John If we're being frank, it appears CC have been bullying everyone with this PD stuff.
I'll let Jordan respond to your points (and I hope he has time), but it's clear that you fundamentally disagree on whether the ODL actually works or not, and you do it in a rather strange and emotional way given that your bio[1] seems to show no legal qualifications (please forgive me if I've misread something). You guys have more money than God, and I think you want to own this space, and I think you're trying to stop dissent from your Vision. For now, as Jordan is an actual lawyer, I'm going to continue voting ODL. Best Steve [1] - http://creativecommons.org/about/people#34 On 19 Feb 2008, at 23:54, John Wilbanks wrote: > Hi everyone. My name is John Wilbanks. I am the VP for Science Commons > at Creative Commons, and I'm the one who wrote the Protocol for > Implementing Open Access to Data. > > I've been lurking here for a couple of weeks. I don't like showing up > and posting without getting a sense of the community. But I think it's > important to join this debate and get your responses...I'll stay > here on > this list, I'll take questions, and I'll take flames. I'm glad you're > having this debate. It's a good debate. And I'm stoking the fires of > it > with this post - but I think you deserve my honest sense on this, and > not a mumbling political post. > > I am speaking here as an individual who endured 18 months of research > into open data as part of CC, but not on behalf of CC the > organization. > >>> The issue was quite simple. We need to have a license that better >>> protects the OSM data > > I'm going to be a little provocative here and say that your data is > already unprotected, and you cannot slap a license on it and protect > it. > This sounds to me like someone deciding to put a license on the United > States Constitution. You're welcome to try that - but that license > will > not change the underlying legal status of the Constitution, which is > the > public domain. > > That means I'm free to ignore any kind of share-alike you apply to > your > data. I've got a download of the OSM data dump. I can repost it, right > now, as public domain. You can perhaps try to sue me - though I'm > pretty > sure I would win. But you absolutely couldn't sue anyone who came > along > and downloaded my copy and then reposted that same data as public > domain. There's no copyright on your data, and that means that only > the > people who sign your deal are bound to it, not anyone who gets it from > the people who sign your deal. Unlike the copyright on a song, which > travels along with the song no matter what, the share-alike is > restricted to the parties of the contract. It's called privity - see > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privity_of_contract > > That's why the ODC was something that CC didn't support. It holds > out a > promise of power that is illusory. Privity + no IPRs = easy to > repost as > public domain. > >> Do we? What's the threat? How has it been assessed? > > The threat comes from people who are worried about data "Capture" - > but > it is wrong to think that the law is a magic wand here. GPL style > approaches only work in the presence of copyrights. They simply don't > have the power in data. The real answer is: if you put your data > online, > it's essentially in the public domain. > > Bad people know this and will exploit it. That's what you don't want > to > allow. But simply posting the data gives the bad people a lot of > power. > The nice people are going to obey your rules and be constricted by > them, > but not the bad people. > > I would encourage you to think not about the threat, about those who > will take the data and not recontribute, or who will sell the data, > than > about the good people. Given that the data is already in the public > domain, whatever license you choose, how will you instead *reward* > those > who think it's worth being a good citizen? That can be done with moral > statements of normative behaviors and a trademark for OSM - only those > who behave get to use it and advertise themselves as OSM compliant. > > It's a far healthier strategy in many ways than relentlessly trying to > stamp out perceived violators. One can imagine a data owner > beginning to > empathize with the RIAA, who see violations everywhere and in so > doing, > loses focus of the opportunities for good outcomes. > >>> OSM never started out as a PD project so why would we think that it >>> would be better to recommend it go PD now? > > Because that's the legal status of the project. My copy of your data > is > in the public domain. It doesn't matter what the wiki license says - > that license only protects copyrighted things. You can choose to use > contracts to entangle users, like the ODC does, but it will only block > the good guys. The bad guys can work around that in less time than it > takes to download your data. > > jtw > ps - Jordan Hatcher, who drafted both the ODC and the PDDL, is a > remarkable attorney and far more knowledgeable on the details of the > contracts than I am. I'm proud to call him a colleague. > > _______________________________________________ > legal-talk mailing list > legal-talk@openstreetmap.org > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-talk > _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-talk
