[Aust-NZ] OSM Licensing - [was Fwd: RE: Aust-NZ Digest, Vol 36, Issue 8] [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

[John Smith]

On 6 September 2010 11:38, Robert Coup <robert.coup at koordinates.com> wrote:
> Nobody is arguing with that. It's just that CC licenses and particularly
> CC-BY-SA don't mean what's "on the cover" with respect to datasets. Creative
> Commons themselves say they shouldn't be used.

Actually things aren't that simple. Maps were the first things
protected by copyright apparently and according to Francis Davey, who
claims to be a lawyer, copyright law doesn't usually state what form a
map has to be in, to be protected by copyright law.

http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/legal-talk/2010-September/004436.html

> The OSM Foundation is basically saying that "sticking our collective heads
> in the sand and pretending it isn't a problem" is not acceptable going
> forward. Sure, that raises huge barriers - but better to start now than
> trying to do it 3 years further down the track.

It also jumps from copyright only to contract law which may put anyone
distributing data on the end of a lawsuit, just so the new
license/contract can be enforced, even if the person downloading the
data from you directly doesn't breach the license/contract directly.