Re: [OSM-legal-talk] local copyright law on government data and OSM license

[Erwin Olario]

Thank you for pitching-in Eugene, and thank you everyone for your inputs.

I would like to specify that in the example mentioned by Eugene, the
dataset is not publicly distributed -- but there are extra-legal copies
going around the Internet. The government agency who created the geodata is
the Philippine Statistical Authority (which isn't, by the way,  the
government agency responsible for defining authoritative boundaries) sold
them for the purpose of helping end-users visualize the statistical data
they create. The condition of their sale (similar to the Memorandum of
Agreement with NAMRIA) was that end-users may use the data on the disc
internally, but may not re-distribute them publicly. They stopped selling
the data 10 years ago, and they never published the geodata.

IMO, the copies getting around that users may be utilizing is sullied by
the fact that it wasn't meant for distribution, so users cannot grant any
rights to OSM, which they didn't have in the first place. This wouldn't be
an issue if the data is being made available by the agency itself, which it
isn't.

At any rate, these discussions are indeed very helpful for elucidating the
position our community should take. And, we take note of Simon's advise
that a conservative interpretation might be prudent.

Looking forward to more of your inputs. Thank you.

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On Fri, Jul 17, 2020 at 5:00 AM Eugene Alvin Villar 
wrote:

> Hi Kathleen, all,
>
> Just as a bit of reference, the original intellectual property law from
> 1924, back when the Philippines was a territory of the United States,
> didn't have this commercial-with-prior-approval second sentence and was
> basically modeled after the U.S. law (government works are fully in the
> public domain). This additional sentence was added in 1972 and was retained
> in the present law of 1997. Previous analysis of the current law by
> Wikimedia volunteers with respect to copyright can be seen here and which
> concludes that this second sentence is some sort of additional
> non-copyright-based government right:
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Template:PD-PhilippineGov
>
> This situation actually raises a lot of questions especially in the
> context of OSM. For instance, if a government agency published a dataset of
> polygons of places, it would probably be best to get the agency's prior
> approval to import such dataset in order to waive the requirement of "prior
> approval [...] for exploitation of such work for profit" because end users
> of OSM should not have to ask the agency for approval if they want to use
> the data that was included in OSM for profit.
>
> On the other hand, if an OSM mapper *derives* new data from such a
> dataset (for example, generating a representative point for each polygon,
> maybe at the centroid, or maybe at at the "admin centre" if the polygon
> represents settlements and the mapper used their best judgement and
> research to place such points), then this new dataset is no longer the same
> as the government dataset. If the OSM mapper added the new derived data to
> OSM, then one could perhaps argue that prior approval from the government
> agency is no longer needed because the very act of mapping in OSM is not
> "for exploitation of such work for profit". And furthermore, end users of
> OSM would also perhaps not need to seek "prior approval" as well since they
> are not exploiting the original government dataset but rather a derived
> dataset (ex., points), and which cannot be used to reverse engineer the
> original government dataset (ex., polygons).
>
> Regards,
> Eugene
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 16, 2020 at 10:57 AM Kathleen Lu via legal-talk <
> legal-talk@openstreetmap.org> wrote:
>
>> A few thoughts:
>>
>> I'd want to talk to a Philippine lawyer, because frankly, these two
>> sentences seem to contradict each other:
>> *No copyright shall subsist in any work of the Government of the
>> Philippines. However, prior approval of the government agency or office
>> wherein the work is created shall be necessary for exploitation of such
>> work for profit*
>>
>> What would be the consequences of not getting permission? A violation of
>> the government's non-copyright rights? Rights of what? I didn't think the
>> Philippines had database rights, but there could well be some other
>> non-copyright law.
>>
>> Looking online, I found this on the National Mapping authority's website:
>> Can I edit and use the NAMRIA maps for business? Article III of NAMRIA
>> Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) states that "the second party shall use the
>> digital data acquired from NAMRIA only for its own authorized purpose and
>> not for commercial purpose. If digital is sold to other parties, the Second
>> Party shall pay the full cost of the 

Re: [OSM-legal-talk] local copyright law on government data and OSM license

[Simon Poole]

This is not a particular unique situation, a sovereign country can,
naturally, create exclusive rights or specific regulation for more or
less whatever it cares.

