On Fri, Oct 30, 2009 at 11:17 AM, Peteris Krisjanis <[email protected]> wrote: > Photo can be and *is* copyright subject
Some photos are. Not all photos are, at least not in all jurisdictions. For instance, in the United States, a photograph of an out of copyright 2-dimensional work of art is generally not copyrightable. A satellite photo, being taken from so far away, is pretty close to 2-dimensional. Aerial photos taken from aircraft, less so. And a photo which is actually a composite of multiple photos (infrared, greyscale, and color, for instance), might be argued to have that slight bit of creative input needed to make it copyrightable. Anyway, there certainly is grey area over even that. > Grey area is - is tracing over sat/ortphotos creation of derative works, or > not? That's equivalent to the question of whether or not that aspect of the original work is copyrighted. Tracing a copyrighted work is certainly copying, and copying is the key necessary condition for the creation of a derivative work. > I know it is frustrating and sometimes people want to do that in > spite, but this won't help anyone, especially OSM. In my opinion the rules need to be relaxed a bit. There's nothing wrong with copying facts from other sources, so long as you're careful to only copy facts, and so long as the amount and substantiality is kept low. I was somewhat amazed that my question as to whether or not I can use Google Street View to check whether or not a left hand turn is allowed at a certain intersection was met with a certain number of "no" answers. I don't know how it is in other parts of the world, but here in the US, copying facts from other sources without infringing on the copyright of those sources, is exactly how you're taught to write a work of non-fiction. I can certainly sympathize with "I should have kept quiet like everyone else" when it comes to stuff like that. But outright tracing? That leaves too much room to get caught. If you're going to "keep quiet like everyone else", at least do it the right way. Look at multiple independent sources. Take notes from those sources. Then make your own work from your memory and your notes. Just like you're making a research paper. But no, don't actually do that. It's unfair to the people who spent all that time riding around on their bicycles making GPS traces. Anthony _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
