On 8 December 2011 15:30, 80n <80n...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Dec 8, 2011 at 1:20 PM, Ed Avis <e...@waniasset.com> wrote: > * If the map is considered to be a compilation then all contributors, as > joint authors, have joint copyright ownership. > > The hanging question in my mind is, if we assume, for the moment, that every > contributor has joint copyright ownership, what rights would they actually > have? Do they have full and unrestricted copyright in the whole > compilation? Are they bound, or limited, by any of the terms or conditions > that they agreed to when signing up? Are they in any way limited by the > CC-BY-SA license grant? Would the Contributor Terms deny them any of their > joint ownership rights?
OSM, Wikipedia and other projects having joint ownership by its contributors could have quite important consequences, personally I think it's very unlikely that this is right. The cost to acquire joint authorship would be low and the rights acquired very broad. In my view it would effectively be a loophole in copyright which would allow any other compatibly (e.g. share-alike) licensed work to be imported into the database and then relicensed under any other terms. Anyone could become a joint copyright owner in any (freely licensed) work they wish. I remember Anthony on the osm-fork list has previously explained why OSM is not a joint copyright work and what would be required for it to be one, have the lawyers considered that reasoning? Cheers _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list legal-t...@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
