Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Protection time of ODbL
Hi, Jukka Rahkonen wrote: > Was the answer to my question that nobody knows how long ODbL is protecting > the > data and it is impossible to tell it exactly? No, I think the answer was "forever". Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Protection time of ODbL
Hi, James Livingston wrote: > On 30/09/2009, at 7:36 AM, Frederik Ramm wrote: >> Question is: 1. what about the contents themselves. Have we reached a >> consensus that the contents of the database are themselves not >> protected >> by copyright and do we explicitly say that we don't claim any >> copyright? > > I don't think that a consensus on what we think matters when > discussing whether the contents of the database are protected by > copyright Well if you say you don't claim any then for all intents and purposes it does not matter whether your jurisdiction says that you could claim copyright or that you couldn't. Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Protection time of ODbL
Hi, Frederik Ramm wrote: > So *either* it's free-for-all after 15 years in Europe but then it is > also free-for-all after 1 day in the US. ... *or* the contractual component is still valid in Europe even after the sui generes protection expires, which validates the OP's question. Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Protection time of ODbL
Matt, Matt Amos wrote: >> And 2. you are wrong because ODBL tries exactly that, to assert rights >> over the collection even in jurisdictions where there are none, by >> invoking the idea of a contract - so where is it written that the >> contract, which may well exist in parallel to sui generis rights in >> Europe, also terminates after 15 years? > > you're wrong - the contract asserts no rights over the collection. > that's why we need a contract, because there are no "sui generis" > rights to take advantage of. I don't think I understand you, or maybe you don't understand me. I'll try this in individual steps: 1. We want to protect the database as a whole; 2. For countries with database law we can sail under that law; 3. but for countries without we need to use a contractual component; 4. such a contractual component is built into the ODbL; 5. the contractual component doesn't have an explicit time limit; 6. the ODbL doesn't say "the contractual component is only valid for those countries without database law"; 7. which means the contractual component which protects our data from day one in places like the US is also valid in Europe (where it usually takes backstage to the stronger database law component); 8. from this it follows that after 15 years, a planet file in Europe is protected no more or less than a fresh planet file in the US. So *either* it's free-for-all after 15 years in Europe but then it is also free-for-all after 1 day in the US. Clearer now? > yes. over insubstantial amounts of data, there's no copyright claimed. Aren't you now mixing database law and copyright terms. Whether or not something falls under copyright has nothing to with whether it is substantial related to some kind of database, has it? For example if OSM user "n80" artfully crafts a way that doesn't even exist and uploads it to OSM, then that way would perhaps be protected by copyright in some jurisdictions, completely independent of the database and whether or not it is substantial. If I read the contributor agreement correctly, then we require from "n80" that he declares never to exercise his copyright. Whether or not, and for how long, database protection covers his work of art, does not come into the equation - the copyright question is over when the data is uploaded. Correct? Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] New license status
Hi, James Livingston wrote: > On 28/09/2009, at 11:16 PM, Gustav Foseid wrote: >> Well... There is no copyright that expires after 15 years. Sui >> generis database rights expire after 15 years, but copyright is >> hardly very relevant for an OpenStreetMap database dump. > > In Europe maybe - however there are countries where database do have > inherent copyright separate from the copyright over their contents, > for example in Australia. I think the copyright wouldn't expire for 70 > years here, which is definitely more than the 15 for European sui > generis database rights. I think we should try very hard to make conditions the same for all OSM users on the planet, as far as possible. If what you say is true then we should make sure (via the content license) that the content is not protected longer in Australia than anywhere else. Personally, as I am opposed to us trying to dictate to our users what they may and may not do with our data, I would appreciate to see OSM data go out of copyright as quickly as possible. (I once tried to talk our share-alike hardliners into accepting one year, on the grounds of one-year-old OSM data being practically useless... but they wouldn't have it.) Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] attribution of data for use on TV
Hi, tele...@hushmail.com wrote: > My question is what type of attribution is appropriate? We had a huge discussion about this 2.5 years ago but not a lot has changed since, so you might want to read the thread with the misleading subject "OSM Layer into Adobe Illustrator", http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2007-February/011537.html where a guy from a TV broadcaster inquired about using the Baghdad map on-air. It all boils down to paragraph 4c of the CC-BY-SA license which says: "You must keep intact all copyright notices for the Work and give the Original Author credit reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing..." The problem is, or at least was for that particular request 2.5 years ago, that nobody in OSM can give you a definitive and legally binding answer what exactly "reasonable to the medium or means" is. I think I'm speaking for the majority of contributors when I say that having the credits in the credits roll at the end of a TV production is perfectly all right (that's the usual place for credits in that medium) but the responsiblity rests with you, or the broadcaster, in the end. > Anyway, I want to do what is > right here. So, do I simply attribute in the app and let my TV > users know I'm using OpenStreetMap data OR do I need to attribute > on-air? I could easily add an OpenStreetMap attribution in the > splash screen and about box. For *you* it is sufficient to tell your clients - in a manner reasonable to your medium, i.e. computer software - that you're using OSM data and that this comes under the license CC-BY-SA 2.0. That's all that is legally required from you. The fact that the data is CC-BY-SA then means that your customers, when using the data, must also acknowledge the source and specify the license; this, however, is not your responsibility but theirs. Of course if you are interested in a healthy long-term relationship with your customers you should advise them accordingly, lest they get a bollocking from angry OSM contributors (see http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Lacking_proper_attribution) and then complain to you about not having been informed. Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] OS map copyright expiry dates, FOI request
Hi, TimSC wrote: > The next question that occurs is can OS > reverse their view or is an FOI binding in some way. I'd say they can probably always backtrack, but they cannot blame you for taking this answer as face value and start using OOC maps. It is just five years difference anyway, so if you start using the maps on 1st January 2011 and they find out in 2012 and ask you to remove your stuff, you just have to drag the process for a while and you're clear again ;-) Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Software using open street map data and Licensing model / restrictions
Hi, Alex wrote: > My mobile client will download the tiles that I will have generated > and display them with Point of Interest information that will be > coming from OSM, commercial data, and user generated content / POIs . > > What I want to know is if my application itself and my website (that > will be presenting a google/OSM style Ajax map) has to be licensed > under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 No, you are free to license your application any way you like. > or is it only > the subset of OSM data the I will be working with ? If you produce tiles that contain OSM data then those tiles - including all commercially sourced data depicted on them - must be licensed CC-BY-SA, i.e. anyone is free to trace the commercial data off the tiles. You can only circumvent that effect by creating overlay tiles and display them on top of each other in the client (i.e. base tiles from OSM = CC-BY-SA, overlay tiles with commercial data = proprietary license). > What exactly can I do with the OSM licensing model when I use OSM data > into my application (note that the data is not included as-is in the > app but downloaded as tiles inside my client) Anything you produce from OSM data must be CC-BY-SA licensed (e.g. if you compile OSM data into some special compressed map format for your application then these special compressed files must by CC-BY-SA). If you mix OSM data with someting else into an end product then that end product must also be CC-BY-SA. If your application displays OSM data loaded from file 1 and proprietary data loaded from file 2, then you can keep the licenses separate. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Re-licensing and public domain contribution as an user option
Hi, Gioele wrote: > Instead of choosing between re-licensing to ODbL and having their > contribution removed, they could choose to release their contribution (past > and future) into public domain. Should we go ahead with the ODbL relicensing - a question that is still not answered and for which we'll have to thoroughly evaluate wheter ODbL as it has emerged now really does what we want - then this idea has my full support. On the surface it is only formalising something we're doing on the Wiki anyway, but I feel that this would be a good move to show the PD people that they have at least been listened to, even if the end result is something else. It does not hurt OSM to give PD people this option of expressing themselves, but it does a great deal for them. It has to made clear of course that PD data in a database governed by contractual and database restrictions (like the ODbL) is not really worth anything, so the fact that individual bits inside the database are PD would only have a symbolic meaning. Also, of course, if someone makes a PD contribution on top of a CC-BY-SA licensed contribution by someone else, then only the "diff" is PD, and the resulting object is still CC-BY-SA. I think when we send out the note to people (or put up a web page) it should say: (a) I don't support the new license or anything else, delete my data. (b) I hereby agree to ODbL () and to the contribution agreement at and for the time it takes to make the switch I'm fine with CC-BY-SA as well. (c) I really don't care, all my past and future contributions to OSM are PD, do what you want. Answer (c) would then simply set a flag in the user preferences somewhere and that's it - for everything else we would act just the same as if the user had answered (b). Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Can feature names be determined from copyrighted data?
Hi, Pavel Zubkou wrote: > In Belarus maps are an objects of copiright ([1], Article 7.1), but > "information as such" does not covered by copyright (Article 8.2). The situation is very similar in many other countries (google for "facts are free"). Some countries (notably the EU) have a special database law that protects collections of facts as if there was a copyright on the collection, even if the individual facts are free; the proposed new ODbL is partly based on this concept. Even in those countries where there is no such database law, we do not copy names from copyrighted maps because we want to be on the safe side. Of course, if you write to the map provider, citing the legal text and asking whether according to this text you have the permission to copy names from his map and he responds with something like "as long as you copy only facts but not the actual design of my maps that's fine" then you are on the safe side. Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Can feature names be determined from copyrighted data?