Copyright is simply the most popular, with wide spread understanding and
international treaties as support, set of exclusive intellectual
property rights. But there is nothing stopping a government special
casing geodata or other ip that they produce, or introducing special
protection for otherwise not protected works, there can simply be no
expectation that such regulation could be internationally enforced and
reciprocal. Two examples are the national geo information law where I
live and sui generis database rights in the EU.

(Omiting some edge cases here, essentially the ones that you shouldn't
ask about, because you wont like the answer) OSM is interested in its
geodata being useful and usable globally, and because of its nature,
particulary in the country the data is relevant in. As a result, unlike
other projects, we can't ignore national quirks and restrictions and
need to accomodate them as far as it is compatible with our mission.

So in this case I would take the conservative stance (as our licence is
open and does not discriminate against commercial use) and suggest that
any use of government data would need permisson. I would not try to
outlawyer the government as your argumentation would seem to imply you
would like to do.

Naturally it is completly possible to produce a fully functional map
without resorting to government data, so not getting such permission is
not a show stopper.

tl;dr version: if you have quirky national regulations then please abide
by them so that your work contributing to OSM is not in vain. If you are
a resident in one of the edge case territories, you should read the OSMF
ToU and carefully consider your situation.

Simon

On 16.07.2020 22:59, Eugene Alvin Villar wrote:
> Hi Kathleen, all,
>
> Just as a bit of reference, the original intellectual property law
> from 1924, back when the Philippines was a territory of the United
> States, didn't have this commercial-with-prior-approval second
> sentence and was basically modeled after the U.S. law (government
> works are fully in the public domain). This additional sentence was
> added in 1972 and was retained in the present law of 1997. Previous
> analysis of the current law by Wikimedia volunteers with respect to
> copyright can be seen here and which concludes that this second
> sentence is some sort of additional non-copyright-based government
> right:
> https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Template:PD-PhilippineGov
>
> This situation actually raises a lot of questions especially in the
> context of OSM. For instance, if a government agency published a
> dataset of polygons of places, it would probably be best to get the
> agency's prior approval to import such dataset in order to waive the
> requirement of "prior approval [...] for exploitation of such work for
> profit" because end users of OSM should not have to ask the agency for
> approval if they want to use the data that was included in OSM for profit.
>
> On the other hand, if an OSM mapper /derives/ new data from such a
> dataset (for example, generating a representative point for each
> polygon, maybe at the centroid, or maybe at at the "admin centre" if
> the polygon represents settlements and the mapper used their best
> judgement and research to place such points), then this new dataset is
> no longer the same as the government dataset. If the OSM mapper added
> the new derived data to OSM, then one could perhaps argue that prior
> approval from the government agency is no longer needed because the
> very act of mapping in OSM is not "for exploitation of such work for
> profit". And furthermore, end users of OSM would also perhaps not need
> to seek "prior approval" as well since they are not exploiting the
> original government dataset but rather a derived dataset (ex.,
> points), and which cannot be used to reverse engineer the original
> government dataset (ex., polygons).
>
> Regards,
> Eugene
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 16, 2020 at 10:57 AM Kathleen Lu via legal-talk
> mailto:legal-talk@openstreetmap.org>>
> wrote:
>
> A few thoughts:
>
> I'd want to talk to a Philippine lawyer, because frankly, these
> two sentences seem to contradict each other: /_No copyright shall
> subsist in any work of the Government of the Philippines. However,
> prior approval of the government agency or office wherein the work
> is created shall be necessary for exploitation of such work for
> profit_
> /
>
> What would be the consequences of not getting permission? A
> violation of the government's non-copyright rights? Rights of
> what? I didn't think the Philippines had database rights, but
> there could well be some other non-copyright law.
>
> Looking online, I found this on the National Mapping authority's
> website:
> Can I edit 

Re: [OSM-legal-talk] local copyright law on government data and OSM license

[Kathleen Lu via legal-talk]

Thanks for the context Eugene.

