2010/8/10 Anthony <[email protected]>: > On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 6:48 PM, Matt Amos <[email protected]> wrote: >> On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 11:22 PM, Anthony <[email protected]> wrote: >>> On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 6:09 PM, Matt Amos <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 10:52 PM, Anthony <[email protected]> wrote: >>>>> Can we get a collection of quotes from those lawyers that you say >>>>> "think otherwise"? Exact quotes of what they said? >>>> >>>> unfortunately not. apparently legal advice can't be publicly shared >>>> without making the lawyers in question liable for it. given that our >>>> legal advisors are acting for us pro-bono and have asked that we don't >>>> quote them publicly, i don't think it would be nice to do that. >>> >>> Then can you at least stop referring to what they said, especially >>> referring to it as though it's in any way authoritative. Without the >>> ability to see the exact quote, let alone ask questions, "many lawyers >>> said you're wrong" is useless. >> >> i'm simply saying that there are people out there who know what >> they're talking about. > > I'm simply saying that I have strong doubts that many of them would > have said that the contents of the OSM are purely factual. > Furthermore, if asked whether or not collections of facts can be > copyrightable, I have strong doubts that many of them would have said > "no".
Map is a hand-written 2D picture of the world. It is definitely more a kind of art than a digital photo in flickr, there is more subjectivity and intelligence etc needed to make it. How can photos be copyrighted? Aren't photos just visual registrations of facts? Also there are many artistic paintings, books, movies etc, which try to be "purely factual", at least through the eyes of the author? I don't really see how someone can even have the idea (or argument) that map is just a database of facts. I'd suggest a simple technical test for "is X an art or fact". 1. ask two persons to create the X. 2. store it to a digital file, and make diff of the files. Only if you can get "no differences" then this was a pure fact. I am sure that mapping (like e.g. photography) will fail the test, even without trying it out. -- Jaak _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