Hi, Pavel Zubkou wrote: > Can I look at > *copyrighted* map for a name of lake that is placed at about 10km > northen from city X? Generally not. We have lots of areas in OSM where data has been legally traced from Yahoo aerial imagery but where we're missing road names - precisely because we must not copy them from copyrighted material. This is a gray area, legally speaking, but we tend to be strict and recommend not using copyrighted maps at all. An exception to this, although not codified anywhere, is where data can be reasonably expected to be part of your personal life. For example if you have canoed on that lake and map it later, but find that you have forgotten its name, it is ok to look it up. Or you actually were there and still remember the name but you only read the name in a travel book that you had on you. (Otherwise half of the street names in my area, which I know by hard, would be illegal to enter into OSM because I ultimately read them on a copyrighted map.) Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] ODbL: Where do we stand regarding collective/derivative databases
Hi, Matt Amos wrote: > LWG cannot entirely resolve these questions, as they need open > discussion and community consensus (which we obviously can't provide > on our own). even then, final interpretation is up to the courts. Of course. Thanks for your comments, I especially liked the a(b(X)@c(Y)) part which is a nice structure to think about this. But about my Navteq+OSM example, you said that > my reading would be that the deletions from the OSM data are a > derivative database of both the OSM data and the navteq data and that > the combination of navteq + (OSM - derivative) constitutes a public > use of that derivative database, requiring the release of the navteq > data. Now if I loaded my Navteq database into postgis and created a buffer around every object, generating one giant buffer area multipolygon for the whole world, then I could use that to subtract data from my OSM data base and would then only have to publish the giant multipolygon under ODbL (because that was mixed with OSM data) and not the original Navteq data. So this means I'd have to get permission from Navteq to release the giant buffer multipolygon under ODbL but if that is granted, I could continue with my OSM-enhanced Navteq tiles plan, and OSM would gain precious little from having access to the Navteq buffer multipolygon. Right? Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] ODbL: Where do we stand regarding collective/derivative databases
Hi, Frederik Ramm wrote: > He now > employs technique #1 from above to merge the Navteq data set and the > reduced OSM data set into one that contains the "best of both worlds". I meant that he employs technique #1 to create a produced work from the Navteq and the reduced OSM data set - not that he actually merges them, that's the whole point of course. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
[OSM-legal-talk] ODbL: Where do we stand regarding collective/derivative databases
Hi, generally good progress on ODbL; many things have been cleared up and we will soon be at a point where the proposal for a license change is not some cloudy abstract thing any longer but a very concrete proposal that people can evaluate. After the LWG has made an effort to resolve the questions about what is substantial and what is a derived work, in my eyes there's one big issue that remains, and that is "what is a derivative database". To recap, my understanding is that if I produce (+publish) works based on a derivative database that I have created then I have to make that database available, fully, under ODbL. If I, on the other hand, produce works based on a collective database that is half ODbL and half proprietary, then I only have to make the ODbL part available. Is that everyone else's reading as well? Let us look at someone who mixes OpenStreetMap and Navteq data. Say I produce map tiles (clearly a produced work, no?) where all the streets come from Navteq, but all the footways come from OpenStreetMap. There are a number of ways to do this, all leading to the exact same result, and nobody from the outside can see which of 1,2,3 I am using: 1. Configure my Mapnik tile generator so that it accesses two different postgis databases - one containing Navteq and one containing OSM - to produce merged map tiles. 2. Pour OSM and Navteq data into the same postgis instance but have different tables (e.g. planet_osm_roads and navteq_roads) which are joined by Mapnik's SELECT statement. 3. Extract all footway geometries from OSM and insert them into my postgis database containing Navteq street data, then run Mapnik on the resulting database. The way I read the license, option 1 would be definitely ok, option 3 would definitely lead to my having to release the Navteq data, and option 2 would be somewhere in between (probably ok until unknown to me, Matt comes along and makes Mapnik internally create temporary tables on the fly for better performance in which case I'd be creating temporary derivative databases without even noticing...) Evil business genius that I am, I would of course claim to be doing 1 even when doing 3 and nobody would have the right to challenge me, right? Which would ultimately mean that: "If there is any conceivable way that a produced work could have been created by using a collective rather than a derivative database, then only the ODbL licensed part of the data source has to be released." This is becoming interesting, we're very much into real-world business scenarios now. There are lots of people who'd shy away from using OSM outright but if they could use a Navteq basemap and sprinkle that with any additional detail that OSM might have that would be just great for them. Let us look at someone who has a Navteq and an OSM data base, and runs a comparing analysis which results in *removing* all features from the OSM database which were also in Navteq. He clearly creates a derivative database but one which has no data added, just data deleted. He now employs technique #1 from above to merge the Navteq data set and the reduced OSM data set into one that contains the "best of both worlds". Since he is clearly operating on a collective database, he only has to release the derived OSM database under ODbL - the value of which is almost zero to the community since it has no data added (the only thing you can do with it is find out which of OSM's features are present in Navteq as well). Is everything I write here correct and compatible with what others are thinking? Is there some lawyer opinion on cases like this documented somewhere in the vast depths of our Wiki and LWG minutes? (I'm just trying to determine what exactly ODbL mandates - not trying to find out what would be desirable in an ideal world.) Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms
Hi, Matt Amos wrote: > but, to prove that we can copy from other maps with impunity there > needs to be a precedent, preferably in several jurisdictions. so could > someone please start ripping off OSM so that we can sue them and get > some case law, please? Ours or theirs? ;-) If we do a test case like that we'll have to finance both sides. Maybe we should start ripping off the OS, then we'd only have to pay for our own lawyers - bargain! ;-) Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms
Matt, Matt Amos wrote: > it's been said before, but it bears repeating: why bother? all the > time wasted arguing about whether copying information from copyrighted > maps is OK would be better used mapping, writing code or one of the > other thousands of productive tasks out there in the OSM community. Well, a good deal of those people who argue *against* copying from existing maps do so partly because they believe (hope, want, pray) that it is forbidden to copy from *our* maps without adhering to *our* license, not because they really want to copy from someone else. If it can be shown that we can copy from other maps with impunity, then we can bin the whole re-licensing effort and go PD right away. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Is CC-BY-SA really so ineffective?
Hi, Grant Slater wrote: > Quote next section... > "If you're under 16: > - Never reveal any personal information about yourself or anyone else > (for example, school, telephone number, your full name, home address > or email address)." > > Not capturing any personal information from under 13 year olds, > effectively makes them except from COPPA. But you do agree that it is a far cry from the lawyer's boilerplate text which says: "In any case, you affirm that you are over the age of 13, as the OSMF Site is not intended for children under 13."? Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Is CC-BY-SA really so ineffective?
Hi, Matt Amos wrote: > or lucky that the FTC didn't shut us down in the US for not complying > with COPPA, etc, etc... What exactly would "being shut down in the US for not complying with COPPA" entail for an UK institution? IP packets being filtered at the Great Firewall? I just checked out the BBC web site and while they say "please get a parent's permission before taking part in any bbc.co.uk community if you're under 16", there is nothing remotely referencing COPPA there. Nor does it say "if you're under 13 you may not look at our web site". Then again, maybe the BBC have already been shut down in the US and nobody even noticed. Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Is CC-BY-SA really so ineffective?
Hi, Ed Avis wrote: > Frederik Ramm writes: > >>> If it is the settled view of the OSM project, based on legal advice, >>> that copyright plus CC-BY-SA does not protect the Openstreetmap >>> geodata from being copied and incorporated into other works, can an >>> official statement be made to this effect? >> No, because we play the same game as everyone else does. We don't know >> if there is copyright but we claim there is, just to be on the "safe" >> side, i.e. at least instil some fear of potential lawsuits in those who >> would use our data without adhering to our license. > > I think this is a very sensible policy, and quite enough deterrent to stop > companies using OSM map data without following the CC-BY-SA share-alike terms. > I cannot imagine any map company wanting to take the risk. > > So I still don't understand why some people are so keen to drop CC-BY-SA and > start a legal arms race by using an EULA instead. If it ain't broke, don't > fix it. I was talking data. Our data is CC-BY-SA and will remain so, unless/until we decide to switch to ODbL or soemthing else. Nobody is saying that the web site terms and conditions, which we don't yet have any of and a lawyer suggested we should - would replace that license for the data. The lawyers's stance, supported by Russ Nelson et al., is that even though we didn't have Ts+Cs before to govern the use of the web site, this should be characterised as "broken" because it exposed us to risk and we were only lucky that nobody sued us for some stupid reason which Ts+Cs would avoid. Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms
Hi, Russ Nelson wrote: > On Jul 3, 2009, at 7:20 AM, Elizabeth Dodd wrote: >> It's a public site, no passwords, no sign up required to read it, so >> it's for >> the public to read. > > What if somebody posts hate speech (for the USAmericans)? > What if somebody adds Nazi party mapping parties to the calendar (for > the Germans)? > What if somebody invites women and men to a mapping party in Saudi > Arabia? > > The question isn't "what legal text do we need?" but is instead "What > legal risks do we expect the OSMF to have to defend itself against?" And what exactly would be the risks of the above? If we are alerted to a hate speech etc., we'll remove it (and I believe no matter what our Ts and Cs say, we will have to remove it). So what risk would any Ts and Cs mitigate and how? What if, god forbid, someone organises a mapping party in China, we would probably have to ban that via our Ts and Cs, wouldn't we? Because mapping is illegal there? > and if we then decide that some risks are too large to accept, "What > legal text do we need to ameliorate that risk?" The OSMF has no a > priori control over what gets posted via email to OSM editors ...and that's why no sane court would assume it has responsiblity. At least here in Germany if you operate a bulletin board or something, you are expected to remove illegal content when you find it or are alerted to it, but nobody will be held responsible for stuff their users post without their knowledge (unless you are proved to operate a site that explicitly invites e.g. Nazi contributions and then play innocent). Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms
Hi, Ed Avis wrote: > Is anyone seriously suggesting that because factual information is not > covered by copyright, then in countries where no database right is > recognized, map data can be copied with impunity? [...] > I know this point has been raised many times, and the discussion tends > to go in circles, but I think it has never been satisfactorily > answered. Yes, unfortunately these things tend to be settled only if/when someone is actually sued, and often the result of such court proceedings isn't even applicable to other cases. > Either copyright applies to map data or it doesn't; and if > it doesn't, then why are we wasting time walking round with GPS > devices? It might be that it doesn't but we know that some people will fight to their (organisation's) death for it anyway - so do we want to spend the rest of our lives fighting legal battles because we know we're right, or just use a GPS and move on? > If it is the settled view of the OSM project, based on legal advice, > that copyright plus CC-BY-SA does not protect the Openstreetmap > geodata from being copied and incorporated into other works, can an > official statement be made to this effect? No, because we play the same game as everyone else does. We don't know if there is copyright but we claim there is, just to be on the "safe" side, i.e. at least instil some fear of potential lawsuits in those who would use our data without adhering to our license. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms
Hi, Francis Davey wrote: > But - and I boringly restate this point because I'm not sure its been > necessarily understood - it depends what you are trying to do. There's > no legal right or wrong it all depends on what you want to do. Well said. Im am not sure that anyone here is "trying to do" anything. General rule: 1. identify threats 2. determine workable countermeasures 3. make decision of whether nastiness of #1 outweighs #2, taking into consideration that #2 usually affects all people at once while #1 comes with a certain likelihood 4. act accordingly Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms
Hi, Ulf Möller wrote: >> No (though you will often see small print disclaimers on them). The >> idea of restricting access to age 13+ strikes me as odd in the >> extreme. When I get some time I'll do some research into what is going >> on in the US that makes them do this. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Protection_Act Should we perhaps have two sets of Terms and Condition - one that applies if the user is in the USA, and the other if he isn't? One with 200 lines of text, the other with 10? Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Contributor Terms
Hi, Ed Avis wrote: >> ODbL, as fast as I understand, does not permit re-licensing, which means >> that even if you have other data that is ODbL licensed, you cannot >> upload it to OSM without express permission of the license holder. > > But if OSM also adoped ODbL then no re-licensing would be necessary. > Isn't this the whole point of copyleft or share-alike licensing? My reading until now was that because ODbL gives the original licensor super cow powers (namely of determining which other licenses are deemed compatible), it must be avoided to pass on these super cow powers to evil people like me (Fred sets up free world database, licenses it ODbL with himself at the license root, imports full OSM database without asking anyone, then decrees under section 4.4.e that for his project, ODbL is compatible with PD, and this makes the OSM data PD.) But please let someone from the license working group say something to this before I confuse everyone. > The current wording of the page says that the OSMF can grant any > licence they want as long as it is 'free' and 'open', which hardly > rules out the above scenario. Sh, don't say that too loud, it has taken us PD advocates a lot of work to sneak that bit in! Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Contributor Terms
Hi, Ed Avis wrote: > Should say: You agree to only add contents for which you are the copyright > holder, *or which are in the public domain*, *or which already have permission > from the rights holder to distribute under Licence X*, or where you have > explicit > permission from the rights holder to submit the content. > > (Licence X being whatever licence OSM is using... so if another organization > releases data under CC-BY-SA or under ODbL or whatever, clearly it must be > permitted to add that to OSM. If not, something is a bit wrong.) ODbL, as fast as I understand, does not permit re-licensing, which means that even if you have other data that is ODbL licensed, you cannot upload it to OSM without express permission of the license holder. > If you want to be able to do future relicensing exercises then why not simply > ask > for copyright assignment? It is more honest that way I think. Yes but it also requires more trust from the mappers. If OSMF has copyright assigned, then Google can subvert the OSMF and have the OSMF board decide to grant Google a full commercial license with no strings attached for the symbolic price of $1. Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Printed maps and new license
Hi, George Ionescu wrote: > One more quick question, just to be sure: how should we handle > printing media in CC-BY-SA terms? > Is printing ©OpenStreetMap - CC-BY-SA on the map enough to ensure I'm > complying with current OSM license? If you have enough room then we prefer the URLs for OSM and CC written out. There is some info here: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Legal_FAQ#I_would_like_to_use_OpenStreetMap_maps._How_should_I_credit_you.3F However if your space is limited, abbreviations are allowed as the license only requires attribution "adequate to the medium" or so. Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Contributor Terms
Hi, Brendan Barrett wrote: >> What happens if someone, with malicious intent, deletes lots of data or >> uploads things that cause trouble (e.g. upload Teleatlas data, then tip >> off Teleatlas to make trouble). Do we reserve the right to sue them for >> damages, and if so, would this agreement be the place to hint at that? > > Would they not be in breach of condition 1: Yes; let me change the example and ask whether we reserve the right to sue someone who uploads 100.000km of random motorways across Europe every day. Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Contributor Terms
Hi, Matt Amos wrote: > just so that this isn't hidden in the dark depths of the privacy > thread, i thought it's worth announcing the latest draft of the > contributor terms. this is the document that contributors would agree > to as the license is changed and on any new sign-up. Good but I dislike the long-ish part about the liability. I understand it is all for the benefit of the mapper but it does sound differently. It is as if you are about to give blood and they give you one page to sign that lists all the circumstances under which they guarantee not so sue you - kinda leaves you with the feeling "oh, I hadn't thought of that... how many other circumstances are not listed here under which they WILL sue me?" I'll heap a ton of praise on you if you manage to express section 5 in 40 words or less. What happens if someone, with malicious intent, deletes lots of data or uploads things that cause trouble (e.g. upload Teleatlas data, then tip off Teleatlas to make trouble). Do we reserve the right to sue them for damages, and if so, would this agreement be the place to hint at that? Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms
Francis, Francis Davey wrote: > That may be true, but if I want to attach a complex contractual > obligation on anyone who uses the data (which is what the new open > data licence will do) then I need to make sure that you know you are > agreeing to it. This is most likely not going to happen with OSM data. We already have a well-established scheme where OSM data is downloaded, mirrored, and distributed anonymously. Not only do many computer sites automatically download new OSM data as it becomes available on planet.openstreetmap.org; this data is then aggregated, converted, and redistributed by many, professionals and hobbyists alike. It is not feasible to release the data only under the condition that the person downloading it has clicked some "I agree" button somewhere; because this would not only force us to change how osm.org works, but we would also have to add some "contractual" obligation to anyone downloading our data to only pass it on to people who agree to the terms/license etc! If you want more background, you might want to check the legal-talk archives for the words "browse wrap" and "click wrap". What we will most likely have is some message inside the downloaded data that says "by using this you agree to blah blah blah". > There's a difference between that and a pure copyright > licence since you don't have a right to use copyrighted material > without a licence (or some exception holding) so "I didn't know the > terms of the licence" won't help someone who wants to "steal" the > data, whereas if you want someone to be bound by a contract you have > to bring its terms to their attention. True but it is absolutely not feasible to make data release dependent on someone reading and agreeing to some terms. Even if it were, a license/contract scheme built on this would only require one rogue element violating the contract and passing the data on to others who haven't entered into the contract and everything would fall apart. > That of course is not the same question as the T&C's for use of the > website (which is a different matter) but I flag this up here as you > bring it up. It is a point that has been discussed a lot in the run-up to the new license. Any advice you have on all this is surely valued by the license working group, but you might want to read their minutes on osmfoundation.org and/or peruse the legal-talk archive to get an idea of the process. > No (though you will often see small print disclaimers on them). The > idea of restricting access to age 13+ strikes me as odd in the > extreme. When I get some time I'll do some research into what is going > on in the US that makes them do this. Please do because I would hate to lose my son's mapping help! Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms
Hi, Elizabeth Dodd wrote: > I go to a website, i read, i look at pictures. > I know quite well that the contents are either copy left or copyright and i > should check before i copy anything. Then again if you're in the US and you see an image that shocks you you might sue the website owner for damages to your health, unless that owner was so clever to write in his terms and condition that you can't - or so it seems. > Put the lawyer back in the cage. +1 Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Printed maps and new license
Hi, George Ionescu wrote: > we're planning on creating printed materials which will include OSM maps. > Does the new license allow us to do so? Yes but anything you do before the new license is implemented, which may still be half a year away for all we know, is governed by the old CC-BY-SA. Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms
Hi,
Francis Davey wrote:
> I can't really say much constructively about the terms of use without
> understanding what their goal is and what tolerance of risk the thing
> is being engineered to. For example, OSM data is going to be imperfect
> in places
In fact, this whole discussion is largely about Ts&Cs for our *web site*
and not for our data. The data thing is regulated somewhere else
entirely (in the ODbL license text and accompanying docs). What this
lawyer actually suggested is that we should have Ts&Cs governing the use
of our web site, which is of small importance compared to our data.
