[OSM-legal-talk] 'Fair Use'
As you may know a number of us are focusing on mapping the Gaza Strip at present. We have now collected a good body of information on Gaza that is copyright to someone or other. We have identified further sources that don't make any copyright statement. Details here: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Palestine_Gaza#Data_sources What information can we use from these sources under 'fair use' rules? Wikipedia has a good article on 'fair use' here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use I have already annotated the map of Rafah with some additional Suburb names taken from an OCHA map citing 'UN OCHA - fair use' as the source. To what extent can we add additional content from these sources without getting approval from the copyright holder? The wikipedia article gives general guidance on this. Do people have an opinion what level of use would be acceptable? Personally I suggest that we now have a sufficiently mature map based on CCbySA data that we could add suburb names for Gaza and also major facilities on the strip from some of these other map sources without problem - especially as the source for much of this data is UN OCHA. There is a discussion about this on the Gaza talk page, however do feel free to respond here and I will summarise our conclusions on the talk page http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:WikiProject_Palestine_Gaza Should we create a 'fair use' page on the wiki and spell out our conclusions? Regards, Peter ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] 'Fair Use'
On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 1:37 PM, Peter Miller peter.mil...@itoworld.com wrote: What information can we use from these sources under 'fair use' rules? Under English Welsh or European law, none. There's no Fair Use exception here. Under American law, whatever you can get away with in court. I have already annotated the map of Rafah with some additional Suburb names taken from an OCHA map citing 'UN OCHA - fair use' as the source. To what extent can we add additional content from these sources without getting approval from the copyright holder? There can be no certainty unfortunately. The wikipedia article gives general guidance on this. Yes following the Wikipedia guidelines is probably the best way of handling this. It might also be worthwhile contacting the UN (for example) and getting agreement that copying the names doesn't break their copyright. Do people have an opinion what level of use would be acceptable? s/use/risk/ . ;-) Should we create a 'fair use' page on the wiki and spell out our conclusions? Yes. I personally would advise against using Fair Use as a justification for anything going into OSM though. Try asserting that the facts aren't copyrightable instead (I know that's it's own can of worms, and IANAL, TINLA). I am a proponent of Fair Use, I just don't think it's a good match for community projects with lots of downstream users. - Rob. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
