Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Matt Amos]

On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 11:34 AM, Frederik Ramm wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Matt Amos wrote:
>> but, to prove that we can copy from other maps with impunity there
>> needs to be a precedent, preferably in several jurisdictions. so could
>> someone please start ripping off OSM so that we can sue them and get
>> some case law, please?
>
> Ours or theirs? ;-)
>
> If we do a test case like that we'll have to finance both sides. Maybe
> we should start ripping off the OS, then we'd only have to pay for our
> own lawyers - bargain! ;-)

and, unlike google, i'm pretty certain they'll sue - their motto is
"be as evil as possible"*.

cheers,

matt

*: used to be "be as evil as humanly possible", but recently
politicians have been involved.

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Matt Amos wrote:
> but, to prove that we can copy from other maps with impunity there
> needs to be a precedent, preferably in several jurisdictions. so could
> someone please start ripping off OSM so that we can sue them and get
> some case law, please?

Ours or theirs? ;-)

If we do a test case like that we'll have to finance both sides. Maybe 
we should start ripping off the OS, then we'd only have to pay for our 
own lawyers - bargain! ;-)

Bye
Frederik

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Matt Amos]

On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 7:43 AM, Frederik Ramm wrote:
> If it can be shown that we can copy from other maps with impunity, then
> we can bin the whole re-licensing effort and go PD right away.

i dunno about that. from richardf's research it seems that tracing
over aerial imagery is hard/skilled/creative enough to qualify for
copyright (at least, in Canada), so maybe *some* of the data would
need re-licensing to become PD.

but, to prove that we can copy from other maps with impunity there
needs to be a precedent, preferably in several jurisdictions. so could
someone please start ripping off OSM so that we can sue them and get
some case law, please? donations for the lawyer(s) welcome at the
usual place. ;-)

cheers,

matt

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Frederik Ramm]

Matt,

Matt Amos wrote:
> it's been said before, but it bears repeating: why bother? all the
> time wasted arguing about whether copying information from copyrighted
> maps is OK would be better used mapping, writing code or one of the
> other thousands of productive tasks out there in the OSM community.

Well, a good deal of those people who argue *against* copying from 
existing maps do so partly because they believe (hope, want, pray) that 
it is forbidden to copy from *our* maps without adhering to *our* 
license, not because they really want to copy from someone else.

If it can be shown that we can copy from other maps with impunity, then 
we can bin the whole re-licensing effort and go PD right away.

Bye
Frederik

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Matt Amos]

On Mon, Jul 6, 2009 at 1:09 PM, Ed Avis wrote:
> Richard Fairhurst  writes:
>>It is worth noting, of course, that the Ordnance Survey believes fervently
>>that every single right possible subsists in their data:
>
> Yes it's fun isn't it?  I think it is a bit dishonest to claim all sorts of
> rights which don't really exist.  But still, that is the lawyer's job: claim
> everything you can, the other side claims the opposite, and the courts will
> reach some sensible position in the middle.

so, by that logic, if you claim none then the courts will reach a
non-sensible position.

>>>It's a simple collection of facts - street names and geometries - arranged in
>>>an uncreative fashion, and Rural vs Feist tells us that this doesn't merit
copyright. Therefore CC-BY-SA will not protect it.
>>
>>>Interesting.  Do you mean only the map, or the underlying data too?
>>
>>The data.
>
> This sounds like good news.  So street names and other factual information 
> about
> US cities can simply be copied from existing maps, provided they were 
> published
> before Congress introduced the database right in that country?

we already have TIGER and GNIS.

for all the wonderful work that richardf has done on the limits of
copyright, etc... i still think it's preferable to use data sources
which are clearly licensed for derivative work, or that we have
explicit permission to copy or derive from.

it's been said before, but it bears repeating: why bother? all the
time wasted arguing about whether copying information from copyrighted
maps is OK would be better used mapping, writing code or one of the
other thousands of productive tasks out there in the OSM community.

what happens if your printed map copyright holder decides it's not OK?
hopefully they'll contact the data/vandalism working group and only
waste many hours of several people's time. but they might get lawyers
involved, which means OSMF might need to retain lawyers of its own -
wasting even more time and resources. is it worth it?

cheers,

matt

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Ed Avis]

Ulf Möller  writes:

>>The idea of restricting access to age 13+ strikes me as odd in the
>>extreme. When I get some time I'll do some research into what is going
>>on in the US that makes them do this.
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Protection_Act

Is there any indication that putting a paragraph of boilerplate text somewhere
on your website does *anything at all* to comply with this Act?

If, let us suppose, the Act says you may not gather data from under 13s, there
is unlikely to be an exemption that says you may do so as long as you have some
text somewhere saying that you don't.  Or that it somehow becomes not your
responsibility if you have some text somewhere saying that under 13s should not
use the site (which you do nothing to enforce).

There might be some subtle legal reason why adding certain incantations to a
'Terms and conditions' page somewhere will absolve you from blame, but I'm not
seeing it at first glance.

-- 
Ed Avis 


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Ed Avis]

Richard Fairhurst  writes:

>>Is anyone seriously suggesting that because factual information is 
>>not covered by copyright, then in countries where no database right 
>>is recognized, map data can be copied with impunity?
>>
>>If so, then it will be okay to start copying data from pre-1990s
>>Ordnance Survey maps?
> 
>No, because UK copyright legislation was amended as of the introduction of
>the EU Database Directive. The contention (and all of this can only ever be
>contention until there's sufficient case law) is that Ordnance Survey data
>was protected by copyright pre-DbD.
> 
>"Prior to the implementation of the Database Directive it might have been
>argued that copyright subsisted in the geospatial data as a table or
>compilation within the meaning of the CDPA.  However, in implementing the
>Directive changes were made to the CDPA which now provides that a literary
>work includes 'a table or compilation other than a database'."

Could you clarify whether this change to the CDPA effectively narrows or
widens the definition of a literary work?  It's not clear which way you mean.

Does this apply retrospectively?  I was referring to OS maps published before
the database directive was introduced, and thus also before this amendment to
copyright law.  (and to printed maps, not the Ordnance Survey database, which
is rather harder to find at car boot sales)

>It is worth noting, of course, that the Ordnance Survey believes fervently
>that every single right possible subsists in their data:

Yes it's fun isn't it?  I think it is a bit dishonest to claim all sorts of
rights which don't really exist.  But still, that is the lawyer's job: claim
everything you can, the other side claims the opposite, and the courts will
reach some sensible position in the middle.

>If you're expressly talking about pre-1990s OS _maps_ there is also the
>question of whether tracing is copying (see my most recent blog post).

This one: 

You make a good point that the current share-alike conditions may be
discouraging commercial maps using OSM data, because the final map would have
to be distributed under CC-BY-SA too.  Then again, I thought this was a
deliberate feature (the 'settled will of the OSM community' as somebody wrote)
to make sure that if a printed atlas were produced from OSM data it would have
to be freely copyable.  I wonder what the contributors really want?

>>If it is the settled view of the OSM project, based on legal 
>>advice, that copyright plus CC-BY-SA does not protect the 
>>Openstreetmap geodata from being copied and incorporated 
>>into other works, can an official statement be made to this 
>>effect?

>OSM appears to want sharealike, so why would it benefit OSM to issue such a
>statement?

I think it's only honest to be clear where you stand.  I don't think the project
should claim legal rights that don't really exist, even if the Ordnance Survey
do that.

It's not very consistent to on the one hand say that the data is CC-BY-SA
licensed and tell people they must follow the terms, while on the other hand
saying on the mailing lists that the data is 'basically unlicensed right now'
and that CC-BY-SA must be replaced because it's not enforceable.
 
>http://edina.ac.uk/projects/grade/gradeDigitalRightsIssues.pdf

Thanks, reading this.

>>It's a simple collection of facts - street names and geometries - arranged in
>>an uncreative fashion, and Rural vs Feist tells us that this doesn't merit
>>>copyright. Therefore CC-BY-SA will not protect it.
>
>>Interesting.  Do you mean only the map, or the underlying data too?
>
>The data.

This sounds like good news.  So street names and other factual information about
US cities can simply be copied from existing maps, provided they were published
before Congress introduced the database right in that country?

>>But you might be right, perhaps in the USA map data
>>can be freely copied.  In which case the OSM project has already
>>achieved its aim (of free map data) kind of by default, and all that
>>remains is to view some areas in Google Maps and start copying in the
>>streets and other features.
> 
>No, Google Maps Ts & Cs contractually forbid you from doing that.

Hmm, whether these terms and conditions really exist is another topic and there
is too much amateur lawyering already... so I'll just say copy from printed
atlases instead.

-- 
Ed Avis 


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Richard Fairhurst]

Ed Avis wrote:
> Is anyone seriously suggesting that because factual information is 
> not covered by copyright, then in countries where no database right 
> is recognized, map data can be copied with impunity?
>
> If so, then it will be okay to start copying data from pre-1990s
> Ordnance Survey maps?

No, because UK copyright legislation was amended as of the introduction of
the EU Database Directive. The contention (and all of this can only ever be
contention until there's sufficient case law) is that Ordnance Survey data
was protected by copyright pre-DbD.

"Prior to the implementation of the Database Directive it might have been
argued that copyright subsisted in the geospatial data as a table or
compilation within the meaning of the CDPA.  However, in implementing the
Directive changes were made to the CDPA which now provides that a literary
work includes 'a table or compilation other than a database'."

http://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/1842/2304/1/databasesandlawfulusers.pdf

The DbD does allow for "insubstantial" parts of the data to be taken without
infringing. However, spread over a collaborative project such as OSM, a few
people taking insubstantial parts could easily add up to a collective
infringement.

It is worth noting, of course, that the Ordnance Survey believes fervently
that every single right possible subsists in their data: "copyright, patent,
trade mark, design right, database rights, trade secrets, know how, rights
of confidence, broadcast rights and all other similar rights anywhere in the
world whether or not registered and including applications for registration
of any of them" (from the OpenSpace Ts & Cs). I think I've even seen them
claim "topographic right", which is fairly hilarious given that topographic
right means semiconductor designs. But "what can you do" is never solely an
academic question, because no matter how confident you are about your legal
arguments, the OS _will_ try to sue you, and the OS is much richer than we
are.

If you're expressly talking about pre-1990s OS _maps_ there is also the
question of whether tracing is copying (see my most recent blog post).

> If it is the settled view of the OSM project, based on legal 
> advice, that copyright plus CC-BY-SA does not protect the 
> Openstreetmap geodata from being copied and incorporated 
> into other works, can an official statement be made to this 
> effect?  It would save a lot of effort for people like People's
> Map or Google, who would love to start copying the OSM data 
> if it weren't for the pesky share-alike restrictions.

OSM appears to want sharealike, so why would it benefit OSM to issue such a
statement?

> I'm reading the Montgomery one now.  Which do you mean by 
> Waelde's paper?

http://edina.ac.uk/projects/grade/gradeDigitalRightsIssues.pdf

>>For what it's worth, my interpretation at present is that a simple OSM 
>>map of a housing estate, such as http://osm.org/go/euwtbOAo-- , is not 
>>at all copyrightable in the US (the most liberal jurisdiction). It's a
simple
>>collection of facts - street names and geometries - arranged in an
>>uncreative fashion, and Rural vs Feist tells us that this doesn't merit
>>copyright. Therefore CC-BY-SA will not protect it.
> Interesting.  Do you mean only the map, or the underlying data too?

The data. No-one is doubting that cartographic design is an artistic work
(UK term) and therefore receives copyright protection.

> From my experience of doing mapping, it seems there is a lot of
> creativity and freedom, with many distinct ways to express the same
> physical fact.

Yes, this is entirely my point. A simple record of the streets in a housing
estate doesn't involve this creativity or freedom: there is only one way,
given a set database structure, to record it, so Rural vs Feist tells us
that it doesn't attract protection in the US. A more intensively mapped area
may do.

> But you might be right, perhaps in the USA map data
> can be freely copied.  In which case the OSM project has already
> achieved its aim (of free map data) kind of by default, and all that
> remains is to view some areas in Google Maps and start copying in the
> streets and other features.