I am not even clear if the lawyer who suggested we need Ts&Cs for the
web site was only talking about the human facing side of it ("Web sites
are what you see in a browser, aren't they?") or about the whole HTTP
based API we offer. Probably the former, because it is difficult to make
a computer accessing the API understand and agree some Ts&Cs.
Bye
Frederik
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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms
Hi, Ed Avis wrote: > I do think that lawyers can get a bit out of control if you don't keep them > on a short leash, but do whatever you have to, I guess. As Francis Davey just said, there may be a choice. *Especially* if you are not based in a litigation crazy country like the US. > Just make sure that > site visitors aren't caught in the crossfire, and do not end up having to > agree > (explicitly or implicitly) to waive some of their rights. Yes, and please make sure that someone who is six years old can legally use the site. Anything that says "by using this site you confirm that you are umpteen years or older" is just not acceptable. We do mapping with schoolchildren, and we actually want to continue doing that! Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms
Hi, Ulf Möller wrote: >> I think if your planned licence change requires people to agree to >> these very lengthy and legalistic 'terms and conditions' then it's an >> indication that you are doing something wrong. > > It doesn't. It's just that during a review of the proposed license, a > lawyer pointed out that it is good practice to have terms of use for the > website. That recommendation would still stand if we chose not to change > the license. If we really must have such terms and conditions, and I still think we don't and am 1000% with what Ed Avis just wrote on boneheaded policies, then please at least put a giant banner on top: "This page is about the use of the openstreetmap.org web site only. It has NO RELEVANCE WHATSOEVER for you if you download OpenStreetMap data from somewhere and use that data, or if you use an OpenStreetMap editor to upload data. The only legal documents regulating that kind of participation are: ..." Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms
Hi, Russ Nelson wrote: > I was relying on information in this book. Feel free to disagree with > John Forester (elsewhere), but my point applies to any unlikely event > of bad consequences which can me mitigated at low cost. "At low cost" is something that remains to be seen - with the initial version we have here, the "low cost" would serve to discourage any non-private users, force underage users to lie to us, and do all sorts of other ugly things which I personally consider quite a sell-out to legal scaremongers. The "cost" would be nothing less than losing face and admitting you do the same shit that everyone else does just because that's how the system works. I'd hope for this project to have the spine to resist putting up stupid legalese that everybody *must* ignore to stay sane. Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms
Hi, Russ Nelson wrote: > Some of the stuff is there to make sure that we have the right to > redistribute contributions to OSM. This is important and useful. I was under the impression that these terms did not have anything to do with our data. The data should be governed by the license and the contribution agreement which I thought were separate? > Prohibited uses just gives us the right to kick fucking assholes in > the butt. Sure, self-defense is the right of all civilized people, > but remember this: a judge can ALWAYS get up on the wrong side of the > bed and rule incorrectly. Yeah, sure, and if I leave the house a brick might fall on my head and I'd be dead. Tough luck! Let's think this trough. Someone vandalises OSM and we kick him out. He sues us. Sues us for what? Half a million dollars for emotional distress? Bring them on. Reactivation of his account? He might get that but he could also simply create a new account so it makes no sense for us to fight for our right to ban him. Sue us for damages? What damages? I'm sorry but I think you have to draw a line somewhere. Write terms and conditions to insure you against things that happen with 1% or 0.1% probability. But don't try to write something that protects you from the 0.0001% cases - we cannot anticipate these anyway. Let's rather have a clean exit strategy and find out what would happen if someone were to sue the shit out of OSMF and win - let us construct things in a fashion that will allow the project to live on even if OSMF should die, rather than protect OSMF at all cost. For example, if we build strong national chapters that, legally, are separate from OSMF, these could easily between themselves set up all the servers required to replace everything OSMF operates. With such a healthy backup network, it would not even make much sense for anybody to try and kill off OSMF. This includes not giving anything to OSMF that has commercial value unless that is absolutely necessary. In the long term, I hope that we'll be able to switch to a distributed server architecture where OSMF operated assets are but one piece of the puzzle, rather than the head of everything. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms
Hi,
Gervase Markham wrote:
>> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use_-_Discussion_Draft
>
> These seem very long indeed. What risks are we mitigating here? If they
> are significant, why does every website in the world not have to have
> one of these?
Yes, I'm also very tempted to dismiss the idea of having these at all.
It sounds quite laughable. I could imagine we would have to have these
if we were an US corporation but hey, we're in Europe as long as not too
many people vote UKIP once Gordon Brown throws the towel. I guess the
rationale behind terms like these is that if user A sues you because
user B used the web site to hack A's computer, you can always say "but B
acted against our terms and conditions". But I don't think that user A's
case would hold any water before an European court.
"Except as otherwise permitted, any use by you of any of the OSMF
Materials and OSMF Site other than for your personal use is strictly
prohibited."
Are we talking about osmfoundation.org or openstreetmap.org? Because if
it is the latter, which parts of the web site are NOT under either GPL
or CC-BY-SA, making any restriction ("personal use only") illegal?
I could probably find something idiotic in every paragraph if I put my
mind to it but I'd rather do something else.
Bye
Frederik
--
Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33"
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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Translations of osm.org
Hi, Jonas Krückel wrote: > And the second question is, if it is allowed to translate the agreement > for the user at the sign up process (a word was "ported" about the > license, I don't really now what this means here)? If we take all this seriously (and I don't necessarily want to say we have to), then, since the body responsible for the legal side of all this is OSMF and OSMF cannot possibly check every language all the time, I guess that there would have to be some disclaimer at the end of all legal-related translations saying that the translation is given on a best-effort basis but where uncertainties arise, the English version is the binding one. Then again I don't know if that's legal, ouch. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] OSM data grant
Hi, Richard Fairhurst wrote: > Russ Nelson wrote: > SteveC wrote: > Andy Allan wrote: >> [...] > > Wow, I knew CloudMade had developed some really cool OSM-related products, > but I had no idea a Fast Acting Synchronised Legal-Talk Trolling Squadron > was one of them. Come on, isn't it nice to have them not fighting with each other for once? Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] ODbL RC and share-alike licensing of Produced Works
Hi, Matt Amos wrote: > my understanding is that, because we have database rights (and > possibly other IP rights) in the original database, the re-created > database is still (a substantial extract of) an ODbL licensed > database. So you can create a substantial extract of a database without ever having had access to the database in any form; in fact, without even knowing that it exists? Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] OGC Geospatial Rights Management Summit
Hi, Elizabeth Dodd wrote: > "Facts are Facts and can't be Copyrighted" ... which ist not exactly the position that OSM is taking on this matter; in fact, with ODBL we go to great lengths to ensure that even if our facts should not be copyrightable we still get to say exactly under what conditions they are used through contract and database law. We're willing to enter completely uncharted waters and use a new and untested licensing framework precisely because we do *not* want our data to be free of any restrictions. So if you are looking for someone who takes the above position, best talk to one of the Science Commons guys! Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] ODbL RC and share-alike licensing of Produced Works
Hi, Henk Hoff wrote: > It is proposed to removed the clause 4.7 altogether I think that is a good idea. Just to clarify: * I use OSM data to create a printed A-Z map of London (which is clearly not a data base, is it?) * I publish that produced work under a BSD license * A competing project named FreeStreetMap traces all London roads off Yahoo imagery, then * FreeStreetMap activists copy every single street name from my BSD-licensed A-Z map into their BSD-licensed FSM database (the one with the noodly appendages) Before, the reverse engineering clause would have kicked in and forced FSM to be under ODBL. In the future, the above will be fully legal, and the resulting FSM database, which contains facts derived from OSM data but which were not in database form, can be distributed as a BSD product. This has been "earned" by FSM through the manual work involved in re-creating a database from a non-database. Ist that correct? Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] signup notice
Hi, Russ Nelson wrote: > If the OSMF went into a court of law and tried to > claim that, because your computer connected once upon a time to OSM, > that everything your computer ever did thereafter had to be > copyrighted CC-By-SA, the judge would laugh the OSMF out of court, Fully agree; I had read the signup notice long ago and thought to myself "what a stupid wording" but knowing full well that this could never be used to claim rights on documents I wrote with a word processor on the same machine that once connected to OSM, I didn't bother. But even though that interpretation is rather laughable, the original poster is right: The wording might unnecessarily upset some people, so why not fix it. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] "Produced Work" guideline working
Hi, 80n wrote: > Actually I think the duck test http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_test is the > simplest way of approaching this problem. If someone treats something as a > database then its a database. Otherwise its a produced work. > > They can call it whatever they like when the publish it. The duck test > kicks in when someone uses it. The problem is that the one who *publishes* it has to say which license he intends to publish under. His choice of license is affected by whether what he publishes is a Produced Work or a Database (licensing options are mutually exclusive - Produced Works cannot be licensed under ODbL, and if it is a database it *must* be licensed under ODbL). This means that the choice cannot be deferred until the work is actually used, doesn't it? Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] "Produced Work" guideline working
Hi, Mike Collinson wrote: > "If it was intended for the extraction of the original data, then it > is a database and not a Produced Work. Otherwise it is a Produced > Work. > > We can clearly define things that are USUALLY Produced Works: .PNG, > JPG, .PDF, SVG images and any raster image; a map in a physically > printed work. > > Database dumps are usually not Produced Works, e.g a Planet dump." I think it was 80n who, in an older discussion about this, pointed out that it may not be helpful to focus on the *intent* of someone doing something. Someone might make an SVG file that contains the full original OSM data, but without the intent of extracting data, and someone else then uses that as a database. But I guess we don't need to get all upset about this because if a database is made from the Produced Work then ODbL again applies through the reverse engineering clause... Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Q&A with a lawyer
