[OSM-legal-talk] Legal or not? user srpskicrv and source = TOPO 25 VGI BEOGRAD
We Croatian OSM contributers noticed that user srpskicrv started mapping in Croatia somethings that we had no GPS traces, and also in Bosnia and Serbia. Guys asked srpskicrv what are his sources and he gave us this link: http://www.vgi.mod.gov.rs/proizvodi/analogni/tk25exyu/tk25a_exyu.html We don't see these maps listed on: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Out-of-copyright_maps His explanation is that Serbia is only country that has kept copyright on these maps after the breakage of Yugoslavia. We know that Croatian Geodetic Administration Surveyor Office also claims copyright on those maps, and we expect that Bosnian does also. I know that srpskicrv was doing what he thought was right but what to do until this matter is cleared up? I asked him to join this conversation so he can say who gave him permission to use those maps. Cheers, Valent. -- pratite me na twitteru - www.twitter.com/valentt blog: http://kernelreloaded.blog385.com linux, anime, spirituality, windsurf, wireless, ronjenje, pametne kuće registered as user #367004 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org. ICQ: 2125241, Skype: valent.turkovic, MSN: valent.turko...@hotmail.com ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Legal or not? user srpskicrv and source = TOPO 25 VGI BEOGRAD
On Fri, 01 Oct 2010 08:02:16 +, Ed Avis wrote: > Or does srpskicrv mean that the mapping agency of Serbia is the only > entity that claims copyright, and further that it has released the maps > to the public domain? Here is his answer: Okay, even if I dont have time (this is the reason for not going on the mailing list, but you could give me the adress to subscribe to them), I am going to explain it to you: The maps were made in the 1974-1980 years by the "MILITARY GEOGRAPHICAL INSTITUTE" of Belgrade in "SOCIALISTIC FEDERATIVE REPUBLIC OF YUGOSLAVIA" 1992, Yugoslavia crashed. New countries were born: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Montenegro, Makedonia (F.Y.R.O.M.) and Serbia (and others say also Kosovo). Those maps were made by the military by them own, so something governmental. The inhabitants were buying that and its opend source as long the governement or the military says NO (and they said NO) Since the new countries exist, the VGI has NO responsibility or right to create maps of those countries, as long as they dont give an order to do so (but the didn't!) Those countries have their own geogrphical or geodesist institutes. So: the VGI is selling those OLD prints and they have still an copyright on reproduction of those papers, BUT NOT THE CONTAINED DATA !!! The VGI has only responsibility on the land of Serbia (nowadays) and there, of course I am NOT ALLOWED to use the datas! I agree that it is a grey zone, but who will say that its illegal? In my case, I am working on Bosnia (and not Croatia anymore): The VGI cannot accuse, cause they have not the right on the datas, its an own country! Bosnia has no right on the datas, cause they gave no order to be made. those maps (the datas on them) are FREE (as long as you dont use it on Serbian terretory). It is difficult to explain it for me in this language, but you can trust me, that I am right, and as normal, there are a lot of people, who think in an other way. Thinking is not enough. Knowing its better. I am working in a govermental company in germany, which is dealing with licenses and I have the knowledge. I was reading constitutions and I got in contact with the Bosnian governement and the serbian VGI. I bought those maps by my own from the VGI (yes, as a foreighner you can buy those maps, but not those which have datas of serbia on them). Everything what I am making should be confirmed ot the place, I wil go there in next spring 2011. And I will look up with my GPS if the work, I did is correct. You cannot do everything by using gps, e.g. Rivers, streams, power lines, forests, basins etc. I hope you understand me and you agree with me or better you trust me, that I am not doing anything wrong. Yours, Leo" -- pratite me na twitteru - www.twitter.com/valentt blog: http://kernelreloaded.blog385.com linux, anime, spirituality, windsurf, wireless, ronjenje, pametne kuće registered as user #367004 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org. ICQ: 2125241, Skype: valent.turkovic, MSN: valent.turko...@hotmail.com ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Legal or not? user srpskicrv and source = TOPO 25 VGI BEOGRAD
