On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 1:07 PM, John Smith <[email protected]> wrote: > 2009/9/10 Anthony <[email protected]>: >> I'm not sure what help a lawyer is going to be - they're not going to be >> able to guarantee you that much of anything is 100% (or 99.9%) safe in 100% >> (or 95%, weighted by user-base) of jurisdictions, especially not for free. >> As Richard says in the comments, "In the UK, as ever, the law is less >> clear-cut than in the US." The only way I can see this being reconciled is >> by getting explicit permission. > > Actually that's what a legal opinion is, you can use it in court, if > it gets that far, to show you sort out information before doing > something and a lawyer thought it would be ok based on his or her > interpretation of the law. I think only practising lawyers are able to > legally give legal opinions.
But being able to say "but lawyer X said we could!" in court will not make you immune to lawsuits. Nonetheless, legal advice from a lawyer would be great - John, any ideas on how to get this? In any case, I agree with Anthony - the only way to *guarantee* company X won't take you to court for doing Z - regardless of who might win in court - is if company X gives you written permission to do Z. As Dave asked, "Has anyone sent a letter to Google's legal department asking for clarification or permission?" Google, at least on face-value, seem to be open-minded when it comes to open-source stuff, and they have recently even acknowledged OSM's existence on an official blog (http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2009/08/3-days-3-googlers-2-cpus-8-cores-google.html). Worth a try. _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