On the other hand, if an OSM mapper *derives* new data from such a dataset
> (for example, generating a representative point for each polygon, maybe at
> the centroid, or maybe at at the "admin centre" if the polygon represents
> settlements and the mapper used their best judgement and research to place
> such points), then this new dataset is no longer the same as the government
> dataset. If the OSM mapper added the new derived data to OSM, then one
> could perhaps argue that prior approval from the government agency is no
> longer needed because the very act of mapping in OSM is not "for
> exploitation of such work for profit". And furthermore, end users of OSM
> would also perhaps not need to seek "prior approval" as well since they are
> not exploiting the original government dataset but rather a derived dataset
> (ex., points), and which cannot be used to reverse engineer the original
> government dataset (ex., polygons).
>
> This interpretation would seem to be consistent with the answer provided
on the National Mapping authority's website:
Can I edit and use the NAMRIA maps for business? Article III of NAMRIA
Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) states that "the second party shall use the
digital data acquired from NAMRIA only for its own authorized purpose and
not for commercial purpose. If digital is sold to other parties, the Second
Party shall pay the full cost of the digital data and its royalties". This
applies only to digital maps (scanned/vector) purchased from NAMRIA.

If it is not the data itself but rather derived from it, then there are no
restrictions.

-Kathleen



> On Thu, Jul 16, 2020 at 10:57 AM Kathleen Lu via legal-talk <
> legal-talk@openstreetmap.org> wrote:
>
>> A few thoughts:
>>
>> I'd want to talk to a Philippine lawyer, because frankly, these two
>> sentences seem to contradict each other:
>> *No copyright shall subsist in any work of the Government of the
>> Philippines. However, prior approval of the government agency or office
>> wherein the work is created shall be necessary for exploitation of such
>> work for profit*
>>
>> What would be the consequences of not getting permission? A violation of
>> the government's non-copyright rights? Rights of what? I didn't think the
>> Philippines had database rights, but there could well be some other
>> non-copyright law.
>>
>> Looking online, I found this on the National Mapping authority's website:
>> Can I edit and use the NAMRIA maps for business? Article III of NAMRIA
>> Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) states that "the second party shall use the
>> digital data acquired from NAMRIA only for its own authorized purpose and
>> not for commercial purpose. If digital is sold to other parties, the Second
>> Party shall pay the full cost of the digital data and its royalties". This
>> applies only to digital maps (scanned/vector) purchased from NAMRIA.
>> http://www.namria.gov.ph/faq.aspx
>>
>> So one question I would have is whether the data source in question is
>> digital data acquired from NAMRIA?
>>
>> I also found this list
>> http://www.geoportal.gov.ph/resources/PGPDataInventorywithSW
>> which seems to indicate that at least some government geodata has no
>> restrictions on it. With respect to at least those datasets, it would seem
>> that *explicit permission with respect to OSM* is unnecessary. I didn't see
>> a source for the letters mentioned in this list, but it's possible that
>> some of the data restrictions would not be a problem for OSM, but they'd
>> have to be examined on a letter by letter basis.
>>
>> Best,
>> -Kathleen
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Jul 15, 2020 at 6:17 PM Erwin Olario  wrote:
>>
>>> Recently, some edits in the country came to the  attention of the
>>> community and have been found to be derived from government data.
>>> Volunteers in the community, after advising the DWG of the process and
>>> action plan, are undertaking the rollback of affected edits.
>>>
>>> In our community, the current practice follows the general
>>> recommendation, that  no (Philippine government) data should be added into
>>> OpenStreetMap, unless explicit permission has been obtained from the
>>> originating agency/office/owners that the data will be added in OSM, under
>>> ODbL.
>>>
>>> The relevant local law on government data, states Republic Act 8293
>>> ,
>>> section 176:
>>> "*Works of the Government. ‑ 176.1. No copyright shall subsist in any
>>> work of the Government of the Philippines. However, prior approval of the
>>> government agency or office wherein the work is created shall be necessary
>>> for exploitation of such work for profit. Such agency or office may, among
>>> other things, impose as a condition the payment of royalties. No prior
>>> approval or conditions shall be required for the use for any purpose of
>>> statutes, rules and regulations, and speeches, lectures, sermons,
>>> addresses, and dissertations, 