Hi, Gervase Markham wrote: > On 13/05/09 14:23, Frederik Ramm wrote: >> Sounds like: "We have a honest desire to sue the shit out of you if you >>violate any of our 52 random rules but we will grudgingly refrain from >> doing so if laws in your jurisdiction should have the nerve of being >> against us." ;-) > > That's only if the rest of the licence sounds like "We have a honest > desire to sue the shit out of you if you violate any of our 52 random > rules". And if you think that, then your problem would not be with the > fair use clause. I don't know if we are perhaps talking about different things. A "fair use" clause typically makes an exemption where you know you have a copyright, whereas I was talking about us not knowing whether we have one. I said that I find it questionable to assert copyright where you are not sure that you have copyrightable material in the first place; to which you replied with your fair use example, which, it occurs to me now, seems to be something entirely different. A fair use clause says "I have copyright but your jurisdiction might allow you to do certain things nevertheless, and I think I'll have to accept that." A fair use clause is FUD if it is unclear whether or not you have a copyright at all, because it suggests that unless covered by fair use rights, the user of your data has to play by your rules. Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Q&A with a lawyer
Hi, Gervase Markham wrote: > The way of avoiding it seeming to be FUD is to have a clause like: > > "Nothing in this licence attempts to restrict your rights under fair use > or a similar doctrine". Sounds like: "We have a honest desire to sue the shit out of you if you violate any of our 52 random rules but we will grudgingly refrain from doing so if laws in your jurisdiction should have the nerve of being against us." ;-) Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Q&A with a lawyer
Hi, Ulf Möller wrote: > I think the provisions of the GPL and ODbL are quite similar: Oops. If ODbL and GPL are as parallel to the GPL as you suggest, then: > GPL v3: > > "Sublicensing is not allowed" - "Each time you convey a covered work, > the recipient automatically receives a license from the original > licensors, to run, modify and propagate that work, subject to this License." The above is for distributing the original, unmodified work, right? > "You may convey a work based on the Program, or the modifications to > produce it from the Program, in the form of source code under the terms > of section 4, provided that you also meet all of these conditions: ... > You must license the entire work, as a whole, under this License to > anyone who comes into possession of a copy." And this is for distributing a derived work. So the "sublicensing is not allowed", in the GPL, *only* applies to distributing the original work, and as soon as you make a derived work, "you must license..." the work. If it is the same with ODbL, and I must say the similar wording makes this likely, then > ODbL 1.0 RC1: > > "You may not sublicense the Database. Each time You communicate the > Database ... to anyone else in any way, the Licensor offers to the > recipient a licence to the Database on the same terms and conditions as > this Licence." The "you must not sublicense" is really only for distribution of the unmodified product, as in the GPL; and > "Any Derivative Database that You Publicly Use must be only under the > terms of: i. This Licence; ii. A later version of this Licence similar > in spirit to this Licence; or iii. A compatible licence. > If You license the Derivative Database under one of the licences > mentioned in (iii), You must comply with the terms of that licence." This would then say that if it comes to distributing a derived work, you are indeed the licensor. The ODbL even contains the wording "If you license the Derivative Database", and this means that you are the licensor. Which means that everything I said before in this thread is rubbish, and Peter Miller's concerns are legit: If you are the licensor, then, under 4.4.d... "Licensors may authorise a proxy to determine compatible licences under Section 4.4 a iii. If they do so, the authorised proxy's public statement of acceptance of a compatible licence grants You permission to use the compatible licence." ... you get to choose what the compatible licenses are, don't you? So I can take the planet file, add a node thereby creating a derivative database, publish it with me as the licensor, and under 4.4 d declare that I am myself the proxy who determines license compatibility, and one second later proclaim that the BSD style license is compatible with ODbL. Yay! Where can I sign up ;-) Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Q&A with a lawyer
Hi, Ulf Möller wrote: >> I have no idea if this concept of fixing the licensor to always be OSMF >> is workable at all. Is it used elsewhere, or is it an entirely new idea? > > A number of high-profile open source projects including GNU and Apache > operate that way. No, I didn't mean that. What you are talking about is not inherent in the license, it is just in (what would be their equivalent of) the contribution agreement. But none of these licenses (Apache or GPL, or any other free license I have read) actually say that anything ever licensed under such a license will always remain with the original licensor. As you rightly say, > (Of course the license allows you to modify > the software and distribute it on your own.) If you take a GPL program and modify it (or not) you can distribute it and you are then the licensor. ODbL doesn't allow that. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Q&A with a lawyer
Hi, Jukka Rahkonen wrote: > But what if OSMF is changing the license and somebody has > managed to base some business on top of derived database licensed under the > old > ODbL license? Well he can always continue the data he already has and which he was given under the old license. The license for *that* data cannot be changed later. OSMF can only change the license for future releases. > Companies can then deside if they > would rather take the new license, or to make a fork. The question of how to fork a hypothetical OpenStreetMap under ODbL is a very interesting one. Some people even say that something that cannot be forked does not deserve to be called "free". I assume what would happen is this: You can fork OSM, continue to run it with your own contributors, but the license has to remain the ODbL as published by ODC. I am not clear about who would have the power to declare which licenses are deemed compatible to ODbL for your fork situation. Several possibilities: (a) the list of compatible licenses would be "frozen" at the time of fork, i.e. whatever had been declared compatible by OSMF (or whoever was authorized by OSMF do make that declaration) remains valid for your fork, forever. (b) OSMF's prerogative to change the list of compatible licenses affects your fork as well, so if your fork is so successful that OSMF's own project pales into insignificance, they'll make sure to change the list just to make your life difficult ;-) (c) you are the new licensor and you get to decide, so if you say "BSD is compatible" then you have freed the data from share-alike. (d) In a combination of (a) and (c), you might be allowed to reduce, but not extend, the list of compatible licenses at the time of fork; i.e. if OSMF has added some funny licenses you don't like, then you might be allowed to create a fork that is *not* compatible with them, but you cannot create a fork that is compatible with extra licenses the OSMF don't like. It sounds to me as if (a) or perhaps (d) were the only sane ways to deal with this but I cannot point to letters of the license that would say as much. Forks are not supported ;-) Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Q&A with a lawyer
Hi, Mikel Maron wrote: > This *seems* like a big problem in the ODbL, but maybe I > misundertand. Is the ODbL non-transitive?? It certainly is planned to be non-transitive. It feels a bit non-free at first because you will never ever get rid of the original licensor; but thinking about it, it's much the same as e.g. copyright law in Germany where strictly speaking no PD exists and whenever I release something into PD I have to say "I grant a perpetual, irrevokable license to anyone to do whatever they please" - the law does not allow me to actually relinquish my rights. > What if another entity, say some National Mapping Agency, licenses > their data as ODbL? It appears that if the NMA are the sole licensor, > and the ODbL prevents transfer of the rights of sole licensor, then > OSM could not assume those rights, and not import the NMA data. That's a difficult bit. In Matt's Q&A document it says Q: If Substantial Contributions are licensed to OSMF under the ODbL, does that impose any additional restrictions on the use of the OSM database or on the operations of the OSMF? A: Large contributions to the OSMF would come with the right to sub-license that data. So at least Clark's view is that to incorporate something else that is ODbL licensed into OSM, we would have to ask the rights owner to grant us extra permission to sub-license the data because ODbL alone is not enough for that. (Very different from CC-BY-SA where we could just take it, attribute him, and that's it.) Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Q&A with a lawyer
Hi, > the OSMF LWG recently had a couple of calls with Clark Asay, who has > generously agreed to give OSMF legal advice concerning the new > license. i've attached the write up of the first of the calls Was that based on the 0.9 or 1.0 license? I am concerned because of Q: Is the process of creating a Produced Work restricted or affected by the ODbL in any way? Do any details of the process of creating a Produced Work need to be made Public? A: No. The process of creating a Produced Work does not need to be revealed, so any artistic interpretation involved does not have to be made available. The only requirement of the ODbL is the notice from section 4.3. and Q: How often does a Derived Database have to be made available? Must this be as often as my produced work or can I do this on a less frequent basis? How soon after the Produced Work is published must I make it available? A: Under the current version of the license, it isn't necessary to make the derived database available. It was my understanding that the above would have been true for 0.9, while the April 2008 ODbL draft and 1.0 would require making available the derivative database on which a produced work is built. Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Q&A with a lawyer
Hi,
Peter Miller wrote:
> However if the OSMF can change the license and given that it is a
> viral license then surely anyone else can also change the licensing of
> any derived database? Our lawyer mentions that the OSMF could 'sell it
> of commercial terms' or make it available to a single person. If this
> is true then why can't anyone else do the same. I really don't
> understand the legal mechanism being used for this and need to look at
> it more closely.
I think this is a very interesting point and it does deserve a close look.
As far as I understand it, the current plan is:
* Mapper gives (perhaps "licenses") his work to OSMF under a special
agreement that basically says "I grant OSMF the right to do whatever
they want but they must publish this under ODbL" or so. I understand
this agreement is currently being worked on.
* OSMF releases data under ODbL. Being the Licensor, OSMF has the right
to authorise someone, possibly themselves, to determine which licenses
are deemed "compatible".
* Licensees must release their derived databases under ODbL or a
compatible license.
This introduces two degrees of freedom of license choice; one is that
OSMF can, at any time, change the list of compatible licenses, and the
other is that ODC can, at any time, create new versions of the license
which would then automatically be available to anyone using OSM content
(without OSMF having to agree).
Now Peter's interpretation is: "Since the licensor has these powers, why
does not Fred simply take the database, publish a derived version of it
under ODbL and say "I as the licensor hereby exercise my powers under
section 4.4.d and decree that PD is a compatible license"?
The answer lies in 4.9 ("you may not sublicense the database"). We often
sloppily say that "if you make a derived work you must license it under
ODbL", but this is not the way ODbL is intended to work. The idea is
that the original licensor (OSMF) is the sole licensor throughout the
chain of use; and as such, only OSMF has all the rights of the licensor
(like defining the list of comptabile licenses).
This is very different from CC-BY-SA, where each time you make a derived
work and publish that, you are the licensee for upstream content and the
licensor for your derived work.
I have no idea if this concept of fixing the licensor to always be OSMF
is workable at all. Is it used elsewhere, or is it an entirely new idea?
Consider me taking the OSM database and adding a few bits here and there
and then publishing the derived database. Now 4.9 says "Each time You
communicate the Database [...], the Licensor offers to the recipient a
licence to the Database on the same terms and conditions as this
Licence.", so my users are granted ODbL rights by OSMF; but legally,
OSMF can hardly be the licensor for the bits that I added, can they?
Bye
Frederik
PS: Agree with Peter on the un-suitability of current OSMF legal
framework to deal with such responsibility. Did you know that legally,
the current OSMF board would not even have to invite their own chairman
to their meetings as he is not resident in the UK? Read the Articles of
Association and Companies Act for more hilarity.