Hi, On 10/02/2010 03:43 PM, Ed Avis wrote: This is pretty clear, then: OSM also needs to be usable on Serbian territory, so it can't use the maps. Right... and OSM needs to be usable in India too, so it must show Kashmir as belonging to India as it would otherwise be illegal. And of course OSM must be usable in Pakistan so it must show Kashmir as disputed territory otherwise it would be illegal. And in China of course, we must only include mapping that as been supervised by local goverments and done by mappers who are approved by central government. And as for N Korea, we should probably delete that altogether. I'm not taking sides in the issue at hand; I just want to point out that "strict adherence to every national law in every country" is not out no. #1 priority, or even achievable at all. In all likelihood, OSM does and always will violate laws in some countries; we have to make a sensible choice about which laws we want to violate and where. Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Legal or not? user srpskicrv and source = TOPO 25 VGI BEOGRAD
>>those maps (the datas on them) are FREE (as long as you dont use it on >>Serbian terretory). > > This is pretty clear, then: OSM also needs to be usable on Serbian > territory, > so it can't use the maps. > I think that the argument is not that. The argument is really 'Is the Serbian government the legal successor of the Yugoslav government in Serbian territories?' Would an international court give the rights to the Serbian government? I think that there is a possibility either way - that the copyright could have expired with the dissolution of the Yugoslav government - or - that on Serbian territory the rights to Yugoslav government went to Serbia. The Serbian government thinks the second. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Legal or not? user srpskicrv and source = TOPO 25 VGI BEOGRAD
On 3 October 2010 01:48, Frederik Ramm wrote: > Right... and OSM needs to be usable in India too, so it must show Kashmir as > belonging to India as it would otherwise be illegal. And of course OSM must > be usable in Pakistan so it must show Kashmir as disputed territory > otherwise it would be illegal. And in China of course, we must only include > mapping that as been supervised by local goverments and done by mappers who > are approved by central government. And as for N Korea, we should probably > delete that altogether. None of those examples applies since it was a question about copyright ownership. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Legal or not? user srpskicrv and source = TOPO 25 VGI BEOGRAD
Hi, On 10/03/2010 04:31 AM, John Smith wrote: None of those examples applies since it was a question about copyright ownership. I don't see why we should treat a nation state's laws about copyright any different than a nation state's idiosyncratic laws about maps or surveying. If you are in Serbia and violate their copyright you'll end up being questioned by the authorities just as if you caught making a map in China. Of course you're welcome to try out for yourself whether or not these examples "apply". Bye Frederik ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Legal or not? user srpskicrv and source = TOPO 25 VGI BEOGRAD
On 2 October 2010 23:29, wrote: > I think that the argument is not that. > The argument is really > 'Is the Serbian government the legal successor of the Yugoslav government > in Serbian territories?' > Would an international court give the rights to the Serbian government? > I think that there is a possibility either way - that the copyright could > have expired with the dissolution of the Yugoslav government - or - that > on Serbian territory the rights to Yugoslav government went to Serbia. I'm not sure that is the right question and, to that extent, I suspect that much of this conversation is a red herring (although it may be interesting). In particular I doubt there is any truly international court which would have any jurisdiction that was in any useful way binding on national courts. 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; no-one might bother to sue anyway (I've no idea how aggressively Serbia would try to enforce rights it believed it had). I'm just looking at the specific question of Serbia. As far as I know no-one has objected to either the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia's declaration of succession to the Berne Convention in June 2001 or Serbia's declaration of continuation in September 2006, but I rarely have to deal with this kind of cross-border issue in my work, so I haven't looked into the question thoroughly. A final note: the fact that the maps are *of* a country other than Serbia has no relevance whatsoever to the general question of copyright ownership. Countries do not "own" data about their geography under the Berne Convention or any WIPO treaty. It may be that the law of Yugoslavia did contain such a restriction. If that is so, I don't know about it. -- Francis Davey ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Legal or not? user srpskicrv and source = TOPO 25 VGI BEOGRAD
On 3 October 2010 17:49, Frederik Ramm wrote: > I don't see why we should treat a nation state's laws about copyright any > different than a nation state's idiosyncratic laws about maps or surveying. > If you are in Serbia and violate their copyright you'll end up being > questioned by the authorities just as if you caught making a map in China. Regulations about making maps in China again has nothing to do with copyright ownership. As for Serbia, Francis put it much better than I can, copyright is over intellectual property and this is regardless if you are in their territory or not, the only question would be if the Serbian government has copyright and if they would enforce their copyrights. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Legal or not? user srpskicrv and source = TOPO 25 VGI BEOGRAD
