Hi,
Richard Fairhurst wrote:
The Directive says a database
[snip Richard's quote and replace mine from
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31996L0009:EN:HTML]
"Article 1
Scope
1. This Directive concerns the legal protection of databases in any form.
2. For the purposes of this Directive, 'database` shall mean a
collection of independent works, data or other materials arranged in a
systematic or methodical way and individually accessible by electronic
or other means."
I would say that a list of 65536 colour values (the "data"), arranged in
a systematic way in 256 columns and 256 rows, and individually
accessible by a PNG reader, certainly sounds like a database according
to this defintion?
I'm just speculating here but if I had a rendering engine that would
transform the OSM planet file into a giant bitmap (colour values
arranged, etc.), I would not be surprised if I could get away with
sharing this bitmap as a derived database under ODbL. I guess someone
who printed it out would then create a produced work, but me?
Not a lawyer here either, and frankly if we took the position that every
map tile was indeed a database, then a lot of the advantages we see in
ODbL would crumble. But, as Kai suggested, in some situations it may
actually make things easier for you if you could say "this PNG file is a
database"; and the current community norm does seem to allow a lot of
interpretation. Ok, so my PNG file was "intended" to extract the data.
It didn't work out in the end but the intention was there... )
Bye
Frederik
--
Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33"
_______________________________________________
legal-talk mailing list
legal-talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