No, Google Maps Ts & Cs contractually forbid you from doing that.

cheers
Richard
-- 
View this message in context: 
http://www.nabble.com/Privacy-and-Terms-tp24185975p24351975.html
Sent from the OpenStreetMap - Legal Talk mailing list archive at Nabble.com.


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Russ Nelson wrote:
> On Jul 3, 2009, at 7:20 AM, Elizabeth Dodd wrote:
>> It's a public site, no passwords, no sign up required to read it, so  
>> it's for
>> the public to read.
> 
> What if somebody posts hate speech (for the USAmericans)?
> What if somebody adds Nazi party mapping parties to the calendar (for  
> the Germans)?
> What if somebody invites women and men to a mapping party in Saudi  
> Arabia?
> 
> The question isn't "what legal text do we need?" but is instead "What  
> legal risks do we expect the OSMF to have to defend itself against?"  

And what exactly would be the risks of the above? If we are alerted to a 
hate speech etc., we'll remove it (and I believe no matter what our Ts 
and Cs say, we will have to remove it). So what risk would any Ts and Cs 
mitigate and how?

What if, god forbid, someone organises a mapping party in China, we 
would probably have to ban that via our Ts and Cs, wouldn't we? Because 
mapping is illegal there?

> and if we then decide that some risks are too large to accept, "What  
> legal text do we need to ameliorate that risk?"  The OSMF has no a  
> priori control over what gets posted via email to OSM editors

...and that's why no sane court would assume it has responsiblity. At 
least here in Germany if you operate a bulletin board or something, you 
are expected to remove illegal content when you find it or are alerted 
to it, but nobody will be held responsible for stuff their users post 
without their knowledge (unless you are proved to operate a site that 
explicitly invites e.g. Nazi contributions and then play innocent).

Bye
Frederik

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Russ Nelson]

On Jul 4, 2009, at 11:27 PM, Elizabeth Dodd wrote:
>
> so are any T&Cs meaningful?

Yes, because they (would) protect us from complaints of censorship (or  
unfair treatment) when we delete advertisements (and it's not the  
watches, but instead the GPS receiver advertisements that we REALLY  
need to worry about), or complaints of unreliability when people rely  
on the information published on an OSM server.

Yes, one would truly be happier if people used their common sense.   
Unfortunately, the United States Government has outlawed common sense  
with its strict liability laws.  I love my country but fear my  
government's ineffable stupidity and worse our executive team's  
inability to perceive and correct problems with obvious solutions.

--
Russ Nelson - http://community.cloudmade.com/blog - 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:RussNelson
r...@cloudmade.com - Twitter: Russ_OSM - 
http://openstreetmap.org/user/RussNelson


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Elizabeth Dodd]

On Sun, 5 Jul 2009, Russ Nelson wrote:
> > It's a public site, no passwords, no sign up required to read it, so  
> > it's for
> > the public to read.
>
> What if somebody posts hate speech (for the USAmericans)?
> What if somebody adds Nazi party mapping parties to the calendar (for  
> the Germans)?
> What if somebody invites women and men to a mapping party in Saudi  
> Arabia?

that is stuff which you sign up for
when you sign up you expect a series of terms and conditions under which you 
may contribute to the website.
incidentally like all web sites, we get plenty of automated signups to 
advertise drugs and watches 
so are any T&Cs meaningful?


-- 
The last thing one knows in constructing a work is what to put first.
-- Blaise Pascal


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Russ Nelson]

On Jul 3, 2009, at 7:20 AM, Elizabeth Dodd wrote:
>
> It's a public site, no passwords, no sign up required to read it, so  
> it's for
> the public to read.

What if somebody posts hate speech (for the USAmericans)?
What if somebody adds Nazi party mapping parties to the calendar (for  
the Germans)?
What if somebody invites women and men to a mapping party in Saudi  
Arabia?

The question isn't "what legal text do we need?" but is instead "What  
legal risks do we expect the OSMF to have to defend itself against?"  
and if we then decide that some risks are too large to accept, "What  
legal text do we need to ameliorate that risk?"  The OSMF has no a  
priori control over what gets posted via email to OSM editors, nor  
what gets posted to the Wiki.  Should it have responsibility for  
things over which it chooses not to control?

Answering these questions requires help from a lawyer.

--
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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Ed Avis wrote:
> Is anyone seriously suggesting that because factual information is not
> covered by copyright, then in countries where no database right is
> recognized, map data can be copied with impunity?

[...]

> I know this point has been raised many times, and the discussion tends
> to go in circles, but I think it has never been satisfactorily
> answered.  

Yes, unfortunately these things tend to be settled only if/when someone 
is actually sued, and often the result of such court proceedings isn't 
even applicable to other cases.

> Either copyright applies to map data or it doesn't; and if
> it doesn't, then why are we wasting time walking round with GPS
> devices?

It might be that it doesn't but we know that some people will fight to 
their (organisation's) death for it anyway - so do we want to spend the 
rest of our lives fighting legal battles because we know we're right, or 
just use a GPS and move on?

> If it is the settled view of the OSM project, based on legal advice,
> that copyright plus CC-BY-SA does not protect the Openstreetmap
> geodata from being copied and incorporated into other works, can an
> official statement be made to this effect?

No, because we play the same game as everyone else does. We don't know 
if there is copyright but we claim there is, just to be on the "safe" 
side, i.e. at least instil some fear of potential lawsuits in those who 
would use our data without adhering to our license.

Bye
Frederik

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Ed Avis]

Richard Fairhurst  writes:

>http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Case_law
>http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Statute_law

Thanks, I've had a look at that.  It seems to agree with the usual
layman's view of the subject: that facts are not copyrightable, though
the expression of them may be; and that many countries recognize a
database right.

>Bear in mind also that Creative Commons themselves have said several times
>that CC-BY-SA is not suitable for OSM. For example,
>
>"In the United States, data will be protected by copyright only if they
>express creativity. Some databases will satisfy this condition, such as a
>database containing poetry or a wiki containing prose. Many databases,
>however, contain factual information that may have taken a great deal of
>effort to gather, such as the results of a series of complicated and
>creative experiments. Nonetheless, that information is not protected by
>copyright and cannot be licensed under the terms of a Creative Commons
>license."

Is anyone seriously suggesting that because factual information is not
covered by copyright, then in countries where no database right is
recognized, map data can be copied with impunity?

If so, then it will be okay to start copying data from pre-1990s
Ordnance Survey maps?

I know this point has been raised many times, and the discussion tends
to go in circles, but I think it has never been satisfactorily
answered.  Either copyright applies to map data or it doesn't; and if
it doesn't, then why are we wasting time walking round with GPS
devices?

If it is the settled view of the OSM project, based on legal advice,
that copyright plus CC-BY-SA does not protect the Openstreetmap
geodata from being copied and incorporated into other works, can an
official statement be made to this effect?  It would save a lot of
effort for people like People's Map or Google, who would love to start
copying the OSM data if it weren't for the pesky share-alike
restrictions.

>But if you can't
>summon the energy to read all that, and I wouldn't blame you, do at least
>read Charlotte Waelde's paper and the key US cases (Rural vs Feist, Mason vs
>Montgomery).

I'm reading the Montgomery one now.  Which do you mean by Waelde's
paper?

>For what it's worth, my interpretation at present is that a simple OSM map
>of a housing estate, such as http://osm.org/go/euwtbOAo-- , is not at all
>copyrightable in the US (the most liberal jurisdiction). It's a simple
>collection of facts - street names and geometries - arranged in an
>uncreative fashion, and Rural vs Feist tells us that this doesn't merit
>copyright. Therefore CC-BY-SA will not protect it.

Interesting.  Do you mean only the map, or the underlying data too?

>Something more intensively mapped, such as http://osm.org/go/eutDzIjd-- ,
>may perhaps attract copyright protection for the database structure - which,
>in OSM, is principally the tagging system. It could go either way for the
>database contents, which is still pretty uncreative _given_ that structure,
>but could be argued to involve careful assessment of sources and so on
>(Mason vs Montgomery).

>From my experience of doing mapping, it seems there is a lot of
creativity and freedom, with many distinct ways to express the same
physical fact.  But you might be right, perhaps in the USA map data
can be freely copied.  In which case the OSM project has already
achieved its aim (of free map data) kind of by default, and all that
remains is to view some areas in Google Maps and start copying in the
streets and other features.

-- 
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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Francis Davey wrote:
> But - and I boringly restate this point because I'm not sure its been
> necessarily understood - it depends what you are trying to do. There's
> no legal right or wrong it all depends on what you want to do.

Well said. Im am not sure that anyone here is "trying to do" anything.

General rule:

1. identify threats

2. determine workable countermeasures

3. make decision of whether nastiness of #1 outweighs #2, taking into 
consideration that #2 usually affects all people at once while #1 comes 
with a certain likelihood

4. act accordingly

Bye
Frederik

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Francis Davey]

2009/7/4 Matt Amos :
> i'll suggest that to our lawyer, but this might mean having more than
> two sets - apparently Canada and Australia have their own versions of
> COPPA. and i guess the EU has something similar. it may end requiring
> us to to have a different set of Ts&Cs for each jurisdiction.
>

>From having a read through COPPA it seems that it would not apply to
someone merely looking at or using the map - unless personal
information is somehow harvested in the process which seems unlikely -
but it might apply to a situation where children signed up.

This illustrates a wider point: if people are going through a sign-up
process then at that stage its entirely reasonable to ask them to
agree to a set of terms and conditions (which can be as simple as
"don't be an idiot"). Many sites do that and do that in a lightweight
and inoffensive way. After all if you want to join in you should
probably told what the local culture is like.

On the other hand terms and conditions for use of the *site* (as
opposed to signing up for an account) would not (as far as a 1 minute
skim read suggests) require any compliance with COPPA.

For my part I cannot see any obvious need for a
whole-site-applies-to-everyone-even-those-without-accounts terms and
conditions.

But - and I boringly restate this point because I'm not sure its been
necessarily understood - it depends what you are trying to do. There's
no legal right or wrong it all depends on what you want to do. My
guess is that you don't need T&C's of the kind outlined but I could be
wrong.

Though I do draft and litigate contracts for a living I only do so in
England and Wales. I have a nodding acquaintance with some relevant
law in other jurisdictions, but if you are particularly concerned
about getting things right world-wide you might want a team effort
8-).

-- 
Francis Davey

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Matt Amos]

On Sat, Jul 4, 2009 at 2:11 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Ulf Möller wrote:
>>> No (though you will often see small print disclaimers on them). The
>>> idea of restricting access to age 13+ strikes me as odd in the
>>> extreme. When I get some time I'll do some research into what is going
>>> on in the US that makes them do this.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Protection_Act
>
> Should we perhaps have two sets of Terms and Condition - one that
> applies if the user is in the USA, and the other if he isn't? One with
> 200 lines of text, the other with 10?

i'll suggest that to our lawyer, but this might mean having more than
two sets - apparently Canada and Australia have their own versions of
COPPA. and i guess the EU has something similar. it may end requiring
us to to have a different set of Ts&Cs for each jurisdiction.

cheers,

matt

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Ulf Möller wrote:
>> No (though you will often see small print disclaimers on them). The
>> idea of restricting access to age 13+ strikes me as odd in the
>> extreme. When I get some time I'll do some research into what is going
>> on in the US that makes them do this.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Protection_Act

Should we perhaps have two sets of Terms and Condition - one that 
applies if the user is in the USA, and the other if he isn't? One with 
200 lines of text, the other with 10?

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frede...@remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Ulf Möller]

Francis Davey schrieb:

> No (though you will often see small print disclaimers on them). The
> idea of restricting access to age 13+ strikes me as odd in the
> extreme. When I get some time I'll do some research into what is going
> on in the US that makes them do this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Protection_Act

Though apparently there is some sort of exception for non-profits.