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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Q&A with a lawyer
Hi, Simon Ward wrote: > I’m (still) of the opinion that we shouldn’t just throw copyright to the > wind in this way while some people (OS, for example) believe they can > exercise copyright over elements of geodata, and not just database > right. They might be right, or wrong. I hope they’re wrong, but it’s > not very well tested. Agreed that it would be *more effective* so say "let's just claim copyright on contents, just as the proprietary data guys do, even if we don't believe in it, just to be on the safe side". However, not everything that is more effective is also morally superior. If the OS go after what they call "violators" in lawsuits that many of us believe are frivolous, would we really want to go after "violators" with lawsuits of the same kind (or threaten to do so) "just to be on the safe side"? Claiming copyright on something where you are not reasonably sure of actually having it is, in my eyes, a FUD maneouvre worthy of players like the OS, but something that we should make an attempt to steer clear of. Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Q&A with a lawyer
Hi, Frederik Ramm wrote: > What I'm concerned with is mainly: How big is the risk of someone > "whitewashing" our data from the contractual part of the ODbL, I should have explained: Such "whitewashing" would require someone to breach the contract by removing all licensing information and then passing on the data to a third party who then cannot become party to the contract. The important bit, to me, seems that said third party cannot be accused of any breach then. I have compared this to "grey imports": Sony sells batch of TV sets to distributor with a contract saying "only for distribution in Ukraine"; distributor breaches contract and sells in Germany; if I now buy a TV set Sony has absolutely no legal right to demand that I return the TV or that I follow whatever contractual obligations they normally impose on German customers etc.; I am a perfectly legal Sony TV set user even if I *knew* that the distributor was breaching his contract. (This is something entirely different from buying stolen goods, because Germany and probably many other jurisdictions have special rules that make it impossible to become the rightful owner of something that was stolen in the first place.) Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Q&A with a lawyer
Hi, Matt Amos wrote: > one of the things i'm gaining a better understanding of, having spoken > with Clark, is that no license is ever fully watertight and we are > highly unlikely to be able to defend all of our rights in all possible > jurisdictions. I think we can all live with not being able to defend the rights in all jurisdictions. What I'm concerned with is mainly: How big is the risk of someone "whitewashing" our data from the contractual part of the ODbL, then introducing it to a large jurisdiction without something like a database directive (the US?), and thereby leaving us with only plain copyright which (correct me if I'm wrong) we choose not to exercise by applying the DbCL? As a commercial user, I am very interested in having the same set of rules binding my competitors in every country. Countries with economies so negligible that they don't subscribe to international IP law are of little interest to me in that regard (I am unlikely to face competition from companies in North Korea et al.), but if some kind of "loophole" would permit rogue US companies to use OSM data free of any restrictions while I, in Europe, am bound by them would be unsatisfactory. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Produced Work
Hi, Jukka Rahkonen wrote: > Thus it would be allowed to to take > less than 100 features or area of less than 1000 inhabitants and make PD, > Share > alike or commercial derivatives from that without any restrictions. Is my > interpretation right? There's the problem of the reverse-engineering clause that makes it impossible for you to release the non-substantial extract as pure PD or even Share-Alike because the user must be told that they cannot recombine large amounts of such extracts. > It would be trivial to set up a WMS server [...] > How would this machine suit the new > license and definitions of Substantial/Insubstantial and Produced Work? Your hypothetical machine would be constantly serving insubstantial exctracts. Not much different from the API call that gets you a way with all its nodes really. And not a problem for anybody. The extracts would be free to use with no restrictions except the reverse engineering clause. Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Produced Work
Hi, SteveC wrote: > And we'd like help similarly with building a practical definition of > Produced Work. Here's how the license RC1 defines it: Obviously this goes hand in hand with the definition of a (derivative) database; everything you make from our data which is not a produced work will be a derivative database and vice versa. > "Produced Work" – a work (such as an image, audiovisual material, > text, or sounds) resulting from using the whole or a Substantial part of the > Contents (via a > search or other query) from this Database, a Derivative Database, or this > Database as part of a > Collective Database. > > Thoughts on more practical definitions? My first impulse has always been to think a produced work (as compared to a database) must be like a program binary compared to source code: A highly lossy transformation. That would then lead to a definition along the lines of "if the data is sufficiently disfigured it is a produced work". But one would always have to tiptoe the line (what about an SVG file? and what if the SVG file contains, in comments, every OSM object it refers to?) But someone (forgot who - stand up and claim credit if you read this!) has brought up a *very* practical definition during the discussion: "A produced work is whatever you declare to be one." It sounds crazy at first, but read on! This would effectively mean that anyone who makes anything from our data has a choice: * Either declare it to be a derivative database. This means he has to put it under ODbL (or a compatible license). * Or declare it to be a produced work. This means he has a wide range of licensing models available, all bound by the reverse engineering clause, *and* he has to make the derivative database from which he created the work available under ODbL. In an extreme example, this would mean that someone could take the planet file and say: "Here, that's my produced work, and it comes under the all-rights-reserved-whatever license." Fine - as soon as someone tries to use that planet file by e.g. loading it into a DBMS, the reverse engineering clause would kick in: "Creating a Produced Work, and then re-creating [...] this Database from the Produced Work, is still subject to this Licence." On the other end of the scale, someone who published PNG tiles on their web server could say: "No, this isn't a produced work, we consider these PNG files to be databases." - which would be in line with the EU definition of what is a database. The free choice between produced work and derivative database would probably end where the produced work cannot, by any twist of definition, be called a database; I guess that would be anything that is neither electronic nor arranged systematically in any way, e.g. some work of art made from clay or so. Such a freedom of choice would remove form us the burden to create a definition and to watch out for violations. It would of course also be attractive for certain use cases; say I created a system that renders tiles in real-time and I have applied clever simplification algorithms to the data which I would like to keep to myself. It would actually be quite attractive for me to say that my published tiles are a database and licensed under ODbL, because then that's all I have to release, whereas if I declare them to be a produced work, then the license would force me to release my cleverly simplified database. If people are uncomfortable with the full freedom of choice, then we could at least create a definition that contains a wide "choice band", i.e. the universe of derived works would be divided into (a) some that are clearly databases, (b) some that are clearly produced works, and (c) a large middle band where people have free choice. I'm still unsure if this would work, discussion much anticipated, but nothing would beat this in terms of practicality! (Except PD of course.) Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
[OSM-legal-talk] ODbL RC and share-alike licensing of Produced Works
Hi, Mike Collinson wrote: > The new text is available at > http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/ and includes "diff" > versions so that you can see clearly what changes are made. With 0.9, we identified the problem of "produced works" not being releasable under CC-BY-SA (or any other share-alike license, say GFDL or even GPL where included in software) because of the reverse engineering clause which collides with the "no restrictions may be added" clause in these share-alike licenses. I think that most of us were quite clear that this would be a total show stopper, and several suggestions were made to overcome the problem. Can someone explain how this has been resolved? I see that the 1.0 release candidate has a provision to name someone who decides which licenses are deemed compatible, but it seems to me that this only applies to databases, not produced works. As I understand it, the follwoing would have to happen to be able to release a produced work under CC-BY-SA with ODbL RC 1.0: * When applying the ODbL, OSMF is authorized to define catalogue of compatible licenses; * OSMF decrees that CC-BY-SA is compatible; * User makes a derived database by copying all of OSM, or a part of it, and says "this copy is now CC-BY-SA, not ODbL" * User is then able to create a produced work from his CC-BY-SA copy of the database and license that produced work CC-BY-SA Am I reading this correctly? I think this would overcome the problem, but it would effectively dual-license the whole of OSM under ODbL and CC-BY-SA. Has that been discussed and found to be a good idea? Or does OSMF not have the intention of declaring CC-BY-SA a compatible license, and if not, how will CC-BY-SA licensed produced works be made possible? Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] ODbL: Defining Substantial in OSM's Context
Hi, Lauri Hahne wrote: > I think the problem here is that our own definition of substantial is > by no means binding. The definition of substantial in ODbL comes > pretty straight from EU's database directive and the definition is > ultimately up to courts to decide. You are right but what do you suggest we do? Is it not better to at least offer "our" definition to users than to sit back and say "ask a lawyer"? Assuming for a moment that OSMF is the creator of the database in the sense of the database directive, then there are two possibilities: We can interpret the term stricter or less strict than intended by the law. Where our interpretation is less strict, this is not a problem; we simply grant our users more rights than they would have by law. Someone within our interpretation can be sure that we're not going to sue him, which is much better than not having our interpretation. Where our interpretation is stricter than the law, a user could theoretically extract more than our interpretation allows and use it freely; we would have to sue him for breach of license, and he would have to convince the court that his use is indeed allowed by the database directive. It is quite likely that the court would at least take our definition into consideration. If we lose then we can amend our definition of "substantial". Offering a definition adds clarity for everyone involved. It is a good thing. Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] map data acknowledgement?
Hi, graham wrote: > And is this kind of 'chained' notice acceptable? ie. my.tel acknowledges > route-me in the 'about' panel, and route-me in turn acknowledges osm in > its 'about' panel? Well at least in theory route-me could operate some sort of "best fit" tile choice where they hand out one of 237 tile choices depending on your request characteristics. Surely my.tel cannot be expected to deal with this, so in my eyes route-me should make sure that if they hand out OSM tiles, they also hand out the matching attribution... Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Substantial meaning
Mike, > I've tried to capture all the comments made with some strawman wording below. > Please feel free to cast arrows at it. I think it is rather good. The reason I, in my suggestion, went for area instead of inhabitants is that it is plain obvious to see for everyone how large an area is, while it may be difficult to determine whether an area has more or less than 1,000 inhabitants. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Substantial meaning
Hi, SteveC wrote: > Has there been any discussion on what people here feel 'substantial' > means in the context of the definitions of the ODbL? I've banged > around the wiki looking but might might have missed it. It hasn't been discussed a lot. I guess you have read the often-referred-to pp28-32 of http://edina.ac.uk/projects/grade/gradeDigitalRightsIssues.pdf which of course are not specific to OSM. RichardF once summarised; > Dr Waelde also notes that under EU database right it's not just a > matter of percentage, but also of a "qualitative analysis". To me it > appears clear that a single street name isn't substantial, the whole > of Cambridge is. We could spend hours discussing this but I suspect it > comes down to "don't take the piss". I could think of a number of ways of defining substantialness. Any workable definition must 1. be compatible with the EU database directive 2. be absolute (no "more than 0.01% of data means substantial") 3. be practical For the sake of 2. and 3., I would define something like this: "A substantial extract is an extract that covers more than one square kilometre *and* more than 25 features, where a "feature" is either a way with all its nodes and tags, or a single tagged node." This would mean that an area of 1000 x 1000 metres could always be fully extracted as insubstantial and used for any purpose. That's roughly the size of Green Park in London. It is not something of a huge value; it is something that can be mapped in an hour, or make it half a day if you want all house numbers and pubs in a densely populated area. For a densely populated area, the 25-feature constraint will always be met within a square kilometre and thus ineffective. For a sparsely populated area, it might be possible to fully extract a larger area as long as it contains less than 25 features. The 25-feature constraint becomes interesting when someone does queries; one could extract the 25 highest mountains or the 25 largest buildings or 25 catholic churches that are within 100 metres of a pub. Because whole ways are allowed, the 25-feature constraint might even allow the extraction of the whole motorway network of a small country. When you think about what you can do with 25 features, always bear in mind that you must not combine multiple insubstantial extracts - if you manage to extract the motorway network of a small country in 25 features then you cannot also get the coastline or the primary roads, even if someone else extracts them for you or if you do it another time. Of course the numbers can be changed but I think that a definition like this is easy to understand and apply. There is some potential for abuse because someone could quickly connect all things of interest to him into one large way and then extract that but I think such behaviour could be ruled out by proper wording. Our goal in defining "substantial" must not be to allow as little as possible. The database directive allows free use of insubstantial extracts, and says the database owner must not disallow such use. If we try to circumvent the rule by issuing a definition of "substantial" that basically makes everything that is useful also substantial then we are in breach of the database directive. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Substantial meaning
Hi, Iván Sánchez Ortega wrote: > If the extraction needs an automated tool, then it is substantial. Uh. This means that even the answer to the question "what is the name of the street at lat=12.345 lon=45.789" would be a substantial extract because you cannot possibly "peer through the XML" to find that out (imagine the time it needs to determine the nodes in the vicinity, then find the ways using these nodes and compute which of them comes near that location). Then again, > Filtering out all amenity=pub in a > small area is not substantial (e.g. all pubs in a 100m x 100m bbox - again, > just peer through the XML with *any* text editor and Ctrl+F) your raw XML processing capabilites seem to vastly exceed mine ;-) Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-dev] Bittorrent
Hi, Greg Troxel wrote: > Of course I could join legal, but I think it's probably good for the > health of the project for everyone to see an abstract. I agree that this would be good but it would need a very balanced and unbiased person to write it, because the role of "writer of abstracts to the masses" carries quite some political power. It would be relatively easy to find some people to summarize the status quo as "ODbL introduction is going along nicely, slowed down a bit but basically proceeding to plan, everyone does their bit and we're moving in the right direction, great people doing an awesome job", and it would be equally easy to find people summarizing the status quo as "major showstoppers still unclear and likely to remain so, legal opinion split, ODbL dead in the water". The difficulty is finding out which of these descriptions is true, or more likely, where in between these two reality lies... Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-dev] Bittorrent
Hi, Francis Davey wrote: > No, but nevertheless no. I'll review go over the posting history. Thanks. ;-) If you use Google to search the legal-talk list for the words "browsewrap" and "clickwrap" (sometimes hyphenated) you will find a lot of the relevant discussion. I'll try to put it in as little words as possible: 1. If we could be sure our data was copyrighted then we would not really have a problem since, as you point out, everybody would have to adhere to our licensing terms to legally use our data. 2. We're pretty sure that we cannot be sure our data is copyrighted, so we try to enforce our license through the concept of database rights which is reasonably well established in Europe; even un-copyrighted data gains a protection comparable to copyright, and again, our license has to be adhered to by users. 3. Headache comes from places without database rights (like the US) where anyone getting hold of our data could simply do anything with it. Even for those who think that our data should be put in the Public Domain anyway (e.g. me), this is undesirable because it would create a wholly different situation in the US than we have in Europe. 4. Because of this, the ODbL tries to be a contract and a license at the same time, forcing users in places like the US to adhere to our "license" through contract law. 5. It is somewhat unclear, and one of the questions posed on http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Open_Issues, what legal consequences would arise from some "bad guy" stripping away the contract information and republishing our data in a non-database country; the worst case for us would probably be if this would lead to third parties being able to use our data totally unrestricted with impunity, even if they know the data comes from OSM. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-dev] Bittorrent
Hi, Francis Davey wrote: > In almost all jurisdictions various information rights are property > rights, which means they operate against everyone. The licence is a > permission to use (say a work) without violation of the rights holders > rights. I.e. the default is total restriction, which may only be > bypassed via the licence. It is irrelevant whether a use of the > information is aware of the licence since it is permissive not > restrictive (although it may be constructed by stating exceptions to a > generally given permission). Everything you say is true, but unless you have just joined the project you must be aware that the new license being contemplated - the Open Database License - rests heavily on the European idea of database rights, and tries to supplant them by a contract for jurisdictions that have no "sui generis" database protection. A contract of course requires agreement by those who are party to it before it can be of legal relevance. (Maybe you're reading this on dev and are unaware of the 1000+ postings in the previous year on legal-talk about the matter...?) Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-dev] Bittorrent
Hi,
(Cross-posting this to legal-talk.)