Re: [OSM-legal-talk] local copyright law on government data and OSM license

[Eugene Alvin Villar]

Hi Kathleen, all,

Just as a bit of reference, the original intellectual property law from
1924, back when the Philippines was a territory of the United States,
didn't have this commercial-with-prior-approval second sentence and was
basically modeled after the U.S. law (government works are fully in the
public domain). This additional sentence was added in 1972 and was retained
in the present law of 1997. Previous analysis of the current law by
Wikimedia volunteers with respect to copyright can be seen here and which
concludes that this second sentence is some sort of additional
non-copyright-based government right:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Template:PD-PhilippineGov

This situation actually raises a lot of questions especially in the context
of OSM. For instance, if a government agency published a dataset of
polygons of places, it would probably be best to get the agency's prior
approval to import such dataset in order to waive the requirement of "prior
approval [...] for exploitation of such work for profit" because end users
of OSM should not have to ask the agency for approval if they want to use
the data that was included in OSM for profit.

On the other hand, if an OSM mapper *derives* new data from such a dataset
(for example, generating a representative point for each polygon, maybe at
the centroid, or maybe at at the "admin centre" if the polygon represents
settlements and the mapper used their best judgement and research to place
such points), then this new dataset is no longer the same as the government
dataset. If the OSM mapper added the new derived data to OSM, then one
could perhaps argue that prior approval from the government agency is no
longer needed because the very act of mapping in OSM is not "for
exploitation of such work for profit". And furthermore, end users of OSM
would also perhaps not need to seek "prior approval" as well since they are
not exploiting the original government dataset but rather a derived dataset
(ex., points), and which cannot be used to reverse engineer the original
government dataset (ex., polygons).

Regards,
Eugene



On Thu, Jul 16, 2020 at 10:57 AM Kathleen Lu via legal-talk <
legal-talk@openstreetmap.org> wrote:

> A few thoughts:
>
> I'd want to talk to a Philippine lawyer, because frankly, these two
> sentences seem to contradict each other:
> *No copyright shall subsist in any work of the Government of the
> Philippines. However, prior approval of the government agency or office
> wherein the work is created shall be necessary for exploitation of such
> work for profit*
>
> What would be the consequences of not getting permission? A violation of
> the government's non-copyright rights? Rights of what? I didn't think the
> Philippines had database rights, but there could well be some other
> non-copyright law.
>
> Looking online, I found this on the National Mapping authority's website:
> Can I edit and use the NAMRIA maps for business? Article III of NAMRIA
> Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) states that "the second party shall use the
> digital data acquired from NAMRIA only for its own authorized purpose and
> not for commercial purpose. If digital is sold to other parties, the Second
> Party shall pay the full cost of the digital data and its royalties". This
> applies only to digital maps (scanned/vector) purchased from NAMRIA.
> http://www.namria.gov.ph/faq.aspx
>
> So one question I would have is whether the data source in question is
> digital data acquired from NAMRIA?
>
> I also found this list
> http://www.geoportal.gov.ph/resources/PGPDataInventorywithSW
> which seems to indicate that at least some government geodata has no
> restrictions on it. With respect to at least those datasets, it would seem
> that *explicit permission with respect to OSM* is unnecessary. I didn't see
> a source for the letters mentioned in this list, but it's possible that
> some of the data restrictions would not be a problem for OSM, but they'd
> have to be examined on a letter by letter basis.
>
> Best,
> -Kathleen
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 15, 2020 at 6:17 PM Erwin Olario  wrote:
>
>> Recently, some edits in the country came to the  attention of the
>> community and have been found to be derived from government data.
>> Volunteers in the community, after advising the DWG of the process and
>> action plan, are undertaking the rollback of affected edits.
>>
>> In our community, the current practice follows the general
>> recommendation, that  no (Philippine government) data should be added into
>> OpenStreetMap, unless explicit permission has been obtained from the
>> originating agency/office/owners that the data will be added in OSM, under
>> ODbL.
>>
>> The relevant local law on government data, states Republic Act 8293
>> ,
>> section 176:
>> "*Works of the Government. ‑ 176.1. No copyright shall subsist in any
>> work of the Government of the Philippines. However, 

Re: [OSM-legal-talk] local copyright law on government data and OSM license

[Matthew Woehlke]

On 15/07/2020 21.16, Erwin Olario wrote:

Recently, some edits in the country came to the  attention of the community


When you say "the country", what country are we talking about?

