|
John Henderson wrote: I can give you a reasonably clear explanation of the legal concepts behind this one. It's very similar to a problem faced by church choirs, small choral groups etc.. with some kinds of music. Some years ago, I was involved with copyright issues for this situation and we obtained legal advice through a commercial licensing organisation.I go to the local tourist information place and start asking for names. They give me a photocopy of a street directory which shows all the names. But this photocopy has a copyright notice.Can I enter names from that page into OSM for the already-mapped ways? Suppose I want my choir to sing "Away in a Manger " for a Christmas pageant. I have a published copy of the carol, with words and music.The words were written by "Anon.", and the music (in my copy) was probably written by Martin Luther, so they are both out of copyright. So, can I simply photocopy from the published book? ....... No!... Although both words and music are in the public domain, the book publishers hold copyright on what is called the "graphic layout". That simply means the way it is laid out on the printed page - the fonts used (both music and words - yes, music does have various fonts) and things like line spacing, margins, hyphenation and so on. But graphic content is the only thing the publishers hold copyright on. If I use the book as a source, and type up a new copy of the words, or hand-write the music, or even play the music into my synthesiser and use a program to regenerate a printed copy of the music, I am free to print whatever I like. Note that I can't do that for the words and music to "Yellow Submarine". In this case, it is the actual words/music that are under copyright, not just the graphic content. The issue of copying names from a street directory is very similar. The publishers of the directory hold copyright over the graphic layout of the map, but they cannot hold copyright over the street names themselves. Those names are in the public domain. If you look up a street name in the directory, then you now know that name. If you then use it to name a street in an OSM map, you are doing so from your own knowledge, even though you only just acquired that knowledge. However, you may NOT use the printed street directory to trace street outlines in any way - just as in my music example, I could not even make a music copy by using tracing paper. So if all you need is street names,use whatever published source you wish. Just make sure that you only get street names. And whatever you do, don't advertise it, or discuss it in forums. There are always some smart-arse lawyers out there, and none of us really needs to defend our actions in court, even though there is a strong legal basis to do so. Regards, Richard |
_______________________________________________ Talk-au mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
