At 06:06 PM 6/10/2008, Gervase Markham wrote: >Mike Collinson wrote: >> A good general method is to flip things around, explain what you are >> going to do with the data and ask them to contact you by, say, the >> end of the month if the use does NOT meet their terms of use. > >I think that is both politically and legally extremely unwise. You can't >write to Sony and say "unless you contact me in the next month, I'm >going to make your entire back catalogue available via BitTorrent". >While a more extreme example, the same principle applies. Their lack of >refusal cannot be taken as consent.
To compare, there would have had to be a meeting where Sony appeared to be offering there their entire back catalogue, that there is a reasonable assumption that they would ordinarily allow it to be made available via BitTorrent (!) and that there your planned action is not likely to be particularly significant. US government data on the other hand is paid for by the people and generally available to the people for any purpose unless a third-party's IP rights are involved. I think the key questions would be a) does that also generally apply to US local government (I don't know) and b) that there has in fact been a conversation where the provider was verbally briefed on what OpenStreetMap does and did not object, so that letter is giving summary *as reasonably understood* - maybe one more telephone conversation might be in order. This is a very commonly used procedure to get things moving where the other party has no stake in expediting things - that being said, I certainly acknowledge that it is a little aggressive and may not be to the OSM community consensus taste but suggest it should be considered if we are to effectively mine existing resources. >> After xxxx, the trail data will be merged into a global public >> database called OpenStreetMap. OpenStreetMap is a non-commercial >> project > >No, it's not - or, at least, to claim this is to suggest that the data >is only used non-commercially, which is definitely wrong. Well, it does not say that, it says that OpenStreetMap is a non-commercial project - it does not have commercial investors, motive and does not seek to make a profit from what is being offered - and the next line says that anyone can use the data for any purpose. To me, "anyone", "any purpose" clearly implies commercial as well as non-commercial and does not need to be spelt out - but, as I said, I think being a little aggressive is good, so I guess there is no harm done in so doing. Mike _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