Stefan de Konink wrote:
>>> To make things absolutely clear. If any new license will prohibit
>>> in any way the distribution of the planet without signing or
>>> agreeing, this bittorrent service will continue anyway as it is
>>> now.
>> That is no problem, as any future license can only govern any
>> future planet files. A new license can not go back in time and say
>> "every previous planet is illegal to distribute". To do that and to
>> enforce that needs a whole lot of power, money and attorneys.
> In that case to make it also clear; to submit new Planet files.
It is unwise to register your opposition to the new license by
threatening to violate certain aspects of it.
I believe the plan regarding the planet file is to embed licensing
information *in* the file, not to require distributors to display
something before they hand out the file.
But you do drive home the point that any license that counts on an
unbroken chain of prior acknowledgment of a contract ("I only give you
this data if you agree to ...") will not work. Violation of such a chain
has been a theoretical construct until now ("what if someone in China
simply re-posts the file without restrictions..."), and you make it real.
It is not nice of you but it is probably good for discussion, because we
might otherwise have fallen for some cloud-cuckoo idea of being able to
dictate the rules to everybody.
Bye
Frederik
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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] using openstreetmap
Hi, Jukka Rahkonen wrote: > This does not mean that the use of servers serving OSM maps is unrestricted. > Prepare to set up an own server or to build other kind of system based on > static > maps. Jukka is of course right; the use of OSM for commercial purposes is legally unrestricted, but if your application places a noticeable load on the OSM tile servers, you will sooner or later be asked to host your own tiles. This is not a legal restriction with OSM in general but a restriction concering the servers you download your tiles from. Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] using openstreetmap
Hi, Mohamad Ali wrote: > 1.We develop a tracking system used for GPS devices, so we display the > vehicles on map in real time,.. Can we have your tracks ;-) > My question is : what are the terms and conditions of using ' OpenStreetMap > ' for a tracking system? > > I mean can we use it for commercial use? Yes, commercial use is unrestricted. The license only requires that you say where you got the data from, and if you make a derived product - for example a large poster with an OSM map where all the roads ever traveled by the devices you monitor are highlighted - then that product has to be licensed under the same terms as OSM itself, that is, CC-BY-SA 2.0. Which does not mean that you have to make your picture publicly available but if you do give it to someone, then they have the right to further use or distribute it (including your additions) in any way they like. Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Database rights and who has them
Hi, Peter Miller wrote: > However... lets not do the work the lawyers should be doing And while we're at it, could we not leave mapping to the professionals as well? After all, becoming a professional cartographer means years, if not decades, of training and collecting experience which hardly a mapper possesses... it's there for a reason! Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] ODbL comments from Creative Commons
Hi, John Wilbanks wrote: > If this were the case, we'd have taken in the ODbL, or we'd have written > something like it. With CC's position in the licensing space it'd have > been quickly adopted - people have been pressing me to get a database > license out for five years. > > This would be so much easier than arguing for "no licenses" that I wish > it were true. Gad, I'd love to have something to recommend rather than > "give it all away and make it really free". To back this up, here's a 1.5 years old blog entry from John Wilbanks about SC working on data licensing (or not licensing): http://network.nature.com/people/wilbanks/blog/2007/12/17/open-access-data-boring-but-important It neatly tells the story how they set out to clarify what the CC licenses meant for data, then found that something like a share-alike element was difficult to implement and thought "ok let's go for attribution at least", and in the end felt compelled to even drop that. Whether one agrees to their conclusion or not, I am tempted to believe that, initially, they really wanted their existing set of CC licenses to work for data, and the whole development from there to the current "Open Access Data Protocol" (which is, bluntly speaking, PD with a moral component) is simply the result of reality-testing their wishful thinking. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] ODbL comments from Creative Commons
Hi,
SteveC wrote:
> I agree that the authors and groups who built the GPL need to
> understand it, at least to the degree possible with no training in
> law, but do I as a user and contributor to GNU/LINUX need to? That I
> thought was the point?
Ideally I would expect that someone who puts his project under GPL has
thought about what he wants to achieve and made a conscious decision
that GPL is the best way to get there.
But the GPL is so widely used already, and GPL users come under such
scrutiny, that I can afford to let examples guide me through GPL. I can,
for example, be reasonably sure that the GPL does *not* require me to
ship my code on CD-ROM to remote parts of Africa and pay the shipping
cost, because if it were so, lots of projects would have been crushed
already and this would be public knowledge. In the same vein, I can
watch existing GPL usage patterns and decide that my project fits in
there ("I want exactly the same as X").
This is not the case with ODbL. If OSM should approve the ODbL then we
would be the first big user of that license. If our users come asking
"can we do X", we can't say "just look what all the others do". And
neither can we say "dunno, ask a lawyer" without looking really really
stupid ("so you guys went through this tremendous relicensing effort,
lost an arm and a leg in the process, and you don't even know what you
did it for?").
Bye
Frederik
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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Age timeout for the license protection (quicker to PD than 50/70/90 years)
Hi, Dirk-Lüder Kreie wrote: > Would it be possible to have users agree on a sort of timeout for their > data rights? I would very much like to have something like that. I recommended such a rule long before ODbL was even discussed but the reaction was not positive. The database right on which the ODbL is mainly based expires much quicker than traditional copyright (15 years after creation of the database). It is interesting to think what happens after 15 years - will the data be completely free then, or will the ODbL then revert to its contractual element even if the underlying database protection becomes void? Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
Hi, Frederik Ramm wrote: > He/ODC/OKNF have also Hmpf. Clarification: oknf.org: "OK New Forest is an expression of church community based in the New Forest in Southern England." okfn.org: "The Open Knowledge Foundation. Promoting Open Knowledge in a Digital Age" Choose which one you would like to host our license ;-) Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
Hi, Gervase Markham wrote: >> 1) Because ODbL 1.0 is better than C-By-SA > > Taking ODbL 0.9 instead of 1.0, I think that's at least debatable, given > the issues raised by the ITO lawyer and others. No reason for these cautious words. ODbL 0.9 is absolutely unworkable because, for example, it does not make sure that interim derivative databases are made available (a key element of the sales pitch we've been driving to the community), and it makes it impossible to release a Produced Work under CC-BY-SA (and so impossible to combine OSM data with CC-BY-SA licensed data into a Produced Work). Anyone suggesting to use ODbL 0.9 un-altered would be out of their mind and thus I assume that nobody does. I have no official OSMF statement on this in English, but Henk Hoff said on talk-de that OSMF expects the current known issues to be ironed out in 1.0, and the phrase "fix problems in 1.1" only applies to such problems that are not known yet. > So the sales pitch to people concerned is "yeah, the new licence has > known problems and we don't understand it properly so it has unknown > ones too. But it'll all probably get fixed eventually"? To be honest to people, this would also have to include: "And by the way once 1.0 is accepted OSMF has absolutely no influence on how quickly license updates are produced." Rufus Pollock has written over on odc-discuss that he doesn't expect a new version of the license to be quick: > I'd also point out that it will be possible upgrade the license (a > v2.0 if you like) though that is not likely to happen that quickly > after a v1.0 release. He/ODC/OKNF have also, but I cannot find this to insert a proper quote at the moment, repeatedly asked for someone from OSM/OSMF to be present on their advisory board to help with interpretation and continuous development of the license. To my understanding OSMF has not yet nominated anyone for this job. Any volunteers? Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
Hi, Gervase Markham wrote: >> OSFM is trying to get ODbL 1.0 in place as soon as possible and fix >> problems in version 1.1 later on. > > The difficulty with doing that is that people who are approached about > relicensing their data might say "no, because the licence is broken in > ways X, Y and Z which were highlighted by the discussion process." Even > if the reply is "we hope to fix those in 1.1", they might say "well, > come back then, then". So what happens then? Do we remove their data or > don't we? It would be extremely stupid to go ahead with a license that has known bugs. (There will be enough not-yet-known bugs to fix in 1.1.) - I wasn't on the phone call but Henk Hoff said in a followup on talk-de that it is OSMF's intention to fix the *known* bugs before going live with 1.0. How this fits together with the idea that the schedule need not be modified is anyone's guess. I am concerned about the review by the ITO lawyer; some of the issues raised seem to me of a magnitude that means the license cannot be simply "fixed" to accommodate them - we have a choice to ignore these issues and plough ahead nonetheless (after all: "three lawyers, four opinions"), or if we take them seriously we'd have to do a major rewrite that could not be considered "a later version of ODbL" anymore. I'm eager to hear Jordan Hatcher's response but at the same time, realistically, I lack the legal expertise to decide who has the more convincing argument. If it is difficult for me to make an informed decision, then how can Joe Mapper who hasn't even followed the discussion? Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Legal review by ITO World's lawyer
Hi, Russ Nelson wrote: > I don't want a virus, but I like the reciprocal nature of these > licenses. Reciprocal is not the correct term IMHO. Reciprocal would mean that if you take our data you will have to give us something in return. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] [Spam] Re: License Telephone Debate
Hi, Grant Slater wrote: > We're made up of native English and Dutch speakers, we need assistance > from people who speak other languages. I have already done a lot of translation work into German for the license process (as have others), and have generally tried to inform the people on talk-de about the important things happening (and to defend the qualities of the new license, by the way). I can translate more if required. But I'm afraid I lack the training and experience to do a simultaneous translation of a phone conference. Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
Hi,
Nick Black wrote:
> I've always felt that you were completely aligned behind the aims of OSM -
> we can disagree, but at the end of the day we're all here for the same
> reason. Right now, its really hard to find anything positive or
> constructive in your ongoing bombardment of these lists.