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Matt Amos]

On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 4:42 PM, Ed Avis wrote:
> Francis Davey  writes:
>>>Therefore, granting permission on the data can only be a real consideration
>>>when there is some pre-existing law which means the other party needs such
>>>permission.  That can be copyright law, database right or whatever.
>>
>>Sure. That's exactly right. But that assumes that the other
>>contracting party has the data already. Having a contract that only
>>permits you to download it from my site (or whatever) will have
>>consideration because I don't  have to let you do that
>
> Good point.  So if there is a contract you must agree to before downloading 
> the
> data, the consideration can be that you received a copy of the data.

not really. the ODbL is enforceable through IPR alone. there is no
need to have people agree to *view* the data. the license (or more
probably a link to it) will be present in all downloaded data, similar
to the LICENSE file in GPL software.

> Much better IMHO to rely on copyright law and other laws such as database 
> right,
> which apply whether you have signed a contract or not.  If these laws do not
> exist in a particular country, well, that's a choice for the citizens of that
> country.

the ODbL does. perhaps you should read it?

>>The idea behind the ODbL is, as I understand it, precisely to try to
>>impose wider controls than would be possible by merely using
>>intellectual property law.
>
> Yes, that's exactly why I for one dislike it.  And the side-effects, such as
> banning anonymous downloads of the data set (or indeed downloads by minors, 
> who
> might not be bound by any purported contract) are unpleasant too.

it doesn't ban anonymouse downloads.

>>But you are mixing up more than one issue. The lack of negotiation and
>>standard form is a wholly different question. Such a contract (a
>>contract of adhesion as my US colleagues would call it) may well bring
>>in other legal considerations.
>
> Yes... I think the proposed ODbL has all three question marks over its 
> validity
> as a contract.  You have dealt with one of them, consideration, by pointing 
> out
> that merely getting a copy of the data can be consideration - which is fine,
> as long as nobody somehow gets a copy other than from the OSM website...

all forms of license suffer from this, including common opensource
licenses like GPL, etc... even CC-BY-SA.

and, as we all know, GPL and CC-BY-SA are ineffectual for databases.

cheers,

matt

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Richard Fairhurst]

Ed Avis wrote:
> Richard Fairhurst  writes:
> > I kind of think it should be compulsory for anyone posting to legal-talk
> to
> > demonstrate that they have read, and understood, Rural vs Feist and
> Mason vs
> > Montgomery.
> I will read those (anyone got a link?).

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Case_law
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Statute_law

Bear in mind also that Creative Commons themselves have said several times
that CC-BY-SA is not suitable for OSM. For example,

"In the United States, data will be protected by copyright only if they
express creativity. Some databases will satisfy this condition, such as a
database containing poetry or a wiki containing prose. Many databases,
however, contain factual information that may have taken a great deal of
effort to gather, such as the results of a series of complicated and
creative experiments. Nonetheless, that information is not protected by
copyright and cannot be licensed under the terms of a Creative Commons
license."

And so on and so forth. That's from
http://sciencecommons.org/resources/faq/databases . That page is actually
deprecated because CC now recommend, effectively, that data should be public
domain. Given that CC, to me, has always appeared to have an unspoken policy
of favouring share-alike as the default recommendation, that's pretty
telling.

It's a huge subject, one with lots of shades of grey and very little
black-and-white, and one that has been discussed very, very extensively
here, on various blogs and elsewhere in the last few years. But if you can't
summon the energy to read all that, and I wouldn't blame you, do at least
read Charlotte Waelde's paper and the key US cases (Rural vs Feist, Mason vs
Montgomery).

For what it's worth, my interpretation at present is that a simple OSM map
of a housing estate, such as http://osm.org/go/euwtbOAo-- , is not at all
copyrightable in the US (the most liberal jurisdiction). It's a simple
collection of facts - street names and geometries - arranged in an
uncreative fashion, and Rural vs Feist tells us that this doesn't merit
copyright. Therefore CC-BY-SA will not protect it. (And given that this
level of detail is on a par with the major commercial mapping sites, it's
definitely something of value.)

Something more intensively mapped, such as http://osm.org/go/eutDzIjd-- ,
may perhaps attract copyright protection for the database structure - which,
in OSM, is principally the tagging system. It could go either way for the
database contents, which is still pretty uncreative _given_ that structure,
but could be argued to involve careful assessment of sources and so on
(Mason vs Montgomery).

But as is traditional at this point, I should point out that I am not a...
you know the rest. :)

cheers
Richard
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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Francis Davey]

2009/7/3 Richard Fairhurst :
>
> Francis Davey wrote:
>> OK. As I said, google maps don't have a T&C imposed before use -
>> what would be useful is to identify what exactly are the problems
>> that one is seeking to deal with before going straight to code.
>
> Google Maps (read-only, equivalent to browsing OSM) have Terms of Service:
>   http://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/help/terms_maps.html

Ah, sorry, I missed that. Its very hard to see on the map I get by
default (since its text on graphics)..

-- 
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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Richard Fairhurst]

Francis Davey wrote:
> OK. As I said, google maps don't have a T&C imposed before use - 
> what would be useful is to identify what exactly are the problems 
> that one is seeking to deal with before going straight to code.

Google Maps (read-only, equivalent to browsing OSM) have Terms of Service:
   http://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/help/terms_maps.html

Google MapMaker (user-contributed, equivalent to contributing to OSM) has
its own Terms of Service:
   http://www.google.com/mapmaker/intl/en_ALL/mapfiles/s/terms_mapmaker.html

To contribute to GMM, you need a Google Account. This requires explicit
assent to their terms (by clicking "I accept. Create my account."). These
terms explicitly flag up that you will be agreeing to the terms of
individual Google 'Services' when you use them:
   "Your agreement with Google will also include the terms of any Legal
Notices applicable to the Services, in addition to the Universal Terms. All
of these are referred to below as the “Additional Terms”. Where Additional
Terms apply to a Service, these will be accessible for you to read either
within, or through your use of, that Service."

AIUI, the Foundation's proposal is that a standard ToS will be linked from
the website, and additional contributor terms will require assent when you
create an account. This is exactly equivalent to Google Maps, unless I've
misunderstood.

cheers
RJF1001, oops, Richard
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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Francis Davey]

2009/7/3 Ed Avis :
>
> Hmm, I think I would argue that 'use of the data' is no consideration at all
> since I would have been able to use it anyway even without agreeing to the
> terms.  For example if I publish a copy of the King James Bible with a
> 'contract' at the front, and the consideration for this contract is being
> allowed to copy the text, clearly this isn't a valid contract since the
> supposed consideration is really nothing at all - the text is in the public
> domain anyway.

Actually its Crown Copyright, but its unusual to see people bothering
to obtain licences for it (though years ago we did make the effort to
get a licence for an online version with no difficulty).

So, there's an interesting point here which is that, you could, in
principle, only sell to people who agreed not to copy it. They would
be bound by that agreement, though their successors in title and third
parties would not be. Having such a "contract" in the front of the
book is more difficult because its harder to see how and why a
purchaser of the book would be bound by it, unless they had had its
terms drawn to their attention before purchase.

This is the classic "shrinkwrap" question as someone else remarked.

Legal publishers do this by the way. I have several books which have
more or less ludicrous attempts to prevent my exercising my dominion
over books I have bought. Just because you say it, doesn't make it
binding, not because of want of consideration but because its not
incorporated into the contract.

The worst example I have ever seen was in a youth hostel in
Pembrokeshire. In the kitchen was a notice which said that the YHA and
its employees were not liable for any personal injury or death whether
caused by their negligence or otherwise. There is so much wrong about
such a statement I wouldn't know where to begin. Some website T&C's
try to do the same kind of thing.

>
> Therefore, granting permission on the data can only be a real consideration
> when there is some pre-existing law which means the other party needs such
> permission.  That can be copyright law, database right or whatever.

Sure. That's exactly right. But that assumes that the other
contracting party has the data already. Having a contract that only
permits you to download it from my site (or whatever) will have
consideration because I don't  have to let you do that (although
there's a bunch of unresolved legal issues with the internet there
too).

>
> But in such cases, I would suggest, a contractual agreement is not necessary
> anyway.  The copyright holder can sue me for making copies of a book whether
> or not I agreed to that when I bought it.  If you don't have a licence for the
> necessary copyright or database rights then you are not allowed to distribute
> the data.  There is no need for any contract.

Yes, that's right too. You don't need to obtain a contract to enforce
rights you already have.

>
> That is why I think that imposing an EULA or terms and conditions on people
> is unnecessary and ineffective.  Either the database right exists or it 
> doesn't;
> if it does then no contract is needed to enforce it; and if it doesn't then no
> contract has been agreed to because there is no consideration.

The idea behind the ODbL is, as I understand it, precisely to try to
impose wider controls than would be possible by merely using
intellectual property law.

>
> As a lawyer does that make any sense, or is there some flaw in the above?
>

Apart from the small matter of consideration, no.

>>Contracts very rarely fail for want of consideration.
>
> I wonder how much case law there is for 'contracts' which are some text
> displayed on a website, which has not had any scope for negotiation, and where
> the supposed consideration is granting you 'permission' for something you most
> likely had the right to do anyway... I doubt many such cases get to court.

In respect of text on websites: In the UK I suspect there are more
than you think, but they tend to happen at the rather knock-about
stage in the county court and so they don't get reported and we don't
hear about them. in the US there are *lots* and *lots* of them
reported.

But you are mixing up more than one issue. The lack of negotiation and
standard form is a wholly different question. Such a contract (a
contract of adhesion as my US colleagues would call it) may well bring
in other legal considerations.

>
> Yes, quite... so far 'good practice' has been the reason given, which doesn't
> really satisfy me and others that the benefits outweigh the costs.

OK. As I said, google maps don't have a T&C imposed before use - what
would be useful is to identify what exactly are the problems that one
is seeking to deal with before going straight to code.

>>Anyway, the tone of responses seems to be that lawyers aren't really
>>welcome here, so I'll shut up again.
>
> I am sorry about the tone of my previous message - I would like to hear more
> of your thoughts.

Thanks.

-- 
Francis Davey

Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Ed Avis]

Francis Davey  writes:

>>Yes, which is why a contributor agreement is needed - but that does not mean
>>you need a set of terms and conditions just to *read* the site.
> 
>Yes and as is I hope clear from what I have written (although your use
>of the word "but" suggests possibly not) I do not believe you do.

Cool, so we agree on this point.  Sorry, I don't mean to flame, I misread
the position you were taking.

>There has to be consideration, but if I say to you - if you want to
>use my data you must agree to abide by these contractual terms - then
>there will be consideration: you get the use of the data,

Hmm, I think I would argue that 'use of the data' is no consideration at all
since I would have been able to use it anyway even without agreeing to the
terms.  For example if I publish a copy of the King James Bible with a
'contract' at the front, and the consideration for this contract is being
allowed to copy the text, clearly this isn't a valid contract since the
supposed consideration is really nothing at all - the text is in the public
domain anyway.

Therefore, granting permission on the data can only be a real consideration
when there is some pre-existing law which means the other party needs such
permission.  That can be copyright law, database right or whatever.

But in such cases, I would suggest, a contractual agreement is not necessary
anyway.  The copyright holder can sue me for making copies of a book whether
or not I agreed to that when I bought it.  If you don't have a licence for the
necessary copyright or database rights then you are not allowed to distribute
the data.  There is no need for any contract.

That is why I think that imposing an EULA or terms and conditions on people
is unnecessary and ineffective.  Either the database right exists or it doesn't;
if it does then no contract is needed to enforce it; and if it doesn't then no
contract has been agreed to because there is no consideration.

As a lawyer does that make any sense, or is there some flaw in the above?

>Contracts very rarely fail for want of consideration.

I wonder how much case law there is for 'contracts' which are some text
displayed on a website, which has not had any scope for negotiation, and where
the supposed consideration is granting you 'permission' for something you most
likely had the right to do anyway... I doubt many such cases get to court.

>What I think you mean is that OSM shouldn't use the suggested terms of
>use (I assume that's the "screenful of legal boilerplate"), I probably
>agree (that's why I said "yuk" earlier in the discussion) but the
>starting point is not the terms of use, its what are you trying to do
>with terms of use? What risks are you trying to avoid and/or what
>advantages are you hoping to achieve?

