Re: [OSM-legal-talk] A case for CT + CC-BY-SA
Ed Avis wrote: Interesting slip... of course I meant to say 'contacting'... :) So are there cases where people are thumbing their nose at the licence, but somehow if we used ODbL they would fall into line? Couldn't tell you that without reading their minds! I honestly don't know how many infringers are saying let's use this data, they'll never know, how many don't realise they're doing wrong, and how many just don't understand the licence. It's probably a bit of all three. I slightly suspect that ODbL's contract pillar makes it more enforceable than CC's copyright-only approach (there are more contract lawyers than copyright specialists). But even if that's true, and you'd need much finer minds than mine to pronounce on it, that's not really my point. Rather, it's this: in the absence of enforcement, good guys will comply with the licence voluntarily, and bad guys won't. Because ODbL's share-alike is more appropriate to data, it allows people to create produced works - a freedom not afforded by CC-BY-SA. (It also imposes additional requirements, of course, notably the derivative source requirement.) So let's assume neither licence is going to be fully enforced in every single circumstance. (That's surely a given; there are only so many hours in the day and so many things we can spot.) That means CC-BY-SA is restricting the good guys, not the bad guys. ODbL, in the produced work case, is not restricting the good guys. If you believe that produced works are a worthwhile freedom to offer, and I do, then the current situation favours the bad guys. (Of course, if you follow this argument to its extreme, then you end up with CC0+community norms... and though I was originally sceptical about that approach, the way in which infringing use is spiralling beyond even our ability to track it has made me rethink.) cheers Richard -- View this message in context: http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/OSM-legal-talk-A-case-for-CT-CC-BY-SA-tp6613895p6618044.html Sent from the Legal Talk mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] A case for CT + CC-BY-SA
On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 1:01 PM, Richard Fairhurst rich...@systemed.netwrote: Rather, it's this: in the absence of enforcement, good guys will comply with the licence voluntarily, and bad guys won't. In the absence of enforcement they good guys will comply with the license if they can. If the terms are onerous then even the good guys will fail to comply. ODbL is way too onerous. Firstly it's not easy to understand what would be required for compliance (the language is unclear and even the best available advice is conflicting) and secondly if the requirement is for a database then it's impractical in many cases. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] A case for CT + CC-BY-SA
Richard Fairhurst wrote: I'm a good guy, I'd hope; I've given years of my life to OSM, and contributed a lot to the community (hardcore JOSM users may see fit to disagree ;) ). Despite that OSM offers nothing to me, because CC-BY-SA's share-alike clause is defined in relation to creative works, not to data. That means my particular niche (hand-drawn, highly specialised cartography, requiring days of work for a small set of maps) works fine with Ordnance Survey OpenData, but not with OSM. If I were someone writing routing software, whose endeavour is not caught within the arbitrary application of CC-BY-SA share-alike to OSM, I'm sure I'd feel differently. I see that the ODbL fits your particular use case nicely. But as you acknowledge, things look different for people with other use cases. I expect that I'm one of those people whose favourite use cases won't benefit from ODbL - quite the opposite, in fact. My personal niche in the realm of OSM products are 3D models. My vision is to build applications that let people explore models of the world and create products such as virtual panoramas, animations, or even simulator game scenarios, with no more than a few clicks. Users of these applications would not be limited to downloading pre-made models from a server and looking at them, but should be able to configure model generation as they see fit and have it instantly performed by their computer. If I'm not mistaken, this use case highlights several of the ODbL's downsides: * Complexity: This is particularly bad when non-specialists create produced works (e.g. screenshots), and the tool they use creates derivative databases in the process. * Unclear distinction between database and produced work: Illustrated by 3D models, which are yet another it depends case. * Skewed balance between effort for sharing databases and sharing products: A database of a virtual environment can be much larger and harder to publish than the short flying over my hometown Youtube clip produced from that database. * Unclear method of making the alterations alternative: This seems hard to apply to GUI-centred software. Strictly speaking, this would also force users of the application from my use case example to ensure continued availability of the SRTM database (additional Contents) and the program (part of the algorithm) as