The same people that now want to have a telephone conference have been
completely absent from the community decision making process during the
last months. I don't know what they were working on but they surely were
not working with the community. I simply cannot fathom why they would
suddenly - without having made any attempt to connect with the community
that was analysing the license draft, finding the problems, hammmering
out possible solutions - want to have a telephone conference to "help us
connect better".
I'm happy to help but that would require that I first understand the
problem. What exactly does the telephone conference want to achieve? The
issues are on the table, the license working group has so far declined
to comment or take part in the process of identifying the issues and
finding possible fixes. Who exactly needs to "connect better" with whom,
and how will the telephone conference help?
Is it just going to be a nice chat where we all get a warm fuzzy feeling
by hearing each other's voice, or is it planned to later use the
telephone conference as any kind of guidance for the process? The more
complicated issues that we have found, for example the fine details
about the reverse-engineering clause clashing with share-alike licenses,
are very unlikely to be tabled and understood by all in a two-hour
international call with many non-native speakers; a telephone conference
will have a natural bias towards easy subjects. This does not mean that
the complicated issues are any less important, and I fear that people
might use the telephone call as an excuse to brush away the complex bits
("ah, but nobody seemed to be interested in that during the telephone
conference...").
Insofar as the telephone conference is just meant to augment what we
already have achieved - to bring in additional people who are more
comfortable with the spoken rather than the written word, and generally
get a different kind of brainstorming going - I'm all in favour of it.
But the very second that someone starts to suggest that the telephone
conference in some way has the potential to overrule the existing work
("it did not seem important enough for people to raise this in the
telco, so...") then whole thing becomes an unfair attempt at discarding
what I and others have been working for, by implementing a process known
in advance to be biased (towards simple issues and native speakers).
The fact that I care for OSM is why I am involved, not only as a mapper,
but also here, on legal-talk.
Bye
Frederik
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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] License Telephone Debate
Hi, SteveC wrote: > In the past couple of license working group meetings we've been trying > to figure out how to get more input from the community on everything > without descending in to a free-for-all. Does that mean that what we've so far collected on the Wiki (and the lists, and the co-ment site) is considered as having "descended" into a "free-for-all" and thus by implication somehow worthless? (Still struggling to see the negative in "free-for-all" but you seem to be convinced that the license must not be discussed by "all".) You say that "issues should be raised on IRC"; does that mean that you only want to discuss *additional* issues that are not yet on the Wiki, or are you basically requesting that people copy+paste the Wiki pages into IRC if they want to affirm the importance of these issues? Or is this more of a psychological exercise where Joe Mapper is allowed to speak his mind and be heard to make him happy (in which case it would be ok for 10 people in a row to say the same thing). Has it occurred to the license working group that such a phone call will naturally be dominated by native speakers of English? Is the signal you are wanting to send something like "we're looking to implement a license for the UK and the US only, and the rest may do what they please"? Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Computer-generated derivative
Hi, > And therefore, I presume the same is true if the program is a Flash > app (running client-side, of course, albeit with a browser frame > around it) which outputs the result as a PDF - which Fred can then > save to his local hard drive and/or print. Right? Since you're asking me personally ;-) yes. You're lucky that the program runs client-side because if it ran server-side then even sending the PDF to the user would constitute distribution. I posted some time ago about CC-BY-SA encouraging people to "shift the burden" of creating derivative works further down the line. So instead of creating a PDF, the server creates two data streams and shifts them to the client, which then creates a PDF. If it was important for the client that the PDF could be passed on to third parties, then the client could generate two PDFs together with a little executable that would combine them on the fly for viewing; this again could then be distributed and would shift the burden to the recipient and so on. If one were sarcastic, one could say that this kind of share-alike license tends to produce "bombshell derivatives" which make it easy for the unsuspecting user to do wrong. (E.g. a slippy map with an OSM layer and a something-whatever-noncommercial layer on top - perfectly viewable for you but don't you dare make a screenshot and publish it!) Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Difference between a Produced Work and a Derived Database
Hi, Jean-Christophe Haessig wrote: > If section 4.7 > is where it is required to transfer the reverse engineereng clause into > the PW’s license, why doesn’t it say so? If I tell you "I give you this book but it must not be scanned and put on the internet", then while I don't explicitly say "and if you pass it on to someone else you have to make sure they don't scan it and put it on the internet", but that's kind of implicit, is it not? > What are the other options to > prevent reverse engineering than putting a clause in the PW’s license? You are right, ODbL does not mandate that attribution is put in to the license of the Produced Work, it only requires that the Produced Work is attributed properly; it seems I have misunderstood you there. I agree that if the goal of the license was to make it clearly understandable to laymen, then it has failed this goal, or at least it is not any better than CC-BY-SA. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Difference between a Produced Work and a Derived Database
Hi, Jean-Christophe Haessig wrote: > I posted a comment on co-ment and on the wiki use cases page, where it > didn’t seem to belong. I was advised to post it here Maybe those who advised you hoped that you would read the ongoing discussion before posting ;-) Your suggestion is similar to what I recently suggested. Your bullet points are mostly covered by the current ODbL: > * the source of the Produced Work is available under the ODbL (at URL…), Current ODbL mandates[*]that the derivative database on which the Produced Work is based must be available which is similar. > * the authors of the Database are attributed, This is in ODbL. > * any reverse-engineering makes the resulting work covered by the ODbL This is in ODbL. > * using the Produced Work as a database is forbidden (searching, etc). This could be said to amount to reverse engineering and would then not be forbidden but would lead to the database having to be made available under ODbL. Your suggestion that there is a choice of "either" using a share alike license "or" the above actually falls short of our current demands; we are discussing that we might perhaps drop the reverse engineering restriction from share-alike licensed produced works, but until now nobody suggested that the other points (attribution, releasing the base derviative database) should be dropped as well if the Produced Work is share-alike. > Of course, the above assumes that the ODbL will make clear restrictions > on the licensing terms of Produced Works, which seems not quite the case As I hope to have shown, it *is* actually the case. > as of the current version. Other people have been asking how the use of > PWs can be controlled without making restrictions on their licensing > terms (the reverse enginering clause does not require that it is copied > to the PW’s license) Oh yes it does, which is the reason why as it currently stands the OdbL is unsuitable for creating share-alike produced works. > Then, if I understood well, there might be jurisdictions where data is > not copyrightable, which means that any PW under a SA license might be > used to reverse-engineer the DB. This is true, but then again there are jurisdictions where anything goes; I am pretty sure that there are "technically legal" ways even now to extract all our data and put in in another form provided you manage to be on the right soil for every step. So we should perhaps not go over the top. It is unlikely that we'll ever have a license that works in North Korea. Bye Frederik [*] (assuming the use<->convey blunder is fixed but it if it isn't then ODbL is unlikely to be used for OSM) -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Reverse-Engineering Maps and Share-Alike Licences
Hi, Gervase Markham wrote: > I would be reluctant to name them. Assuming the data remains bound by > some form of share-alike, in 50 years time, OSM or OSM derivatives is > going to be the only database anyone ever uses for storing and > retrieving public global mapping data. At that point, we have no clue if > the FSF, the GPL or Creative Commons will still exist, or whether there > will be another more popular share-alike licence used. Sure; but how likely is it that we'll still be at ODbL v1.0 at that time? Since our license can be upgraded to "a later version", so can the list of compatible SA licenses for Produced Works. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Reverse-Engineering Maps and Share-Alike Licences
Hi, 80n wrote: > Obviously you can create an image and license it as a Produced Work. > Also fairly obviously you claim that a vector image (eg SVG) is a Produced > Work, > even if it contains most of planet.xml in unmodified form. Not sure here. You can of course produce a Derivative Database and *claim* it were a Produced Work but my reading always was that as soon as your work contains anything that is by definition a database then your work is a Derived Database and *not* a Produced Work. I assumed that in the absence of a clear definition, the EU definition of "database" would hold and this would mean that even a PNG file can be said to be a database (which would be the other extreme and make Produced Works a niche application). I thus requested, on multiple occasions, clarification of what *we* want to be a database, and I think this is definitely something we have to define either in or acommpanying the license. See also http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Use_Cases#When_is_something_a_Derivative_Database_when_is_it_a_Produced_Work_and_can_it_be_both. > However, if you exempt the reverse engineering clause for certain > share-alike licenses then it becomes trivial to relicense the whole OSM > database under such a license We don't want to dual-, triple-, quadruple-license our data that's for sure, but we're also not hostile to a bunch of share-alike licenses; if it can be made so that significant effort is required to accomplish the transition ODbL -> SomeShareAlikeLicense (i.e. the easy route via SVG would be too easy, but an OMR route would be difficult enough) then I would be tempted to say: If someone really wants to jump through these hoops to get it done, let him do it. I think this will be a niche application and, if at all, only used very seldom. And if we later find that someone is really being a thorn in our side with that for one reason or another, *then* we think about fixing it. (My general opinion is let's fix bugs now before we start rather than at some undefined point in the future. However in this case I think the threat is negligible.) To Simon Ward - my suggestion was to keep the current stuff about Produced Works (basically: any license you want as long as no-reverse-enigneering clause is kept), and additionally say that the reverse-engineering clause may be dropped if the work is to be licensed under X, Y, or Z. I thought that it would be *easier* (one sentence!) to write that into the license, rather than trying to define the criteria that a license must meet to benefit from this exception. - Again with the thought that if in the future a significant new Share-Alike license pops up, we can make an amendment to our ODbL to allow that one as well. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Reverse-Engineering Maps and Share-Alike Licences
Hi, Andy Allan wrote: > I think without the reverse engineering clause, you may as well make > it PD in the first place.. As I said: You could drop the reverse engineering clause for certain share-alike licenses only, thus making reverse-engineering into a share-alike form possible but that would mean that the best you get with your OMR is a CC-BY-SA or GFDL licensed database. You could then take that to a country where the data itself is not protected and because CC-BY-SA has no database component, use it without restriction. - But then you can *always* take our database to a WIPO unfriendly country and do WTFYW if you're the kind of person so inclined. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Reverse-Engineering Maps and Share-Alike Licences
Hi, Gervase Markham wrote: > So what can be done? I agree that reverse engineering is a risk. Life is > not perfect. But still, my suggestion is that we should abandon the idea > of trying to prevent reverse engineering, for the following reasons: > > a) GPL and CC-BY-SA compatibility of produced works is more important. > > b) If people are reverse-engineering our stuff, either they need a > massive, sustained, continuous Mechanical Turk effort, or their map will > be out of date anyway. I agree with both points, but I would like to try and be pragmatic: Don't throw out the reverse engineering clause; just add a clause that explicitly permits releasing Produced Works under a number of named share-alike licenses. I think this gives us the best mix. Reverse engineering will be possible, but only from share-alike licensed Produced Works. This makes it impossible to create an "all rights reserved" produced work and reverse engineer from that; any reverse engineering will be through a share-alike licensed work, and the resulting database will by protected by the share-alike license in question. This means one of two things: (1) If you are of the opinion that copyright does not work for OSM data anyway and only database/contract law can protect it, then the reverse engineering will release OSM from clutch of the database right and into the fully unrestricted world. In this case, our situation is not *better* than today but it is not worse either. (2) If you are of the opinion that copyright does indeed work for OSM data then the reverse engineering amounts to a conversion from one share-alike type of license to another, which is no big deal. Anyone driving a reverse-engineering effort wold have to invest a lot of money and in the end all he gets is (at best) an OSM dataset licensed exactly as it is today. Great win! See also: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Suggested_Changes#Possible_solution_.231:_Explicitly_allow_popular_SA_licenses Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Are Produced Works anti-share alike?