Yes, quite... so far 'good practice' has been the reason given, which doesn't
really satisfy me and others that the benefits outweigh the costs.

>There's a lot more to such things than merely trying to bind visitors
>to a contract. For example if you process personal data then as a
>matter of good practice you should have a clear explanation of what
>you are going to do with it (and as a matter of law in the EU you
>should inform the data subjects you are doing so). I suspect OSM does
>need such a thing.

Agreed.

>Anyway, the tone of responses seems to be that lawyers aren't really
>welcome here, so I'll shut up again.

I am sorry about the tone of my previous message - I would like to hear more
of your thoughts.

-- 
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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Francis Davey]

2009/7/3 Ed Avis :
>
> Yes, which is why a contributor agreement is needed - but that does not mean
> you need a set of terms and conditions just to *read* the site.
>

Yes and as is I hope clear from what I have written (although your use
of the word "but" suggests possibly not) I do not believe you do. I am
trying (though unsuccessfully) to make helpful remarks, but they don't
seem to be being helpful.

>
> I think if it's necessary to undertake a complex contractual obligation just 
> to
> look at some map data, then it is no longer free map data.  But if we assume

That is, as I understand it, what the new data licence does attempt to
achieve - but I could have misunderstood this.

> that the goal of OSM is now 'provide legally encumbered map data under EULA'
> for the sake of this discussion...
>
>>There's a difference between that and a pure copyright
>>licence since you don't have a right to use copyrighted material
>>without a licence (or some exception holding) so "I didn't know the
>>terms of the licence" won't help someone who wants to "steal" the
>>data, whereas if you want someone to be bound by a contract you have
>>to bring its terms to their attention.
>
> Yes, and they have to agree to it (just seeing it on a web page is not 
> enough),

Sure, its a necessary but not sufficient condition.

> and although IANAL, I think there must be some consideration, for example a
> monetary payment.  It's not clear that putting up an intimidating screenful

There has to be consideration, but if I say to you - if you want to
use my data you must agree to abide by these contractual terms - then
there will be consideration: you get the use of the data, and I get
whatever I get out of the terms and conditions (eg you agreement to do
or not to do certain things). Contracts very rarely fail for want of
consideration. NB: this is all in English law terms, other systems of
contract law work differently.

> of legal boilerplate accomplishes anything.
>

Oh yes it does: it can annoy and intimidate people. It is what some
people want to do. Not, I suspect, what OSM wants to do which is why
(amongst other things) you shouldn't use ALL CAPS paragraphs unless
you want people to feel shouted at.

What I think you mean is that OSM shouldn't use the suggested terms of
use (I assume that's the "screenful of legal boilerplate"), I probably
agree (that's why I said "yuk" earlier in the discussion) but the
starting point is not the terms of use, its what are you trying to do
with terms of use? What risks are you trying to avoid and/or what
advantages are you hoping to achieve? Once you have that thought
through, then its pointful to look at whether you need any form of
legal wording on your site and, if so, what it should be.

There's a lot more to such things than merely trying to bind visitors
to a contract. For example if you process personal data then as a
matter of good practice you should have a clear explanation of what
you are going to do with it (and as a matter of law in the EU you
should inform the data subjects you are doing so). I suspect OSM does
need such a thing.

A statement can amount to a warning or disclaimer that does not create
contractual relations but puts the recipient on sufficient notice to
be aware that there are dangers or risks in using a site in a certain
way and so as to limit the site owner's liability - I cannot see any
need for such a thing with OSM.

Anyway, the tone of responses seems to be that lawyers aren't really
welcome here, so I'll shut up again.

-- 
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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Ed Avis]

Francis Davey  writes:

>Many websites have terms and conditions (eg amazon
>and tesco) and they do so because using those sites goes beyond just
>having a browse but involves rather more interaction (including the
>handing over of money).

>In the case of OSM things don't go that far (importantly no money
>changes hands) but users of the site can add content to it.

Yes, which is why a contributor agreement is needed - but that does not mean
you need a set of terms and conditions just to *read* the site.

>That may be true, but if I want to attach a complex contractual
>obligation on anyone who uses the data (which is what the new open
>data licence will do) then I need to make sure that you know you are
>agreeing to it.

I think if it's necessary to undertake a complex contractual obligation just to
look at some map data, then it is no longer free map data.  But if we assume
that the goal of OSM is now 'provide legally encumbered map data under EULA'
for the sake of this discussion...

>There's a difference between that and a pure copyright
>licence since you don't have a right to use copyrighted material
>without a licence (or some exception holding) so "I didn't know the
>terms of the licence" won't help someone who wants to "steal" the
>data, whereas if you want someone to be bound by a contract you have
>to bring its terms to their attention.

Yes, and they have to agree to it (just seeing it on a web page is not enough),
and although IANAL, I think there must be some consideration, for example a
monetary payment.  It's not clear that putting up an intimidating screenful
of legal boilerplate accomplishes anything.

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Frederik Ramm]

Francis,

Francis Davey wrote:
> That may be true, but if I want to attach a complex contractual
> obligation on anyone who uses the data (which is what the new open
> data licence will do) then I need to make sure that you know you are
> agreeing to it.

This is most likely not going to happen with OSM data. We already have a 
well-established scheme where OSM data is downloaded, mirrored, and 
distributed anonymously.

Not only do many computer sites automatically download new OSM data as 
it becomes available on planet.openstreetmap.org; this data is then 
aggregated, converted, and redistributed by many, professionals and 
hobbyists alike.

It is not feasible to release the data only under the condition that the 
person downloading it has clicked some "I agree" button somewhere; 
because this would not only force us to change how osm.org works, but we 
would also have to add some "contractual" obligation to anyone 
downloading our data to only pass it on to people who agree to the 
terms/license etc!

If you want more background, you might want to check the legal-talk 
archives for the words "browse wrap" and "click wrap".

What we will most likely have is some message inside the downloaded data 
that says "by using this you agree to blah blah blah".

> There's a difference between that and a pure copyright
> licence since you don't have a right to use copyrighted material
> without a licence (or some exception holding) so "I didn't know the
> terms of the licence" won't help someone who wants to "steal" the
> data, whereas if you want someone to be bound by a contract you have
> to bring its terms to their attention.

True but it is absolutely not feasible to make data release dependent on 
someone reading and agreeing to some terms. Even if it were, a 
license/contract scheme built on this would only require one rogue 
element violating the contract and passing the data on to others who 
haven't entered into the contract and everything would fall apart.

> That of course is not the same question as the T&C's for use of the
> website (which is a different matter) but I flag this up here as you
> bring it up.

It is a point that has been discussed a lot in the run-up to the new 
license. Any advice you have on all this is surely valued by the license 
working group, but you might want to read their minutes on 
osmfoundation.org and/or peruse the legal-talk archive to get an idea of 
the process.

> No (though you will often see small print disclaimers on them). The
> idea of restricting access to age 13+ strikes me as odd in the
> extreme. When I get some time I'll do some research into what is going
> on in the US that makes them do this.

Please do because I would hate to lose my son's mapping help!

Bye
Frederik

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Elizabeth Dodd]

On Fri, 3 Jul 2009, Francis Davey wrote:
> > Put the lawyer back in the cage.
>
> Be nice 8-). This isn't (as far as I can see) about lawyers being
> unreasonable.

I just get the impression that some people have had so much to do with lawyers 
while trying to get the database licence organised that they have lost sight 
of reality.
Lawyers advise. Philosophers think. Don't mix the roles




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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Elizabeth Dodd wrote:
> I go to a website, i read, i look at pictures. 
> I know quite well that the contents are either copy left or copyright and i 
> should check before i copy anything.

Then again if you're in the US and you see an image that shocks you you 
might sue the website owner for damages to your health, unless that 
owner was so clever to write in his terms and condition that you can't - 
or so it seems.

> Put the lawyer back in the cage.

+1

Frederik

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Francis Davey]

2009/7/3 Elizabeth Dodd :
>
> I can't really comprehend how "terms and conditions for use of a website" mean
> anything in the big real world.
> I'm over 50 years old, have university degrees and post graduate
> qualifications; i teach undergraduates and postgraduates in my field.
> However, I'm not stuck in academic clouds
> and putting terms and conditions on a website is bizarre.

Not at all - it depends on context and what you want those terms and
conditions to do. Many websites have terms and conditions (eg amazon
and tesco) and they do so because using those sites goes beyond just
having a browse but involves rather more interaction (including the
handing over of money). I want to be able to click on a button to buy
a book from amazon, so its useful for me to be able to come to an
agreement with amazon as to what that will mean.

In the case of OSM things don't go that far (importantly no money
changes hands) but users of the site can add content to it. Do you
want (in any way) to govern how they do that? Its noteworthy that the
use of google maps comes without any terms and conditions (that would
be legally binding anyway) but that (say) use of blogger.com *does*.

In deciding whether to have such a thing, what it should contain and
how to deploy it you need to understand what you think you are going
to get out of doing so, i.e. what you are trying to achieve by it.
That's something that a lawyer can't answer, they are only a
technician who can tell you if and how to do what you may or may not
want to do.

> I go to a website, i read, i look at pictures.
> I know quite well that the contents are either copy left or copyright and i
> should check before i copy anything.

That may be true, but if I want to attach a complex contractual
obligation on anyone who uses the data (which is what the new open
data licence will do) then I need to make sure that you know you are
agreeing to it. There's a difference between that and a pure copyright
licence since you don't have a right to use copyrighted material
without a licence (or some exception holding) so "I didn't know the
terms of the licence" won't help someone who wants to "steal" the
data, whereas if you want someone to be bound by a contract you have
to bring its terms to their attention.

So its not so simple as you say, if OSM wants to achieve what it
appears to be trying to achieve with its new licence model.

That of course is not the same question as the T&C's for use of the
website (which is a different matter) but I flag this up here as you
bring it up.

> Terms and conditions for use of a website - do we put terms and conditions on
> advertising posters governing who can read them?

No (though you will often see small print disclaimers on them). The
idea of restricting access to age 13+ strikes me as odd in the
extreme. When I get some time I'll do some research into what is going
on in the US that makes them do this.

> It's a public site, no passwords, no sign up required to read it, so it's for
> the public to read.

Not if you want to edit the data (as far as I can see anyway) then you
do have to sign up.

>
> Put the lawyer back in the cage.
>

Be nice 8-). This isn't (as far as I can see) about lawyers being unreasonable.

-- 
Francis Davey

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Francis Davey]

2009/7/3 Frederik Ramm :
>
> In fact, this whole discussion is largely about Ts&Cs for our *web site*
> and not for our data. The data thing is regulated somewhere else
> entirely (in the ODbL license text and accompanying docs). What this
> lawyer actually suggested is that we should have Ts&Cs governing the use
> of our web site, which is of small importance compared to our data.
>

No, I get that. It was using it as an extreme example. Someone using
your website may end up making use of some of your data and if I you
very paranoid you could make them click an agreement which included a
limitation of liability clause before being able to use it.

In contractual/liability terms you can't impose a disclaimer like that
just by having a little CC-SA-BY at the bottom of a website (as OSM
does at the moment).

-- 
Francis Davey

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Elizabeth Dodd]

On Fri, 3 Jul 2009, Ulf Möller wrote:
> It doesn't. It's just that during a review of the proposed license, a
> lawyer pointed out that it is good practice to have terms of use for the
> website. That recommendation would still stand if we chose not to change
> the license.

I can't really comprehend how "terms and conditions for use of a website" mean 
anything in the big real world.
I'm over 50 years old, have university degrees and post graduate 
qualifications; i teach undergraduates and postgraduates in my field.
However, I'm not stuck in academic clouds
and putting terms and conditions on a website is bizarre.
I go to a website, i read, i look at pictures. 
I know quite well that the contents are either copy left or copyright and i 
should check before i copy anything.
Terms and conditions for use of a website - do we put terms and conditions on 
advertising posters governing who can read them?
It's a public site, no passwords, no sign up required to read it, so it's for 
the public to read.

Put the lawyer back in the cage.



