requestors would be intending to report on the contents of it and copyright wouldn't interfere. With GIS data generally you want to use the data, not report on it. > Other kinds > of "leaks" are possible; among UK government officials it is customary > to lose notebooks and hard disks on trains. The GPL FAQ > (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0- > faq.html#TOCInternalDistribution) > contains the question whether theft of previously un-relesed GPL > software would trigger share-alike and the answer is no, because the > sharing did not happen intentionally. > > The GPL FAQ also says that company-internal use is not distribution, but > providing copies to off-site contractors is; if that were true for OSM, > then if you made a PDF and emailed that to a print shop to make 20 > copies for you that would already be distribution. I'm not sure on that - I suspect it would depend on where you are, how the contracts with the contractors are worded, and if they can keep the materials. Contractors tend to be fairly free with documents supplied to them (e.g. manuals or instructions), reusing them internally. > (What happens of the MoD takes an OSM map, draws a little bit on top of > it and stamps it "secret" - is that allowed at all, given that the > current license requires that they must not add any restrictions to the > material...?) If they're not distributing - nothing. They don't need any permission from the copyright holder for that. If they distribute it, then they might be in trouble, but copyright might not apply here if it's the MoD - there are plenty of exemptions in most IP law for national security related reasons. You might be able to stop them from distributing it in another country, but in that other country the secret might have no effect. _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
