On 17/07/2010, at 4:12 AM, Simon Ward wrote: > On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 10:01:08PM +1000, James Livingston wrote: >> * It also uses contract law, which makes things a *lot* more complicated > > Despite my strong bias towards copyleft, I thought this was a problem > with the license. Unfortunately people thought that because laws about > rights to data are vastly different that contract law is needed to > balance it out—it’s apparently unfair otherwise. I don’t really believe > that.
It certainly harmonises things a bit more, both removing some of the "loopholes" in various countries copyright law which people can exploit, and removing some of the "fair use" provisions countries have. Of course, a loophole and a fair use provides are basically the same :) I'm still not sure how useful it will be in enforcing the ODbL in the US. Consider if Bob from the US takes the OSMF-provded planet dump, produces a North America extract and makes it available on his FTP site. Jane from the US downloads it, uses it and doesn't release her Derived Database. What can we do about it? We can't use copyright or database rights to enforce it in the US (one of the main reasons for using contract as well). Ignoring any arguments about whether she could agree to a contract by downloading it from a FTP site, the only person she could have a contract with is Bob, not the OSMF. >> Since we're not voting on ODbL, but ODbL + contributor terms, there's also: >> * Changing the licence in future may not require your permission (if you do >> contribute for a while, or are un-contactable for three weeks) > > I didn’t realise it was that short a time period. :/ Three weeks isn't that long, if someone is on holiday. For example I'll be on a longer one later this year, with only intermittent Internet access and only reading my special "email here if you need me while on holiday" account, not my normal one. Not that we'd be re-licensing using the CTs by then, I don't even know if we'll have done the ODbL relicense. Regards, James _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