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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Francis Davey wrote:
> I can't really say much constructively about the terms of use without
> understanding what their goal is and what tolerance of risk the thing
> is being engineered to. For example, OSM data is going to be imperfect
> in places

In fact, this whole discussion is largely about Ts&Cs for our *web site* 
and not for our data. The data thing is regulated somewhere else 
entirely (in the ODbL license text and accompanying docs). What this 
lawyer actually suggested is that we should have Ts&Cs governing the use 
of our web site, which is of small importance compared to our data.

I am not even clear if the lawyer who suggested we need Ts&Cs for the 
web site was only talking about the human facing side of it ("Web sites 
are what you see in a browser, aren't they?") or about the whole HTTP 
based API we offer. Probably the former, because it is difficult to make 
a computer accessing the API understand and agree some Ts&Cs.

Bye
Frederik

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Francis Davey]

2009/7/3 Frederik Ramm :
>
> As Francis Davey just said, there may be a choice. *Especially* if you
> are not based in a litigation crazy country like the US.
>

Its also a question of making sure you know how to work with your
lawyers (who of course ought to be good ones). If you don't know what
you want, a lawyer can't make it happen for you. Its also important to
make sure you are talking directly to those who are expert in the
field, rather than through a filter. One often hears that people
cannot do something "for legal reasons" when in fact their
conversation with their lawyers has said something quite different.

This may seem trivial, but exactly the same thing happens in computer
science, as this anecdote illustrates: head of history at my secondary
school was a keen amateur programmer (in the 70's/early 80's this was
more unusual than it is now) and also chair of an organisation called
the Schools Council which produced a history O-level. It was marked by
numerous different examiners (it consisted of lots of papers,
coursework and so on), all the marks were added up to give a mark out
of 200, this was then converted to a percentage (something that was
needed amongst other things for moderation with other boards).

A new computer system was introduced to manage the board's marking.
Head of history is told that they must stop marking out of 200 and
mark everything out of 100 because (I really kid you not) the
conversion to percentages would otherwise be beyond the computer
system's capability. Now my teacher and friend knew that dividing by
two is actually quite easy for most computers, in many respects its
easier than dividing by 10 but he was unable to convince the company's
representatives that this was so.

Result: everyone marks using half-size marking scales. Lots of history
examiners (being weak humans) find marking with half marks (as they
end up having to do) psychologically difficult.

Moral: not that you must keep your programmers on a leash but that you
need to have effective communication between users and technicians.
Just as true in the legal case.

I can't really say much constructively about the terms of use without
understanding what their goal is and what tolerance of risk the thing
is being engineered to. For example, OSM data is going to be imperfect
in places (that's right isn't it?) so there will be situations where
using it might (because of its inaccuracy) cause loss or damage. There
is therefore a risk of being sued.

Note: the risk is really of getting the threat and all points after.
Some of my clients deal with regular legal threats because of the way
their websites work. That creates a load on their time which they can
ill afford. So the risk starts there. The end of the line of risk is
having to pay damages to someone.

Even if a risk is minuscule, you can almost certainly add a little
more to a contract to reduce the risk still further; to spell out
things more precisely and to make it ever clearer to a reader how
unlikely they are to win any case they try to bring.

But its all about tolerance. You don't engineer things to perfection,
nor do you draft contracts in the same way. It is possible (I've done
it) to formally prove that programs meet specifications and (if you
are properly paranoid) that the object code and underlying machine do
too. When I worked as a computer scientist I did a research project
looking at that. But for OSM that would be overkill (we were more
worried about things like Ariane V blowing up), just as a gold-plated
covers-all-things terms of use would be.

I'd also remark that (as I understand it) the proposed terms of use is
a copy from elsewhere. Its obviously not right and no-one thinks it
is, but its useful to work out what you want in it and what you want
it to do. Eg, do we really need to spell out all the DMCA repeat
offender/take down stuff? I don't do US law (I'm an English lawyer)
but my reading of the US case law is that you do need a policy (as a
gateway to the "safe harbors") and you do need to supply certain
information to make that effective otherwise you lose the protection,
but you don't need to recite nearly as much of S.512 as the draft
does.

Sorry for the long post - I'm trying to avoid meddling with that which
I do not understand.

-- 
Francis Davey

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Ed Avis wrote:
> I do think that lawyers can get a bit out of control if you don't keep them
> on a short leash, but do whatever you have to, I guess.  

As Francis Davey just said, there may be a choice. *Especially* if you 
are not based in a litigation crazy country like the US.

> Just make sure that
> site visitors aren't caught in the crossfire, and do not end up having to 
> agree
> (explicitly or implicitly) to waive some of their rights.

Yes, and please make sure that someone who is six years old can legally 
use the site. Anything that says "by using this site you confirm that 
you are umpteen years or older" is just not acceptable. We do mapping 
with schoolchildren, and we actually want to continue doing that!

Bye
Frederik


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Ed Avis]

Matt Amos  writes:

>the "personal use only" stuff comes into the "terms of service". you
>don't need to agree - it's simply a statement by OSMF that the site is
>intended for personal use and that any non-personal use of the site
>may result in service being withdrawn.

Hmm.  I guess not being a lawyer I misunderstood.  But it hardly seems
necessary to say such a thing - it's not as if OSMF has agreed to provide
uninterrupted service in the first place, or, indeed, that anyone using the
site for personal use is guaranteed that the site will work.

For us non-lawyers, it would clarify things to have a paragraph at the top
saying 'these terms of service are not something you need to agree to, they
are simply a statement by the OSMF of how we will try to run our website'
would solve the problem.

>to make this very, very clear: we're not proposing the privacy policy
>and terms of service because we're evil, or we're excited by long and
>boring legal documents or even that we're anticipating a clear threat.
>we're doing it **because our lawyer is recommending it**.

I do think that lawyers can get a bit out of control if you don't keep them
on a short leash, but do whatever you have to, I guess.  Just make sure that
site visitors aren't caught in the crossfire, and do not end up having to agree
(explicitly or implicitly) to waive some of their rights.

-- 
Ed Avis 


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Ed Avis]

Richard Fairhurst  writes:

>>The licence should not try to impose additional restrictions on 
>>people beyond their own country's copyright law (and other applicable 
>>laws such as database right).
>
>In which case OSM becomes public domain.

Are you saying that the OSM data, currently distributable under the CC-BY-SA
licence, is in the public domain now?

What about, for example, Ordnance Survey maps from before the database right
was introduced, and where the buyer has not agreed to any contract or EULA?

>I'm repeating myself, I'm afraid, but you can take two approaches with data.
>You can say "it's all PD". Or you can attempt to arm yourself to the teeth
>by deploying whatever tools are available in your jurisdiction: copyright,
>database right and contract. There is no middle ground. A weaker approach
>(say, a copyright-only licence like CC-BY-SA) won't be applicable in all
>countries, therefore in some places our data will be freely copiable.

This is exactly my point.  Copyright law is a trade-off giving limited
exclusion rights to copyright holders in order to benefit the public.  It is
not absolute, so for example, copyrights expire after a certain time period.  
The scope of copyright in a particular country is decided by that country's
legislature.  If a certain country decides that maps are freely copyable, then
that is a decision for their parliament to take and be answerable to their own
voters.  I think it is unethical to try to override that, even if software
companies do it.  (This is certainly an example where what is done in the world
of software is not appropriate for free data.)

And if in some places our data is freely copyable, so what?  It does no harm to
anyone outside those countries.  Popeye is in the public domain in Europe but
that does not mean you can freely import Popeye comics from Europe to the US.

I think that 'arming yourself' with all the legal weapons possible is quite
the wrong metaphor.  The project is not about suing wrongdoers but about making
free map data as widely available as possible.
 
>The settled will [1] of the OSM community is that we want a share-alike
>licence,

Which we have.  If you believe that CC-BY-SA is not a share-alike licence, or
that somehow it does not work when applied to map data, then let's see the
evidence.

>That isn't the case for factual data. If you don't impose additional
>restrictions over and above statute law, then there will be some countries
>in which your data is unprotected, and it will leak out from there.

Are you really saying it is possible to launder the OSM data by taking it to
Bogoland, where is is 'unprotected', and then copying it and sending it back
to Europe, the US or other developed country?  If so then why don't you just
do that in order to accomplish the relicensing?

I may be exaggerating above but I just don't see what the problem is.  It seems
like legalistic speculation and FUD rather than a real scenario.  If anyone
can point to a case where this has already happened then I'll believe it - and
start investigating how existing map data can be subjected to the same
treatment...

>Nonetheless if the OSM community wants a share-alike license, it has to use
>this sort of language.

Everyone who has contributed to OSM so far has done so under CC-BY-SA.  I don't
see where these large numbers of people are coming from who are unhappy with
the existing share-alike terms and pushing for something more onerous.

>I kind of think it should be compulsory for anyone posting to legal-talk to
>demonstrate that they have read, and understood, Rural vs Feist and Mason vs
>Montgomery.

I will read those (anyone got a link?).

-- 
Ed Avis 


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Francis Davey]

2009/7/3 Russ Nelson :
>
> Indeed.  Consider what you would say if a lawyer looked at a program
> and said "Why do we need all this codese?"

Speaking as a lawyer - albeit one who hasn't been on this list nearly
long enough to have an opinion, I'm mostly just trying to learn where
OSM are coming from - my reaction to the terms of use is "yuk". I'm
not sure this it the place to discuss it and whether my views are at
all interesting, but I do draft (and more often litigate) contracts
like this.

Main problem (as I see it) is that its drafted from a US point of
view, but purports to be governed by English law. I'm not quite sure
how that will work out in practice or what the goal is. Is it clear
that OSM is only used in the US and England? If not, why is (only) US
law being mentioned when many different legal systems will come into
play? If English law is the governing law, then that, surely is the
one to go with, subject to having an eye to all other relevant
jurisdictions.

I work a lot with clients who want to be reasonably legal safe but
want contracts to be short and simple and are prepared to take the
risk that I haven't put in an extra 30 pages of boilerplate to cover
an obscure risk, so that kind of drafting is entirely possible. But
its a matter entirely for the client. I'd be happy to write/rewrite
this kind of thing for you or give my input, but, as I said, I'm an
OSM novice and really don't know what you are after.

>From an English law point of view, all caps paragraphs should be
removed of course 8-).

There's a bunch of stuff I'd rewrite, but its not up to me.

All the best.

-- 
Francis Davey

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Russ Nelson]

On Jul 2, 2009, at 6:58 PM, Richard Fairhurst wrote:
> Nonetheless if
> the OSM community wants a share-alike license, it has to use this  
> sort of
> language.


Indeed.  Consider what you would say if a lawyer looked at a program  
and said "Why do we need all this codese?"

