> In the US at least, I didn't think works paid for by the government could > have a restrictive copyright claim placed on them.
In the US we have several levels of governments. Works created by the nation-wide federal government cannot be copyrighted. However, that does not apply to state, county, or city governments. They can copyright their works. Portland includes this statement: ---------------------------------- Copyright The City of Portland asserts ownership of its spatial data and all its portions. All title, ownership, and intellectual property rights which may exist or be created with the geospatial data shall remain with the City of Portland. The arrangement of facts of the geographic data, the organizational structure of the GIS databases, the coding of the GIS databases, the format of the GIS databases and the graphic design of its maps are the property of the City of Portland, as registered and protected by US copyright statutes and treaties. Recipients are restricted from displaying City spatial data on the public Internet without express written consent from the City. ---------------------------------- This can be found at http://www.portlandonline.com/omf/index.cfm?c=28144 in the data licensing documents. > Maybe this is data that a > company put together and then is licensing to the city? That is true in many situations. Portland mentions this in their data description, and says that data from commercial companies used by the City isn't even available from the City. The data that is available from the City is still copyrighted and restricted, as mentioned above. They have provisions for non-profit and educational use of the city GIS data at no cost, or low cost, but it does not include the right to redistribute the data. Too bad :-( - Alan _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk-us
