(Sending this to wikipedia-l & OSM's legal-talk too)
On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 4:09 PM, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason<[email protected]> wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 9:15 PM, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason<[email protected]>
> wrote:
>> So, what we should do is to author a document (on the wiki?) which
>> clearly explains why such terms which restrict redistribution and
>> fields of endeavor mean that free content projects like OSM can't use
>> the data and will have to keep using SRTM.
>
> Since nobody (especially someone with legal know-how) has offered to
> do this I've continued to my correspondence with NASA/USGS/METI using
> my own know-how and miscellaneous bits I've scraped from the recent
> ASTER threads on this list for support.
>
> Below is an E-Mail I just sent to the NASA/USGS/METI people I'm
> corresponding with. I won't include the snippets I'm replying to since
> I haven't had permission to publish them, instead I'm going to replace
> them with little summaries of the original content. My summaries are
> one-liners while the originals are a few paragraphs so obviously
> information is lost in the process:
>
>> [What's this public OpenStreetMap forum you're referring to?]
>
> It's being discussed on the main OpenStreetMap "talk" mailing list
> (and some other foreign language lists, e.g. the German one). Here's a
> list to the thread I started there:
>
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2009-July/thread.html#38235
>
> It's a public mailing list so you could sign up if you'd like, or
> continue corresponding with me and I could ferry information
> back-and-forth.
>
> In any case I'll be submitting what I send to you to the
> aforementioned mailing list, but I won't quote any remarks from you
> (@nasa.gov/@usgs.gov people) unless I have explicit permission to do
> so. So I'll modify this E-Mail so that e.g. the paragraph I'm replying
> to now will be replaced by something like "[Where is this being
> discussed?]" before I post it. But that's bound to cause confusion so
> having permission to quote you when appropriate would be better.
>
> I was hoping that someone with more legal knowledge would be willing
> to chime in but that hasn't happened already. I'm just a mapping
> hobbyist but I'll try to explain what would be about acceptable terms
> for open source/free software projects the best I can.
>
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2009-July/038327.html
>
>> [Perhaps your intended use of the ASTER data is supported, e.g. if you
>> derived tiles intended for some mapping software that would not be
>> considered redistribution of the original product an could be pushed
>> downstream]
>> [However if you were intending to distribute the canonical ASTER data as-is
>> that would be in violation of the terms]
>
> I think I've correctly read between the lines of the download
> agreement in assuming that the purpose of that clause is to avoid
> Balkanization of the ASTER data, i.e. to make sure that NASA/METI will
> always be the canonical source for the source dataset.
>
> If the terms were changed to something like:
>
> You are not allowed to publicly distribute the original ASTER data
> files but any derived work can be redistributed freely with (only) the
> following restriction:
>
> If you distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, or publicly
> digitally perform the Work or any Derivative Works or Collective
> Works, You must keep intact all copyright notices for the Work and
> give the original author (NASA/METI) credit reasonable to the medium
> or means You are utilizing by conveying the name (or pseudonym if
> applicable) of the Original Author.
>
> Or something like that then the ASTER dataset could be used to its
> full potential by free data projects like OpenStreetMap, Wikipedia &
> others. But since there would be no restriction on the fields of
> endeavor that generated data could always be used to generate a DEM
> again, see a further explanation in this E-Mail:
>
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2009-July/038327.html
>
> For instance here's a map where the OpenStreetMap data which is under
> the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (CC-BY-SA) license has
> been combined with SRTM contours:
>
> http://osm.org/go/0CZyDpI--?layers=00B0FTF
>
> The CC-BY-SA license specifies (as do most free software licenses)
> that when you distribute derived works you can impose no further
> restrictions on the data. That's a pretty much a universal feature of
> popular free content licenses to avoid data Balkanization and ensure
> compatibility so that e.g. someone doesn't specify the additional
> terms that you can't use the derived work for some specific use (e.g.
> military), or that you can't use it on a Sunday. Such accumulated
> restrictions would quickly make the data unusable for everybody.
>
> Someone could take that map and generate a global DEM by analyzing the
> contour lines and distribute a global DEM derived from ASTER free of
> the original restrictions, thus circumventing the original limited use
> clause.
>
> But in reality nobody is going to go to all this trouble and nobody is
> going to be confused about NASA/METI being the original and canonical
> source of ASTER data. The best support for this claim is that today
> nobody is confused about NASA being the canonical source for SRTM
> data. Even though it's in the Public Domain which means downstream
> distributors don't even have to attribute NASA for it (although they
> nearly universally do anyway).
>
> In summary, not having restrictions on fields of endeavour will open
> the ASTER data to use by free content projects which otherwise
> wouldn't be able to use it, and nobody is likely to mistake NASA/ASTER
> as not being the canonical source for it, especially given
> attribution.
>
> As for why I've changed the attribution in the latter paragraph of
> those example license terms is pretty much lifted from the CC-BY 2.0
> license:
>
> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode
>
> The reason for changing the form of attribution from the current (When
> presenting or publishing ASTER GDEM data, I agree to include "ASTER
> GDEM is a product of METI and NASA.") is that asking distributors to
> include an exact string (in English) leads to what's called the
> Berkeley advertising clause problem (as pointed out on the list:
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2009-July/038237.html),
> see this page for an explanation:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_licenses#UC_Berkeley_advertising_clause
>
> Instead if distributors are merely asked to attribute the author
> (NASA/METI) that'll serve the same purpose in practice without the
> troubles associated with reproducing an exact string, e.g. the
> attribution can be translated or otherwise adjusted for the medium.
>
> For instance if the ASTER data was used by someone to extrapolate the
> position of mountain peaks and this derived data added to the
> OpenStreetMap database we could add a node with a source=ASTER tag,
> e.g.:
>
> http://api.openstreetmap.org/browse/node/308406749
>
> Which is appropriate for a relational dataset, as opposed to
> reproducing "ASTER GDEM is a product of METI and NASA." for every
> object in it.
NASA/METI have updated their distribution terms with a FAQ in response
to my questions:
https://lpdaac.usgs.gov/lpdaac/about/news_archive/friday_july_24_2009
Unfortunately the new terms aren't new at all, and they still look too
restrictive to be incorporated into freely licensed datasets.
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