--
Russ Nelson - http://community.cloudmade.com/blog - 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:RussNelson
r...@cloudmade.com - Twitter: Russ_OSM - 
http://openstreetmap.org/user/RussNelson


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Matt Amos]

On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 3:20 AM, Matt Amos wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 10:20 PM, Ed Avis wrote:
>> Matt Amos  writes:
>>
>>>http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use
>>>http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy
>>>see also the terms at the bottom of every edit box.
>>
>> These terms and conditions don't try to impose an EULA on people
>> reading the site but give guidelines on uploading data, on copying
>> text (which is normally restricted by copyright law, and so you need
>> to read the licence), and the privacy policy is something that sets
>> standards for the Wikimedia Foundation to follow, not a set of
>> restrictions or disclaimers that users must agree to.
>
> i think you're still misunderstanding: the privacy policy and terms of
> service are not EULAs - they don't need to be agreed to. as you say,
> the privacy policy is simply a declaration by OSMF about the
> conditions under which it collects and retains data. the terms of
> service are the conditions under which you may use the site - again,
> they don't need to be agreed to.
>
>>>i think you have misunderstood; i don't see anyone suggesting that
>>>you'd need to explicitly agree to anything to browse the map.
>>>
>>>if they wish to upload something, they'll need an account. when they
>>>register for an account they will be presented with the "contributor
>>>terms" which include licensing.
>>
>> I think that's fine.  In that case the 'terms and conditions' should
>> not purport to apply to people just using the website or the OSM data
>> (which has its own licence), but only be something you explicitly
>> agree to on uploading data.  That means any stuff about 'personal use
>> only' and so on doesn't belong.
>
> what you're referring to are the "contributor terms", which is a
> contract between OSMF and the contributor regularing each party's
> rights and obligations. wikipedia has something very similar.

i should have linked to
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Contributor_Terms

bear in mind that it still isn't a finished document - it's under
discussion in LWG meetings and being reviewed by our lawyer. we think
it sets out, with the minimum of legalese, a fair contract with the
balance rights and obligations that the community wants.

of course, we could be mistaken. so please let's continue discussing it.

cheers,

matt

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Matt Amos]

On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 10:20 PM, Ed Avis wrote:
> Matt Amos  writes:
>
>>http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use
>>http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy
>>see also the terms at the bottom of every edit box.
>
> These terms and conditions don't try to impose an EULA on people
> reading the site but give guidelines on uploading data, on copying
> text (which is normally restricted by copyright law, and so you need
> to read the licence), and the privacy policy is something that sets
> standards for the Wikimedia Foundation to follow, not a set of
> restrictions or disclaimers that users must agree to.

i think you're still misunderstanding: the privacy policy and terms of
service are not EULAs - they don't need to be agreed to. as you say,
the privacy policy is simply a declaration by OSMF about the
conditions under which it collects and retains data. the terms of
service are the conditions under which you may use the site - again,
they don't need to be agreed to.

>>i think you have misunderstood; i don't see anyone suggesting that
>>you'd need to explicitly agree to anything to browse the map.
>>
>>if they wish to upload something, they'll need an account. when they
>>register for an account they will be presented with the "contributor
>>terms" which include licensing.
>
> I think that's fine.  In that case the 'terms and conditions' should
> not purport to apply to people just using the website or the OSM data
> (which has its own licence), but only be something you explicitly
> agree to on uploading data.  That means any stuff about 'personal use
> only' and so on doesn't belong.

what you're referring to are the "contributor terms", which is a
contract between OSMF and the contributor regularing each party's
rights and obligations. wikipedia has something very similar.

the "personal use only" stuff comes into the "terms of service". you
don't need to agree - it's simply a statement by OSMF that the site is
intended for personal use and that any non-personal use of the site
may result in service being withdrawn.

to make this very, very clear: we're not proposing the privacy policy
and terms of service because we're evil, or we're excited by long and
boring legal documents or even that we're anticipating a clear threat.
we're doing it **because our lawyer is recommending it**.

wikipedia's documents are much, much shorter. why they make no
explicit reference to COPPA, i don't know. how they get away with
that, i don't know. all i know is that our lawyer has said that having
these documents is A Good Idea. your lawyer may disagree.

cheers,

matt

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Richard Fairhurst]

Ed Avis wrote:
> The licence should not try to impose additional restrictions on 
> people beyond their own country's copyright law (and other applicable 
> laws such as database right).

In which case OSM becomes public domain.

I'm repeating myself, I'm afraid, but you can take two approaches with data.
You can say "it's all PD". Or you can attempt to arm yourself to the teeth
by deploying whatever tools are available in your jurisdiction: copyright,
database right and contract. There is no middle ground. A weaker approach
(say, a copyright-only licence like CC-BY-SA) won't be applicable in all
countries, therefore in some places our data will be freely copiable.

The settled will [1] of the OSM community is that we want a share-alike
licence, therefore we will use the verbiage that is most likely to
accomplish this in most jurisdictions. As of 2 July 2009, that's ODbL with
the relevant sign-up stuff.

When you say "Going down the road of a click-through EULA, which tries to
impose additional restrictions and take away rights you had before, is not
the right direction for a free data project such as OSM", you're talking
from a "free software" perspective. Software's easy. Software is
demonstrably copyrightable in 99% of jurisdictions.

That isn't the case for factual data. If you don't impose additional
restrictions over and above statute law, then there will be some countries
in which your data is unprotected, and it will leak out from there.
_Personally_ I don't think that's a bad thing - I'm a PD advocate
through-and-through, as all of my released code will testify. Nonetheless if
the OSM community wants a share-alike license, it has to use this sort of
language.

I kind of think it should be compulsory for anyone posting to legal-talk to
demonstrate that they have read, and understood, Rural vs Feist and Mason vs
Montgomery. You really can't apply the precepts of software licensing to
factual data.

cheers
Richard

[1] Not provably the majority, but that's another story.
-- 
View this message in context: 
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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Ulf Möller wrote:
>> I think if your planned licence change requires people to agree to
>> these very lengthy and legalistic 'terms and conditions' then it's an
>> indication that you are doing something wrong.
> 
> It doesn't. It's just that during a review of the proposed license, a 
> lawyer pointed out that it is good practice to have terms of use for the 
> website. That recommendation would still stand if we chose not to change 
> the license.

If we really must have such terms and conditions, and I still think we 
don't and am 1000% with what Ed Avis just wrote on boneheaded policies, 
then please at least put a giant banner on top:

"This page is about the use of the openstreetmap.org web site only. It 
has NO RELEVANCE WHATSOEVER for you if you download OpenStreetMap data 
from somewhere and use that data, or if you use an OpenStreetMap editor 
to upload data. The only legal documents regulating that kind of 
participation are: ..."

Bye
Frederik

-- 
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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Ed Avis]

Ulf Möller  writes:

>>I think if your planned licence change requires people to agree to
>>these very lengthy and legalistic 'terms and conditions' then it's an
>>indication that you are doing something wrong.
>
>It doesn't. It's just that during a review of the proposed license, a 
>lawyer pointed out that it is good practice to have terms of use for the 
>website. That recommendation would still stand if we chose not to change 
>the license.

Hmm.  Since IANAL it is very hard to argue with someone who IAL.  I would note
that many companies (usually big, bureaucratic ones) have a legal department who
think it is 'good practice' to attach a lengthy disclaimer message to every
outgoing email message.  This message is confidential and intended only for the
named recipient; it does not necessarily represent the views of BigCorp Inc.,
and so on and so on.

Yet such organizations and their clumsy legalese are rightly laughed at by 
anyone
remotely Internet-literate.  What I'm getting at is that you have to be careful
not to let the legal department get out of control and start generating pages of
legalese disclaiming all possible eventualities and ambiguities, when there is 
no
tangible, identifiable reason to do so.  Labelling something as 'good practice'
or, worse, 'best practice' is not itself a reason to do it; in my experience the
most boneheaded policies usually come under this title.

If there are real reasons why some kind of disclaimer is needed then let's have
a couple of short paragraphs framed as a 'notice' rather than a set of 'terms'
which you must agree to.

-- 
Ed Avis 


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Ulf Möller]

Ed Avis schrieb:

> I think if your planned licence change requires people to agree to
> these very lengthy and legalistic 'terms and conditions' then it's an
> indication that you are doing something wrong.

It doesn't. It's just that during a review of the proposed license, a 
lawyer pointed out that it is good practice to have terms of use for the 
website. That recommendation would still stand if we chose not to change 
the license.


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Ed Avis]

Russ Nelson  writes:

>Some of the stuff is there to help enforce the database license.  If  
>we had a license that didn't give us the occasion to sue anybody, we  
>wouldn't need terms like that, but in fact we DO plan to sue SOMEBODY,  
>sooner or later.  And it's only reasonable to then be able to say in  
>court "Haumph, you used our website on these various  
>occasions; continued use implies that you did IN FACT agree to abide  
>by our distribution license."  You can argue whether the terms are  
>effective, but you can't argue against their existence in principle.

Actually, I do find their existence in principle deeply troubling.
The licence should not try to impose additional restrictions on people
beyond their own country's copyright law (and other applicable laws such
as database right).  I think the GPL has the right model to follow:
'You do not have to accept this License, since you have not signed it.'

Going down the road of a click-through EULA, which tries to impose additional
restrictions and take away rights you had before, is not the right direction
for a free data project such as OSM.

I think that hypothetical legal scenarios (of how to let our lawyers best attack
bad people) are far less important than maintaining an unambiguously free set of
map data, respecting the rights of users and contributors, and not tangling the
project up in pages of forbidding legalese.

So I think such terms, whether 'effective' or not in making it easier to sue
people, would certainly be effective in discouraging contributions to OSM.

-- 
Ed Avis 


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Ed Avis]

Matt Amos  writes:

>http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use
>http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy
>see also the terms at the bottom of every edit box.

These terms and conditions don't try to impose an EULA on people
reading the site but give guidelines on uploading data, on copying
text (which is normally restricted by copyright law, and so you need
to read the licence), and the privacy policy is something that sets
standards for the Wikimedia Foundation to follow, not a set of
restrictions or disclaimers that users must agree to.

>i think you have misunderstood; i don't see anyone suggesting that
>you'd need to explicitly agree to anything to browse the map.
>
>if they wish to upload something, they'll need an account. when they
>register for an account they will be presented with the "contributor
>terms" which include licensing.

I think that's fine.  In that case the 'terms and conditions' should
not purport to apply to people just using the website or the OSM data
(which has its own licence), but only be something you explicitly
agree to on uploading data.  That means any stuff about 'personal use
only' and so on doesn't belong.

-- 
Ed Avis 



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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Matt Amos]

On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 1:20 PM, Ed Avis wrote:
> As far as I can tell Wikipedia doesn't have 'terms and conditions' on
> the website, despite being equally dependent on user contributions and
> with more scope for legal risk from libel, offensive content and so
> on.

http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy
see also the terms at the bottom of every edit box.

> There is no reason anyone should have to 'agree' to anything in order
> to browse the website and look at the map, and if they wish to upload
> data to OSM, they only need agree to license it under the correct
> terms.

i think you have misunderstood; i don't see anyone suggesting that
you'd need to explicitly agree to anything to browse the map.

if they wish to upload something, they'll need an account. when they
register for an account they will be presented with the "contributor
terms" which include licensing.

cheers,

matt

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Ed Avis]

I think if your planned licence change requires people to agree to
these very lengthy and legalistic 'terms and conditions' then it's an
indication that you are doing something wrong.

As far as I can tell Wikipedia doesn't have 'terms and conditions' on
the website, despite being equally dependent on user contributions and
with more scope for legal risk from libel, offensive content and so
on.

There is no reason anyone should have to 'agree' to anything in order
to browse the website and look at the map, and if they wish to upload
data to OSM, they only need agree to license it under the correct
terms.

