On Sat, Dec 4, 2010 at 3:23 AM, Eugene Alvin Villar <sea...@gmail.com> wrote: > Then you must have the same objection to tracing from Yahoo's imagery. > Unlike Bing, there is no specific agreement between Yahoo and OSM. > Yahoo only agreed that the act of tracing from the satellite imagery > that they host and putting the traced data under any license (and not > specifically CC-BY-SA 2.0) does not violate Yahoo Maps' terms of > service, which contains similar language to Bing's terms of use. Yet > here we are tracing from Yahoo for years already.
Yes, reading http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Yahoo#Legalities it sounds very shaky. If "Yahoo takes the position that if we derive vector-based map data from the aerial photos owned by Yahoo! they are no longer copyright Yahoo!, so we can release them under any license we want." is true, then I don't see any problems, I would however think that as a community we should have some way of verifying that this really is Yahoo's view. The statement, "Yahoo takes the position that if we derive vector-based map data from the aerial photos owned by Yahoo! they are no longer copyright Yahoo!, so we can release them under any license we want." is different to, "Yahoo only agreed that the act of tracing from the satellite imagery that they host and putting the traced data under any license (and not specifically CC-BY-SA 2.0) does not violate Yahoo Maps' terms of service" The former in my view says that they grant permission for tracing and subsequent data to be licensed at the discretion of the tracer. The latter just says that its not against their terms of service, but doesn't say "if the copyright of the imagery subsists in derived information like tracing, we release that copyright". In my point of view, we should require both issues (terms of service, and copyright of derived works) to be clarified by Yahoo before we do any tracing from Yahoo. This is just my opinion though. Either way, from an outsider just coming into this area, I find the lack of verifiable evidence from Yahoo potentially problematic. Anyway, back to Bing, even if you believe that the following statement is legally solid enough to be interpreted as a license or grant by a court (I do not), it doesn't say anything about derived works, deriving information from the imagery or tracing. All it says is they allow the imagery to be used as a backdrop in editors. Nothing about deriving information.... Sure in that latest PDF they say " Any updates you make to the OpenStreetMap map via the Application (even if not published to third parties) must be contributed back to openstreetmaps.org." But they never actually say what is allowed. “Microsoft is pleased to announce the royalty-free use of the Bing Maps Imagery Editor API, allowing the Open Street Map community to use Bing Maps imagery via the API as a backdrop to your OSM map editors. Bing Maps imagery must be used in accordance with the API Terms and Conditions [see PDF below] – although this is not legal binding advice, and you are encouraged to read the TOU itself, in sum the TOU says: you are only granted rights to use the aerial imagery, you must use the imagery as presented in the API, you cannot modify or edit the imagery, including the copyright and credit notices; you cannot create permanent, offline copies of the imagery, all of your updates to OSM arising out of the application must be shared with OSM, and the OSM map editor must be free to end users.” _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