I guess from context you mean "the Philippines", but you really ought to 
specify.


(I've been editing a bunch of stuff in PWC, Virginia, USA based partly 
on government data which I have been assured by the issuing agency is 
Public Domain. I *hope* you aren't talking about me, but it's really 
unclear.)


--
Matthew

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] local copyright law on government data and OSM license

[Kathleen Lu via legal-talk]

A few thoughts:

I'd want to talk to a Philippine lawyer, because frankly, these two
sentences seem to contradict each other:
*No copyright shall subsist in any work of the Government of the
Philippines. However, prior approval of the government agency or office
wherein the work is created shall be necessary for exploitation of such
work for profit*

What would be the consequences of not getting permission? A violation of
the government's non-copyright rights? Rights of what? I didn't think the
Philippines had database rights, but there could well be some other
non-copyright law.

Looking online, I found this on the National Mapping authority's website:
Can I edit and use the NAMRIA maps for business? Article III of NAMRIA
Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) states that "the second party shall use the
digital data acquired from NAMRIA only for its own authorized purpose and
not for commercial purpose. If digital is sold to other parties, the Second
Party shall pay the full cost of the digital data and its royalties". This
applies only to digital maps (scanned/vector) purchased from NAMRIA.
http://www.namria.gov.ph/faq.aspx

So one question I would have is whether the data source in question is
digital data acquired from NAMRIA?

I also found this list
http://www.geoportal.gov.ph/resources/PGPDataInventorywithSW which
seems to indicate that at least some government geodata has no restrictions
on it. With respect to at least those datasets, it would seem that
*explicit permission with respect to OSM* is unnecessary. I didn't see a
source for the letters mentioned in this list, but it's possible that some
of the data restrictions would not be a problem for OSM, but they'd have to
be examined on a letter by letter basis.

Best,
-Kathleen


On Wed, Jul 15, 2020 at 6:17 PM Erwin Olario  wrote:

> Recently, some edits in the country came to the  attention of the
> community and have been found to be derived from government data.
> Volunteers in the community, after advising the DWG of the process and
> action plan, are undertaking the rollback of affected edits.
>
> In our community, the current practice follows the general recommendation,
> that  no (Philippine government) data should be added into OpenStreetMap,
> unless explicit permission has been obtained from the originating
> agency/office/owners that the data will be added in OSM, under ODbL.
>
> The relevant local law on government data, states Republic Act 8293
> ,
> section 176:
> "*Works of the Government. ‑ 176.1. No copyright shall subsist in any
> work of the Government of the Philippines. However, prior approval of the
> government agency or office wherein the work is created shall be necessary
> for exploitation of such work for profit. Such agency or office may, among
> other things, impose as a condition the payment of royalties. No prior
> approval or conditions shall be required for the use for any purpose of
> statutes, rules and regulations, and speeches, lectures, sermons,
> addresses, and dissertations, pronounced, read or rendered in courts of
> justice, before administrative agencies, in deliberative assemblies and in
> meetings of public character. (Sec. 9, first par., P.D. No. 49)"*
>
> In the discussions by contributors, there are some who expressed favor a
> more liberal interpretation of this section of the law, that government
> data is ineligible to copyright, hence no permission is necessary from the
> government. And if the end-user has commercial plans for said data, it is
> up to them to apply for said permission from the relevant government
> agencies.
>
> However, this government permission requirement appears to oppose the OSM
> license, wherein OSM data users are only required to attribute, and not
> seek any additional permissions. Hence, our promoted practice of seeking
> the informed consent of data owners.
>
> While the interpretation of the law is not a question of popularity,
> there's no doubt that a more liberal interpretation is desirable for our
> community but I'm wondering if somebody from the licensing WG can provide
> us specific guidance whether a liberal interpretation of this law is
> aligned with the OSM license.
>
> /Erwin
>
>
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