-- 
Ed Avis 


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[SteveC]

On 29 Jun 2009, at 17:11, SteveC wrote:

>
> On 26 Jun 2009, at 14:57, Peter Miller wrote:
>
>>
>> On 24 Jun 2009, at 06:56, SteveC wrote:
>>
>>> Dear all
>>>
>>> One of the things that's resulted from getting help with the license
>>> process is that it's been noticed we don't have a lot of the legal
>>> furniture, and thus protection and clarity, found frequently
>>> elsewhere. We've been offered some fairly standard privacy and terms
>>> of use policies:
>>>
>>> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Privacy_Policy_- 
>>> _Discussion_Draft
>>> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use_-_Discussion_Draft
>>>
>>> We've put them up for your input as step 1. These aren't even
>>> recommended by us just yet, but to start a discussion on anything
>>> that
>>> may be bad (or maybe good - that would be novel!) with them?
>>
>> Thanks for that Steve. Lots to think about there, but it is certainly
>> good to start with something standard and then see what needs
>> changing.
>>
>> I fully support the process of adding a clear legal framework to the
>> project but the terms and conditions and license can't be considered
>> in isolation without looking at the Articles of Association at the
>> same time. Andy asked for interest from people to work on the  
>> Articles
>> of Association but I have not heard more about it and there is  
>> nothing
>> on the foundation website. Is there a working group for this? Who is
>> on it? Is it publishing minutes? Are there any proposed changes
>> available for comment?
>
> Andy?

oh I see he replied

>
>>
>> My concern here is to try to avoid creating an interesting target for
>> 'carpet baggers' who may wish to 'privatise' OSM in the way that the
>> mutual building societies were privatised in the past ten years in  
>> the
>> UK.
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpet_baggers#United_Kingdom
>>
>> I suggest that we need to infuse all the legal arrangements with
>> efforts to:
>> 1) Avoid the OSMF being valuable as a 'take over' target with a
>> potential financial value on the open market. Both the articles and
>> the terms and conditions should help with this.
>
> I agree and, well, the key thing is that the OSMF doesn't own the
> data, and even if it were the licenser it can't just randomly
> privatise the data like CDDB right? And if not, then what is there
> that would give it value?
>
>> 2) To protect the OSMF from hostile actions by excluding  
>> opportunities
>> of financial reward to any parties (members, directors or
>> contributors). Both the terms and conditions and articles should help
>> with this.
>>
>>
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Peter Miller
>>
>>>
>>> Best
>>>
>>> Steve
>>>
>>>
>>> ___
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>>
>>
>> ___
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>> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
>>
>
> Best
>
> Steve
>
>
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>

Best

Steve


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[SteveC]

On 26 Jun 2009, at 14:57, Peter Miller wrote:

>
> On 24 Jun 2009, at 06:56, SteveC wrote:
>
>> Dear all
>>
>> One of the things that's resulted from getting help with the license
>> process is that it's been noticed we don't have a lot of the legal
>> furniture, and thus protection and clarity, found frequently
>> elsewhere. We've been offered some fairly standard privacy and terms
>> of use policies:
>>
>>  http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Privacy_Policy_-_Discussion_Draft
>>  http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use_-_Discussion_Draft
>>
>> We've put them up for your input as step 1. These aren't even
>> recommended by us just yet, but to start a discussion on anything  
>> that
>> may be bad (or maybe good - that would be novel!) with them?
>
> Thanks for that Steve. Lots to think about there, but it is certainly
> good to start with something standard and then see what needs  
> changing.
>
> I fully support the process of adding a clear legal framework to the
> project but the terms and conditions and license can't be considered
> in isolation without looking at the Articles of Association at the
> same time. Andy asked for interest from people to work on the Articles
> of Association but I have not heard more about it and there is nothing
> on the foundation website. Is there a working group for this? Who is
> on it? Is it publishing minutes? Are there any proposed changes
> available for comment?

Andy?

>
> My concern here is to try to avoid creating an interesting target for
> 'carpet baggers' who may wish to 'privatise' OSM in the way that the
> mutual building societies were privatised in the past ten years in the
> UK.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpet_baggers#United_Kingdom
>
> I suggest that we need to infuse all the legal arrangements with
> efforts to:
> 1) Avoid the OSMF being valuable as a 'take over' target with a
> potential financial value on the open market. Both the articles and
> the terms and conditions should help with this.

I agree and, well, the key thing is that the OSMF doesn't own the  
data, and even if it were the licenser it can't just randomly  
privatise the data like CDDB right? And if not, then what is there  
that would give it value?

> 2) To protect the OSMF from hostile actions by excluding opportunities
> of financial reward to any parties (members, directors or
> contributors). Both the terms and conditions and articles should help
> with this.
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
>
>
>
>
> Peter Miller
>
>>
>> Best
>>
>> Steve
>>
>>
>> ___
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>> legal-talk@openstreetmap.org
>> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
>
>
> ___
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> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
>

Best

Steve


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Mike Collinson]

At 03:57 PM 26/06/2009, Peter Miller wrote:
>My concern here is to try to avoid creating an interesting target for  
>'carpet baggers' who may wish to 'privatise' OSM in the way that the  
>mutual building societies were privatised in the past ten years in the  
>UK.
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpet_baggers#United_Kingdom
>
>I suggest that we need to infuse all the legal arrangements with  
>efforts to:
>1) Avoid the OSMF being valuable as a 'take over' target with a  
>potential financial value on the open market. Both the articles and  
>the terms and conditions should help with this.
>2) To protect the OSMF from hostile actions by excluding opportunities  
>of financial reward to any parties (members, directors or  
>contributors). Both the terms and conditions and articles should help  
>with this.

Peter,

We think we have come up with up with a very robust and elegant way of dealing 
with this by binding the Foundation when individual contributors make their 
contributions, see item 3 of:.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Data_License/Contributor_Terms#OpenStreetMap_Contributor_Terms

(this text has just gone up on the wiki and there will be a general 
announcement about it to this list).

This should be stronger than amending the Foundation's articles as the articles 
themselves are can be changed in an adverse takeover.  It does not preclude 
tightening the articles and I personally feel we should.  For propriety, we 
feel that the make-up of the Articles Working Group should be different from 
the License group.

Comments welcome and appreciated.

Mike
License Working Group 



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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Andy Robinson (blackadder-lists)]

Peter Miller wrote:
>Sent: 26 June 2009 2:58 PM
>To: Licensing and other legal discussions.
>Subject: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms
>
>


>I fully support the process of adding a clear legal framework to the
>project but the terms and conditions and license can't be considered
>in isolation without looking at the Articles of Association at the
>same time. Andy asked for interest from people to work on the Articles
>of Association but I have not heard more about it and there is nothing
>on the foundation website. Is there a working group for this? Who is
>on it? Is it publishing minutes? Are there any proposed changes
>available for comment?

A sufficient number of interested persons have come forward to form the
group but it has yet to meet. Those who have come forward are a mixture of
members and non members from various locations around the world which is
good. When the group does meet the discussions and any proposals will be
fully reported. Any change in the Articles requires a vote of the
membership, so the purpose of the working group is not to make any change
but to recommend what might be changed and the suggested wording. It will be
up to the membership to decide if they want the changes or not.

Cheers

Andy




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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Russ Nelson wrote:
> I was relying on information in this book.  Feel free to disagree with  
> John Forester (elsewhere), but my point applies to any unlikely event  
> of bad consequences which can me mitigated at low cost.

"At low cost" is something that remains to be seen - with the initial 
version we have here, the "low cost" would serve to discourage any 
non-private users, force underage users to lie to us, and do all sorts 
of other ugly things which I personally consider quite a sell-out to 
legal scaremongers. The "cost" would be nothing less than losing face 
and admitting you do the same shit that everyone else does just because 
that's how the system works. I'd hope for this project to have the spine 
to resist putting up stupid legalese that everybody *must* ignore to 
stay sane.

Bye
Frederik


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[OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Peter Miller]

On 24 Jun 2009, at 06:56, SteveC wrote:

> Dear all
>
> One of the things that's resulted from getting help with the license
> process is that it's been noticed we don't have a lot of the legal
> furniture, and thus protection and clarity, found frequently
> elsewhere. We've been offered some fairly standard privacy and terms
> of use policies:
>
>   http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Privacy_Policy_-_Discussion_Draft
>   http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use_-_Discussion_Draft
>
> We've put them up for your input as step 1. These aren't even
> recommended by us just yet, but to start a discussion on anything that
> may be bad (or maybe good - that would be novel!) with them?

Thanks for that Steve. Lots to think about there, but it is certainly  
good to start with something standard and then see what needs changing.

I fully support the process of adding a clear legal framework to the  
project but the terms and conditions and license can't be considered  
in isolation without looking at the Articles of Association at the  
same time. Andy asked for interest from people to work on the Articles  
of Association but I have not heard more about it and there is nothing  
on the foundation website. Is there a working group for this? Who is  
on it? Is it publishing minutes? Are there any proposed changes  
available for comment?

My concern here is to try to avoid creating an interesting target for  
'carpet baggers' who may wish to 'privatise' OSM in the way that the  
mutual building societies were privatised in the past ten years in the  
UK.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpet_baggers#United_Kingdom

I suggest that we need to infuse all the legal arrangements with  
efforts to:
1) Avoid the OSMF being valuable as a 'take over' target with a  
potential financial value on the open market. Both the articles and  
the terms and conditions should help with this.
2) To protect the OSMF from hostile actions by excluding opportunities  
of financial reward to any parties (members, directors or  
contributors). Both the terms and conditions and articles should help  
with this.



Regards,





Peter Miller

>
> Best
>
> Steve
>
>
> ___
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> legal-talk@openstreetmap.org
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Russ Nelson]

I was relying on information in this book.  Feel free to disagree with  
John Forester (elsewhere), but my point applies to any unlikely event  
of bad consequences which can me mitigated at low cost.

http://books.google.com/books?id=0n2t7P1v2M8C&lpg=PA25&dq=%22effective%20cycling%22%20john%20forester%20helmet%20safety&pg=PA24

On Jun 26, 2009, at 2:03 AM, Richard Fairhurst wrote:

>
> Russ Nelson wrote:
>> Do you wear a helmet when you ride a bicycle?  Accidents resulting
>> in TBI are very uncommon, but their consequences are very high
>> and a helmet will protect you from many of those consequences.
>
> Fantastic. We have now found the one OSM-related argument guaranteed  
> to
> result in _more_ flames than BSD vs GPL.
>
> http://www.cyclehelmets.org/ etc. Not saying I agree or otherwise,  
> just...
> well.

--
Russ Nelson - http://community.cloudmade.com/blog - 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:RussNelson
r...@cloudmade.com - Twitter: Russ_OSM - 
http://openstreetmap.org/user/RussNelson


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Elizabeth Dodd]

On Fri, 26 Jun 2009, Richard Fairhurst wrote:
> > Do you wear a helmet when you ride a bicycle?  Accidents resulting
> > in TBI are very uncommon, but their consequences are very high
> > and a helmet will protect you from many of those consequences.
>
> Fantastic. We have now found the one OSM-related argument guaranteed to
> result in more flames than BSD vs GPL.
>
> http://www.cyclehelmets.org/ etc. Not saying I agree or otherwise, just...
> well.
got no choice, its the Law.
helmets are also much cheaper to replace than prescription glasses - is that 
on the site too?

-- 
BOFH excuse #260:

We're upgrading /dev/null


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Harry Wood]

We actually have a privacy policy already :
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Privacy_Policy   Written back in August
2007, it's linked in the footer of the wiki. Frederick may remember helping
to write it.

Harry


SteveC-2 wrote:
> > 
> >  it's been noticed we don't have a lot of the legal  
> > furniture, and thus protection and clarity, found frequently  
> > elsewhere. 
> > 
-- 
View this message in context: 
http://www.nabble.com/Privacy-and-Terms-tp24185975p24216764.html
Sent from the OpenStreetMap - Legal Talk mailing list archive at Nabble.com.


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Richard Fairhurst]

Russ Nelson wrote:
> Do you wear a helmet when you ride a bicycle?  Accidents resulting 
> in TBI are very uncommon, but their consequences are very high 
> and a helmet will protect you from many of those consequences.

Fantastic. We have now found the one OSM-related argument guaranteed to
result in _more_ flames than BSD vs GPL.

http://www.cyclehelmets.org/ etc. Not saying I agree or otherwise, just...
well.

cheers
Richard
-- 
View this message in context: 
http://www.nabble.com/Privacy-and-Terms-tp24185975p24215418.html
Sent from the OpenStreetMap - Legal Talk mailing list archive at Nabble.com.


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Russ Nelson]

On Jun 24, 2009, at 6:39 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Russ Nelson wrote:
>> Some of the stuff is there to make sure that we have the right to
>> redistribute contributions to OSM.  This is important and useful.
>
> I was under the impression that these terms did not have anything to  
> do
> with our data. The data should be governed by the license and the
> contribution agreement which I thought were separate?

Wiki.  Diaries.  Emails.  Etc.

>> Prohibited uses just gives us the right to kick fucking assholes in
>> the butt.  Sure, self-defense is the right of all civilized people,
>> but remember this: a judge can ALWAYS get up on the wrong side of the
>> bed and rule incorrectly.
>
> Yeah, sure, and if I leave the house a brick might fall on my head and
> I'd be dead. Tough luck!

Do you wear a helmet when you ride a bicycle?  Accidents resulting in  
TBI are very uncommon, but their consequences are very high and a  
helmet will protect you from many of those consequences.

Should the OSMF wear a helmet when it supplies services to the public?