Hi, Ulf Möller wrote: > Are you saying that CC doesn't apply to a Produced Work at all because > it is not a "copyrightable work of authorship"? No, Richard's argument was that a Produced Work could be seen as having two components; one being the copyrightable work of authorship, which would be governed by the CC-BY-SA license and which may not be further restricted; the other being a derivative database under the database directive which is outside the scope of CC-BY-SA. The idea that other regulations than the license itself can govern a CC-BY-SA licensed product is not entirely made up; think of publishing an "R" rated film under CC-BY-SA where you will be required to add the restriction to not sell it to under-18s (depending on jurisdiction etc etc). Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Todays (thurs) license working group call
Hi, Frederik Ramm wrote: > Peter, Matt and others have done an excellent job at cleaning up and > structuring the Use Cases page on the Wiki. I have read all of the use > cases, made a few fixes, and I think they now sum up almost everything > that is important to us One thing I forgot. My whole interpretation of the ODbL is based on the assumption that we have share-alike on interim databases used to create Produced Works, as was the case in the previous license draft and is explained in detail on http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Suggested_Changes#The_.22interim_derivative_database.22_problem I think that there is broad consensus that the license needs to be fixed in this respect and that this was just an oversight and not a deliberate change. In the light of this, it would be not very productive for the lawyer to analyse the use cases based on the current wording of the ODbL, but he should take into account that we intend to make this change. Otherwise we will have to repeat the whole procedure after having made the change. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Todays (thurs) license working group call
Hi, SteveC wrote: > We also want to get a bunch of questions answered from a > legal PoV and to that end we'd like your help in pulling together > things from the use cases and open issues in to a concise list to be > emailed. Peter, Matt and others have done an excellent job at cleaning up and structuring the Use Cases page on the Wiki. I have read all of the use cases, made a few fixes, and I think they now sum up almost everything that is important to us (plus perhaps one or two fringe issues but I guess they were important for *someone* so hey). From my point of view, "Use Cases" is now *the* central page for a lawyer to look at and to give feedback to; while "Open Issues" does contain a few interesting topics but also some wider-ranging rants like "do we really need all this nonsense" which are probably of limited interest to a lawyer asked to give advice on ODbL. I did something for which those who cleaned up Use Cases might hate me; I pulled in three major items from "Open Issues" into a new section called "Definitions" on the "Use Cases" page. They are not use cases proper, but reading the use cases I found that many of them, in one way or another, circled around the questions of the grey area between "what is derivative db/collected db", "what is derivative db/produced work" and "what is a substantial extract". All these questions were on the "open issues" page because they are open issues; but it is to be expected that they will be answered or the answer at least touched in response to many of the use cases. So, I've now placed them at the bottom of the Use Cases page and it is not unlikely that by the time the lawyer has looked through the use cases s/he will already have answered these questions. Take it as a kind of checklist. The "Use Cases" page is perhaps not as concise as you (Steve) would have liked when you asked for a "list to be emailed" but I think it is the best we can do without loss of information. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] CC-BY-SA and T+Cs
Hi, Richard Fairhurst wrote: > Very often CC-BY-SA items will be conveyed with contractual > restrictions: Andy A cited the other day that the cycle map has its own Ts & > Cs, for example. So has CloudMade; they say that you may access their site "solely for your personal use". It is an interesting twist of share-alike; you cannot, of course, say that the map tile you are serving is for personal use because that would violate the license. But it seems that you can restrict the way in which you deliver it (since making stuff available is completely outside the scope of CC-BY-SA - you must only allow others to pass it on, you need not pass it on yourself). Grammatically speaking that's the difference between an adverb and an adjective - the map tiles are free, but they are not delivered freely. Once you have the map tile you can do with it what you want, but in order to *get* the map tile you have to agree to Ts&Cs. It seems obvious that under CC-BY-SA you have no obligation to give your tiles to anyone. I could set up a tile server and only allow access to people whose first name begins with A, or to those who pay me. The interesting question is, can I use this power to restrict how people use my tiles? Can I say "this is an open server that anyone can access, but if you plan to use the tile for a satanic ritual after you have accessed the server, then you do not have permission to access my site? Oh yes I cannot disallow that you use the tile for a satanic ritual but I can disallow that you use my site to access it... and by the way I also disallow anyone to access my site with the plan of giving the tile to you so don't you think of asking your friend". Can I say "anyone can download this tile and it is CC-BY-SA, but if you want to print it, then you have to give me 5 pounds because *free* access to this site is only granted to those who don't intend to print?" This is relevant (as long as we're still CC-BY-SA anyway) because the OSMF are planning to limit use of the Mapnik tile server as well; there is stuff about tile serving in the 2008-07-23, 2008-08-30 and 2008-09-24 OSMF board meeting minutes (http://foundation.openstreetmap.org/officers-board/board-meeting-minutes/); the issue seems to be on hold for the moment but there seem to be people on the OSMF board for whom scaling back OSMF tile serving is a high priority item. We'll see if and how the recent funding drive has maybe reduced pressure on this front, but I should not be surprised if OSMF one day says that they'll stop serving tiles to commercial users or "for commercial purposes" or whatever, which would also make them have to answer the above questions. (For the record, even though I run a company that is set to benefit from OSMF reducing service because this would increase the market for commercial map data providers, I don't advocate such a move.) Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] License to kill
Hi, 80n wrote: > its better to have a vibrant community than a license that > maximises the possible use cases at the expense of hard won contributors. I do not think that it is fair to assume that lack of share-alike and/or attribution would mean that the community was any less vibrant. I do not see the polarisation between "user interests" and "community interests" that you seem to see. I think the important connection between the project and the people is that they have created the project, that it is their "baby", and they care for it. *That* is the main distinction between OSM and, say, TIGER: TIGER has been created by an act of government and not by the people. You seem to think that unless people have written guarantee that they get something in return, they will not contribute. I do not agree and I think you severely underestimate the willingness of people to contribute to something they like - heck, Google Map Maker has BETTER maps than OSM for some areas, and they tell everybody upfront that NOTHING is being given back! In fact, I would feel insulted if somebody publicly assumed that I would not participate in a project without a written guarantee of getting something back. There may be such people but I would not like to be counted among them. That being said - the proposed ODbL *has* a written guarantee that something is being given back; it just does not promise to give *everything* back, and I think it strikes a very good balance between the interests of the "data producers" and "data consumers" (your choice of words, I think it's a bit one-sided). Without users, the project is useless, so there can be no absolute priority of one side over the other. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] License to kill
Hi, Richard Fairhurst wrote: > OJ W wrote: >> Given that maps need to be regularly updated to stay useful, >> anyone relying on a CC-BY-SA loophole will be just as SOL if >> we change the license in a year as if we changed it in time >> for april fools > > Shit, I'd better cancel the 25,000 copies of Waterways World rolling off the > presses with a largely NPE-derived map of the Chesterfield Canal in, then. I tend to side with OJW on this. You weren't at the last SOTM (hope to see you this time?) but I had a very nice graph of the expected value of OSM data once the community stops working on it, and, what shall I say, I made it look like "life expectancy of mankind after we lose the bees". There may be things that don't change (in another discussion someone pointed out that house numbers could be among them), but in general, the big thing about OSM is not the giant heap of data we have collected (others have more!) but the fact that if you use this data, you have on your side a whole community of people who constantly update, refine, improve, and quality-check the data. I think that without this, OSM is relatively un-interesting. If you had to take OSM data as a basis and then attempt to buy support for it because the community would not do it for you... good luck. Much like OJW in his argument, I have argued for relaxed wording when it comes to the reverse engineering clause in ODbL and for applying less-than-maximum care when dealing with the "enforcing the contract" issue. My take was that if we have a leak and somehow someone manages to create an OSM derivative that is free of any restrictions (maybe by first exporting it to a corrupt caribbean nation without database law, then employing people to remove the licensing notices and then sending the cleaned thing to the USA or so), and if this becomes a problem for us, we can deal with that *then* because while we cannot take the data that he already has away from him, we can always cut him off from updates. This makes for an altogether better sleep as opposed to the notion that once someone manages to strip off the license then all is lost. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] License to kill
Hi, Peter Miller wrote: >> If we get 99% there with version 1.0 and version 2.0 takes the next >> two years then the cost benefit, to me, would suggest 1.0 as the >> better deal. > > Lets first get the consultation input into Jordan, then lets read the > updated draft, then comment again if that is requested, then wait for > the final draft for version 1. Yes. "For the avoidance of doubt", the current draft is IMO nowhere even near "99% there" and it is absolutely clear that changes have to be made. Also, the cost of staying with buggy old CC-BY-SA for a few months longer is rather negligible, so any cost-benefit analysis would have to take that into account. It's not that our house is burning and we need someone with a hose quickly. > We can then decide as a community if we > are happy to proceed (which I think we will). If there is a big > problem then I suspect that a version 1.1 could be turned round > quickly to address it. Good for you to be optimistic, however I quote Rufus Pollock from odc-discuss: "I'd also point out that it will be possible upgrade the license (a v2.0 if you like) though that is not likely to happen that quickly after a v1.0 release." The worst that could happen would be to talk people into accepting a buggy 1.0 with the promise of a quick upgrade to a fixed 1.1 and then seeing 1.1 take forever. It's not that I expect a license to be perfect, none will ever be; I just expect us to fix the bugs we already see, and reserve the upgrade mechanism for those that pop up later, rather than rushing through something where we already have a list of known bugs. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] ODbL: incompatibility issues
Hi, Simon Ward wrote: > I’d prefer people carry on > discussing issues, here _and_ on the wiki, +1... discuss stuff here, record on the Wiki, so that when the time comes to judge whether a revised license addresses our concerns we can tick off the issues from the Wiki pages. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Factual Information License and Produced Works?
Hi, Jean-Christophe Haessig wrote: > Otherwise, anyone could make legal copies of nearly any photography > (e.g. landscapes) Photography is regarded as an art form by the law and the photographer usually enjoys copyright because it is assumed that the selection of the motive, and daytime, and angle, and weather, and camera settings are a creative act. This reasoning has been stretched by courts to include even satellite photography, where they say that whoever wrote or configured the software that decides which pictures get taken enjoys the copyright as a photographer. There is no clear legal stance on deriving facts from photographs; there have been court decisions that said the photographer's copyright is not violated if somebody simply uses the photo to draw a road or a building outline based on it. Similarly, some scholars believe that it is perfectly all right to use Google Aerial Imagery to derive OSM data from it. OSM does not have an answer to these question, but chose to err on the side of caution, i.e. we only advocate what we *know* is legal and not what *might* be legal. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] compatibility with CC licenses
Grant, Grant Slater wrote: > There has been some discussion of adding a tag into the planet.osm > header detailing that the data is licensed. Actually this is exactly what the license suggests: Quoting 4.2 (b) "[You must] Include a copy of this Licence [...] or its Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) [...] both in the Database [...] and in any relevant documentation" Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Concerns about ODbL
Hi, Jean-Christophe Haessig wrote: > I surely understand that contributors’ names won’t disappear from OSM > itself, however with that clause, someone might make a copy of the > database, remove the names and redistribute it (only attributing to > OSM), which will in effect disable the users of this copy to find out > original contributors’ names. This is certainly true. Someone making a derived database can freely choose which elements to retain and which to remove. - We do not even tell people the names of all contributors (only the last person to edit the item is listed in the planet file). Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Concerns about ODbL
Hi, OJ W wrote: > Exactly, so the ODbL has a political choice to license OSM map images > as PD (that can trivially be made uncopiable) I think your introduction of PD into this discussion is entirely unnecessary. If you make a Produced Work from an ODbL licensed database, then you can immediately make this Produced Work uncopiable (e.g. you can make a giant art installation from it an charge anyone who dares to photograph it, or you can print it into a book which is (c) yourself). PD doesn't come into the equation. > where previously we > guaranteed that all map images would be freely copiable. CC-BY-SA guaranteed that all map images would be freely copiable (for certain definitions of free, e.g. they could not be combined with NC or GFDL data etc.), but OSM is not aiming at a world of freely copiable map *images*. Map images are like compiled code. They are worth very little without the source. ODbL acknowledges that, and shifts our focus towards the source. Which makes sense to me. For me, the creation of "binaries", of map images, happens at the fringes of OSM; they are snapshots with little value especially as soon as they're a day old or two. > Whether this > is "essential" hasn't been explained It has been explained in the half sentence following my use of the word "essential": (Fred) > This is essential if we want to give users the chance to combine OSM > material with other, more restrictively licensed material, into images > or other products. (OJW) > it certainly isn't essential to > the creation of free maps. Unless the "free map" in question is one that combines free "non-commercial" altitude data with free OpenStreetMap roads; this is not possible with CC-BY-SA and will be possible with ODbL. If that's not "essential" then I don't know what is. Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
