Just an observation :
These maps look just like if not identical to the russian topographical maps.
mike
On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 12:26 AM, Matija Nalis <mnalis-n...@voyager.hr> wrote:
> On Sun, 3 Oct 2010 09:41:00 +0100, Francis Davey <fjm...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 2 October 2010 23:29, <ed...@billiau.net> wrote:
>>> The argument is really
>>> 'Is the Serbian government the legal successor of the Yugoslav government
>>> in Serbian territories?'
>>
>> If (say) Serbia were to use OSMF or an OSM user in London, the local
>> court would have to decide whether - as a matter of UK copyright law -
>> Serbia were entitled to a copyright in the maps/data/whatever and if
>> so whether it could be enforced. The Berne Convention requires that we
>> afford the same protection to foreign copyrights as we do our own, so
>> a court in England might well decide that Serbia could enforce these
>> copyrights. Ditto pretty much any court in any country that was a
>> signatory to the Convention.
>>
>> Of course there are massive caveats here: there might be no copyright
>> in the data;
>
> Well, ex-Yugoslavia (as well as todays Serbia) were/are both Berne
> convention signatories. The maps in question are from 1970s it seems,
> and copyright in YU was 70 years AFAIR at the time the YU falled.
>
> So all singnatories to Berne convention should be still protecting that
> works. Now, if I understand you correctly, you propose 2 scenarions:
>
> a) if it is likely that Serbia is successor to Yugoslavia, that the
> maps in question are still protected (unless Serbia relinquieshed
> copyright on them, which AFAIK it didn't), or
>
> b) if the Serbia is not successor to Yugoslavia (at least in the matter of
> aforementioned copyright on maps), than that maps may be out of
> copyright.
>
> While I agree with (a), the (b) does not seem right to me. IMHO, if Serbia
> is not accepted as successor to Yugoslavia (and the matter was not resolved
> by succession), then the copyright owner is "missing" - and should behave
> like any other case of missing or unknown copyright owner (for example, if
> author without successors died; or if the work was under pseudonym and never
> reveled).
>
> And that behaviour is, to the best of my knowledge, that the copyright work
> remains protected with "all rights reserved" (only practical difference
> being that potential users now have 0% chance of buying rights from owner
> anymore, as she's gone). (At least it looks so in Croatian copyright law
> which is mostly the same as the ex-Yugoslav/Serbian one. Are you perhaps
> arguing that under UK law if the copyright owner is not known or is not
> proactively suing copyright breakers, one can legaly copy copyrighted works,
> and is not in vioalation until he receives and ignores "cease and desist"
> letter ?)
>
>> no-one might bother to sue anyway (I've no idea how
>> aggressively Serbia would try to enforce rights it believed it had).
>
> Uh, that one ("are the chances we won't be caught breaking law low enough
> today?") should not be the way to handle this (or similar) issues, IMHO.
>
> Unauthorized copying of copyrighted works is illegal. The possibly high
> chances that copyright owners might not notice or might not be bothered
> to sue ATM does not make it legal.
>
>
> --
> Opinions above are GNU-copylefted.
>
>
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--
James Michael DuPont
Member of Free Libre Open Source Software Kosova and Albania
flossk.org flossal.org
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