--
Russ Nelson - http://community.cloudmade.com/blog - 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:RussNelson
r...@cloudmade.com - Twitter: Russ_OSM - 
http://openstreetmap.org/user/RussNelson


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Paul Johnson]

On Wed, 2009-06-24 at 17:46 -0400, Russ Nelson wrote:

> Some of the stuff is there because of stupid-ass legislation which  
> violates various laws (e.g. if the site is going to be used by  
> underaged children (which of course it will) we would have to treat  
> them differently (at least according to US law) except of course we  
> have no freaking idea how old they are, so we just tell everyone to  
> lie and pretend that they're of-age which of course breaks the law  
> that you shouldn't induce peaceful honest people to lie.)

God forbid a parent be involved in their child's hobbies...



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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[OJ W]

Will there be some OSM-specific privacy implications not covered in
the generic policy?

e.g. when people use openstreetmap.org, they are potentially revealing
their home/work/holiday locations, their routes to work, the pubs they
visit (assuming their first OSM edit is to add their regular haunts)
and many other things not collected by 'normal' websites

just seems like the sort of thing a privacy policy ought to mention...

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Matt Amos]

On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 11:39 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote:
> Russ Nelson wrote:
>> Some of the stuff is there to make sure that we have the right to
>> redistribute contributions to OSM.  This is important and useful.
>
> I was under the impression that these terms did not have anything to do
> with our data. The data should be governed by the license and the
> contribution agreement which I thought were separate?

you're right - the terms of use are the conditions under which we make
the site available. we make the data available under different terms
(i.e: the ODbL, or whatever).

likewise, the privacy policy deals with data we hold on users, not the
"geo" data.

>> Prohibited uses just gives us the right to kick fucking assholes in
>> the butt.  Sure, self-defense is the right of all civilized people,
>> but remember this: a judge can ALWAYS get up on the wrong side of the
>> bed and rule incorrectly.
>
> I'm sorry but I think you have to draw a line somewhere. Write terms and
> conditions to insure you against things that happen with 1% or 0.1%
> probability. But don't try to write something that protects you from the
> 0.0001% cases - we cannot anticipate these anyway.

i think these are pretty boilerplate documents which have been
"refined" over a period of time, i.e: the lawyerly equivalent of some
really tightly optimised assembler. for us, this may be premature
optimisation.

> Let's rather have a clean exit strategy and find out what would happen
> if someone were to sue the shit out of OSMF and win - let us construct
> things in a fashion that will allow the project to live on even if OSMF
> should die, rather than protect OSMF at all cost.

i think the thinking is; since OSMF is the database and service
provider, the database is an OSMF asset and could be seized (or
subject to other judgements) in case of litigation. now s/OSMF/$OTHER/
- basically, there's little we can do to mitigate this attack. on the
other hand, what does the litigant gain? if they get the database,
does it come encumbered with the existing contributor agreements?

> For example, if we build strong national chapters that, legally, are
> separate from OSMF, these could easily between themselves set up all the
> servers required to replace everything OSMF operates. With such a
> healthy backup network, it would not even make much sense for anybody to
> try and kill off OSMF.

is that the bit about "OSMF may disclose both personally identifiable
and automatically collected information to affiliated companies or
other businesses or persons to process such information on our
behalf"?

we could go even further than national chapters by releasing the full
history dumps (or mirroring brent's full history diffs), spreading the
data even further. of course, then whatever new DB we create is still
technically licensed from OSMF (which has become the evil empire), but
i don't think this can cause any problems other than with relicensing
in the future...

> This includes not giving anything to OSMF that has commercial value
> unless that is absolutely necessary.

hmm... i think i hear RichardF saying "PD FTW!" :-)

> In the long term, I hope that we'll
> be able to switch to a distributed server architecture where OSMF
> operated assets are but one piece of the puzzle, rather than the head of
> everything.

wow. please can i be there when the lawyers try to write a license for
this? ...i've never seen anyone's brain melt[1] before ;-)

cheers,

matt

[1] 
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_WT296Ycwut8/Sd62mGEsG_I/A1U/PmLgSvUOuUk/s1600-h/scanners_endfight.bmp
teh most awsums film, btw.

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

2009/6/25 Martin Koppenhoefer :
> Hallo Frederik

oops, sorry, not for the list.

Martin

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

2009/6/25 Frederik Ramm :
>
> For example, if we build strong national chapters that, legally, are
> separate from OSMF, these could easily between themselves set up all the
> servers required to replace everything OSMF operates. With such a
> healthy backup network, it would not even make much sense for anybody to
> try and kill off OSMF.
>
> This includes not giving anything to OSMF that has commercial value
> unless that is absolutely necessary. In the long term, I hope that we'll
> be able to switch to a distributed server architecture where OSMF
> operated assets are but one piece of the puzzle, rather than the head of
> everything.


Hallo Frederik,

kennst Du couchdb?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CouchDB

Ich habe leider selbst keine Ahnung von Datenbanken, aber die bietet
wohl eine gute Möglichkeit, auf vielen verschiedenen Servern
gleichzeitíg zu laufen. Keine Ahnung wie performant das ist, wo die
Probleme liegen,etc. aber beim sie scheint ähnlich wie das OSM-Modell
strukturiert zu sein (Key/Value-Paare). Vielleicht ist das Thema ja in
Entwicklerkreisen sowieso schon längst bekannt, aber bei Deinem
aktuellen Beitrag kam mir wieder der Gedanke und ich dachte, ich
schreib Dir mal.

Gruß Martin

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

2009/6/25 Frederik Ramm :
> Yeah, sure, and if I leave the house a brick might fall on my head and
> I'd be dead.

I'm almost sure you wanted to write "tile" ;-)

cheers,
Martin

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Russ Nelson wrote:
> Some of the stuff is there to make sure that we have the right to  
> redistribute contributions to OSM.  This is important and useful.

I was under the impression that these terms did not have anything to do 
with our data. The data should be governed by the license and the 
contribution agreement which I thought were separate?

> Prohibited uses just gives us the right to kick fucking assholes in  
> the butt.  Sure, self-defense is the right of all civilized people,  
> but remember this: a judge can ALWAYS get up on the wrong side of the  
> bed and rule incorrectly.  

Yeah, sure, and if I leave the house a brick might fall on my head and 
I'd be dead. Tough luck!

Let's think this trough. Someone vandalises OSM and we kick him out. He 
sues us. Sues us for what? Half a million dollars for emotional 
distress? Bring them on. Reactivation of his account? He might get that 
but he could also simply create a new account so it makes no sense for 
us to fight for our right to ban him. Sue us for damages? What damages?

I'm sorry but I think you have to draw a line somewhere. Write terms and 
conditions to insure you against things that happen with 1% or 0.1% 
probability. But don't try to write something that protects you from the 
0.0001% cases - we cannot anticipate these anyway.

Let's rather have a clean exit strategy and find out what would happen 
if someone were to sue the shit out of OSMF and win - let us construct 
things in a fashion that will allow the project to live on even if OSMF 
should die, rather than protect OSMF at all cost.

For example, if we build strong national chapters that, legally, are 
separate from OSMF, these could easily between themselves set up all the 
servers required to replace everything OSMF operates. With such a 
healthy backup network, it would not even make much sense for anybody to 
try and kill off OSMF.

This includes not giving anything to OSMF that has commercial value 
unless that is absolutely necessary. In the long term, I hope that we'll 
be able to switch to a distributed server architecture where OSMF 
operated assets are but one piece of the puzzle, rather than the head of 
everything.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frede...@remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Russ Nelson]

On Jun 24, 2009, at 4:31 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote:
>
> I could probably find something idiotic in every paragraph if I put my
> mind to it but I'd rather do something else.

Some of the stuff is there simply by virtue of having any terms of use  
at all, e.g. Assignment, Survival, or Claims.

Some of the stuff is there because of stupid-ass legislation which  
violates various laws (e.g. if the site is going to be used by  
underaged children (which of course it will) we would have to treat  
them differently (at least according to US law) except of course we  
have no freaking idea how old they are, so we just tell everyone to  
lie and pretend that they're of-age which of course breaks the law  
that you shouldn't induce peaceful honest people to lie.)

Some of the stuff is there to help enforce the database license.  If  
we had a license that didn't give us the occasion to sue anybody, we  
wouldn't need terms like that, but in fact we DO plan to sue SOMEBODY,  
sooner or later.  And it's only reasonable to then be able to say in  
court "Haumph, you used our website on these various  
occasions; continued use implies that you did IN FACT agree to abide  
by our distribution license."  You can argue whether the terms are  
effective, but you can't argue against their existence in principle.

Some of the stuff is there to make sure that we have the right to  
redistribute contributions to OSM.  This is important and useful.

Removal of content is a good term to have in place.  I get mailing  
list subscribers asking me to remove their email address from the  
archives.  I ignore them, thinking "Too late!  Think before you  
email!"  But if someone comes at me with a legal threat, and I have no  
contributor's agrement to point them to, I'm pretty-much going to have  
no choice but to remove their address.

Prohibited uses just gives us the right to kick fucking assholes in  
the butt.  Sure, self-defense is the right of all civilized people,  
but remember this: a judge can ALWAYS get up on the wrong side of the  
bed and rule incorrectly.  If you have verbiage in your T&C that lets  
you point out, in appeal, excuse me, but we *did* tell them exactly  
what would happen if they did that, and we did it, so they have no  
reason to prevail in a judgement.

And if you think that you're safe just because you live in Europe,  
consider that the OSMF provides services in the USA.  It can say to  
the judge "we don't operate in the US; this person has no opportunity  
to sue us", but who knows what might happen in the future?  Maybe one  
of the principals of the OSMF might fly through the US, or move to the  
US, or start a US company.

--
Russ Nelson - http://community.cloudmade.com/blog - 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:RussNelson
r...@cloudmade.com - Twitter: Russ_OSM - 
http://openstreetmap.org/user/RussNelson


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Gervase Markham wrote:
>>  http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use_-_Discussion_Draft
> 
> These seem very long indeed. What risks are we mitigating here? If they 
> are significant, why does every website in the world not have to have 
> one of these?

Yes, I'm also very tempted to dismiss the idea of having these at all. 
It sounds quite laughable. I could imagine we would have to have these 
if we were an US corporation but hey, we're in Europe as long as not too 
many people vote UKIP once Gordon Brown throws the towel. I guess the 
rationale behind terms like these is that if user A sues you because 
user B used the web site to hack A's computer, you can always say "but B 
acted against our terms and conditions". But I don't think that user A's 
case would hold any water before an European court.

"Except as otherwise permitted, any use by you of any of the OSMF 
Materials and OSMF Site other than for your personal use is strictly 
prohibited."

Are we talking about osmfoundation.org or openstreetmap.org? Because if 
it is the latter, which parts of the web site are NOT under either GPL 
or CC-BY-SA, making any restriction ("personal use only") illegal?

I could probably find something idiotic in every paragraph if I put my 
mind to it but I'd rather do something else.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frede...@remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[Gervase Markham]

On 24/06/09 06:56, SteveC wrote:
>   http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Privacy_Policy_-_Discussion_Draft

The Mozilla project has a privacy policy which I would suggest is rather 
friendlier, while still being lawyer-approved - at least, US lawyers. 
I'm sure I could arrange for you to be able to use the appropriate bits 
of it:
http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/about/privacy/

>   http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use_-_Discussion_Draft

These seem very long indeed. What risks are we mitigating here? If they 
are significant, why does every website in the world not have to have 
one of these?

Gerv


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[OSM-legal-talk] Privacy and Terms

[SteveC]

Dear all

One of the things that's resulted from getting help with the license  
process is that it's been noticed we don't have a lot of the legal  
furniture, and thus protection and clarity, found frequently  
elsewhere. We've been offered some fairly standard privacy and terms  
of use policies:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Privacy_Policy_-_Discussion_Draft
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Terms_of_Use_-_Discussion_Draft

We've put them up for your input as step 1. These aren't even  
recommended by us just yet, but to start a discussion on anything that  
may be bad (or maybe good - that would be novel!) with them?

Best

Steve


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