long as they want to continue publication of their produced work. You said CC-BY-SA is also a license that few current mappers should hate so much that they cannot stand to be part of a project that uses it. For the past three years I've stayed here partly in the hope that we'll move to ODbL, and partly out of inertia because OS OpenData wasn't available three years ago. The day that it's decided that we're staying with CC-BY-SA is the day I quit the project. I hope that you could still be convinced to accept a dual licensing solution that makes the database available under both ODbL and CC-BY-SA? If your goal is to eliminate legal barriers that make it hard for you to use OSM data the way you want, then I can understand your position - I'm doing the same thing right now, except for a different use case and therefore with different requirements. Trying to take existing options away from friendly data users, though - and an ODbL-only solution would involve that - is something that I can neither truly understand nor support. -- Tobias Knerr ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] A case for CT + CC-BY-SA
Tordanik wrote: I see that the ODbL fits your particular use case nicely. But as you acknowledge, things look different for people with other use cases. I expect that I'm one of those people whose favourite use cases won't benefit from ODbL - quite the opposite, in fact. I can certainly see your issues. But I think that this is what Steve was talking about in the SOTM-EU keynote when he said let's move to ODbL and sort out the details in v2. None of what you've highlighted is insuperable. They either require, IMHO (and I'm certainly not an authority on these things), a small wording change in ODbL 1.1, or a well-formed community guideline on our part. I suspect, for example, that looking closely at machine-readable in ODbL 4.6 would get us a long way. But fixing ODbL to remove implementation bugs will be a lot easier than making CC-BY-SA appropriate for data. I hope that you could still be convinced to accept a dual licensing solution that makes the database available under both ODbL and CC-BY-SA? Oddly enough I've just answered this one in private mail to someone so I'll repost my message here. :) My well-documented personal preference is for public domain (or attribution-only). So if you have two licences with differing share-alike permissions, and you dual-license the data under them, then you're providing it with more freedoms than you would under one alone. That's more permissive than either licence, and therefore closer to public domain - so _personally_ I'm happy. (I've said this on the lists at some point though I can't instantly find where.) But never mind what I think, is it right for the project? It's always hard to put yourself in someone else's mindset. But if you believe that share-alike is good, then surely you want that share-alike to be enforceable (otherwise you'd support CC0+community norms, a la Science Commons). With CC-BY-SA it's entirely possible that in many jurisdictions it isn't enforceable for all data - and, particularly, for OSM's most commercially valuable asset (routable street networks and addressing) in jurisdictions such as the States. So I wouldn't advocate CC-BY-SA or ODbL for the project; I think ODbL is a better way of providing share-alike. But personally, I'd not be upset if we ended up with dual-licensing, because it's slightly closer to public domain. cheers Richard -- View this message in context: http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/OSM-legal-talk-A-case-for-CT-CC-BY-SA-tp6613895p6618510.html Sent from the Legal Talk mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] A case for CT + CC-BY-SA
Cool, thanks for responding Ed. Look forward to the results. Steve On 7/25/2011 3:17 PM, Ed Avis wrote: Steve Coaststeve@... writes: Therefore I think it's going to require you to release the full instructions too. I'm guessing it's an email thread? For the UK, yes. For the US I have done the consultation with the two attorneys in a couple of long phone calls which I did not record. However, I expect the work they produce for me to give the question as well as an answer. I made clear that I want their best-researched opinion and not to promote any particular viewpoint (I am sure this does not need stating but I did so anyway to be on the safe side). In general I do not think a lawyer is able to produce 'biased' answers in the usual sense. There is far too much hot water he or she could get into for not giving a fair shake to all sides of the argument, and this is ingrained into the way lawyers think. But still the way you ask the question can affect the result because of this very caution. We have produced a free map. Can we distribute it under CC-BY-SA and know that some big evil company won't take it and not give back? I am a big evil map company. Can I take this CC-BY-SA data and not give back? These questions appear to be opposites, but the answers may well be 'no and no'. So I have tried not to phrase the question in either of those ways but to ask in a more general way about scope of copyright. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