On Sat, 02 Oct 2010 17:48:39 +0200, Frederik Ramm wrote: > Hi, > > On 10/02/2010 03:43 PM, Ed Avis wrote: >> This is pretty clear, then: OSM also needs to be usable on Serbian territory, >> so it can't use the maps. > > Right... and OSM needs to be usable in India too, so it must show > Kashmir as belonging to India as it would otherwise be illegal. And of > course OSM must be usable in Pakistan so it must show Kashmir as > disputed territory otherwise it would be illegal. And in China of > course, we must only include mapping that as been supervised by local > goverments and done by mappers who are approved by central government. > And as for N Korea, we should probably delete that altogether. > > I'm not taking sides in the issue at hand; I just want to point out that > "strict adherence to every national law in every country" is not out no. > #1 priority, or even achievable at all. In all likelihood, OSM does and > always will violate laws in some countries; we have to make a sensible > choice about which laws we want to violate and where. That might be (even if the whole ODbL move seems to be speaking otherwise, but let's not try to pull *that* one in the discussion); but even if it is so, going against Berne convention does not seem like the most sensible choice to me (as quite a few countries are signatory to that one). -- Opinions above are GNU-copylefted. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Legal or not? user srpskicrv and source = TOPO 25 VGI BEOGRAD
On Sun, 3 Oct 2010 09:41:00 +0100, Francis Davey wrote:
> On 2 October 2010 23:29, 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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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Legal or not? user srpskicrv and source = TOPO 25 VGI BEOGRAD
On Mon, 04 Oct 2010 08:21:12 +0200, jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com wrote: > Just an observation : > These maps look just like if not identical to the russian topographical > maps. mike Are russian topographical maps free usable with OSM? -- pratite me na twitteru - www.twitter.com/valentt blog: http://kernelreloaded.blog385.com linux, anime, spirituality, windsurf, wireless, ronjenje, pametne kuće registered as user #367004 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org. ICQ: 2125241, Skype: valent.turkovic, MSN: valent.turko...@hotmail.com ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Legal or not? user srpskicrv and source = TOPO 25 VGI BEOGRAD
On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 8:57 AM, Valent Turkovic wrote: > On Mon, 04 Oct 2010 08:21:12 +0200, > jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com wrote: > >> Just an observation : >> These maps look just like if not identical to the russian topographical >> maps. mike > > Are russian topographical maps free usable with OSM? that is another contentious issue, they are defactor public domain IMHO. mike ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Legal or not? user srpskicrv and source = TOPO 25 VGI BEOGRAD
On Thu, Oct 7, 2010 at 12:09 AM, jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com < jamesmikedup...@googlemail.com> wrote: > > that is another contentious issue, they are defactor public domain IMHO. > mike > > AFAIK, not in Russia. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Legal or not? user srpskicrv and source = TOPO 25 VGI BEOGRAD
Am 02.10.2010 14:36, schrieb Valent Turkovic: Here is his answer: Those countries have their own geogrphical or geodesist institutes. So: the VGI is selling those OLD prints and they have still an copyright on reproduction of those papers, BUT NOT THE CONTAINED DATA !!! The fact that the new countries have institutes that create their own maps has nothing to do with the copyright on existing VGI map data. (Map making is not exclusively a government task, as anyone working on OSM should know.) There are only two possibilites: Either VGI still owns the rights to the maps they created, or the rights were transferred to the new countries. In either case, you cannot use the data without permission. I agree that it is a grey zone, but who will say that its illegal? OSM doesn't accept data from grey zones ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Legal or not? user srpskicrv and source = TOPO 25 VGI BEOGRAD
On Sun, Oct 10, 2010 at 4:51 AM, Ulf Möller wrote: > Am 02.10.2010 14:36, schrieb Valent Turkovic: >> I agree that it is a grey zone, but who will say that its illegal? > > OSM doesn't accept data from grey zones It'll be interesting to see how the ODbL switchover takes place, then. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
