[OSM-legal-talk] viral attribution and ODbL

2010-04-20 Thread TimSC
Richard Fairhurst wrote:
> But in five years, we have never been able to obtain clear agreement  
> for this. 
I assume this is based on gatherings of OSM members, mailing list 
discussions, IRC, etc. But I have never been directly asked by OSMF what 
the future license should be. I suspect that the majority of mappers 
will go with the flow, with a small number of vocal supporters on both 
sides. But without polling the members who can't know what the consensus 
is, so perhaps this is something OSMF should do? Until then, the level 
support for PD and ODbL among mappers is pretty much speculation. We 
might regret losing the share-alike people, but we may gain new PD only 
fans. Again, this is an unknown variable.

> OSMF has chosen to follow c) and has managed it, thus far, with a  
> surprising amount of consensus given our fractious community.
I guess I differ with OSMF as I have not seen a viable share-alike 
database license. I know many knowledgable people think ODbL is it. I am 
inclined to agree with the Creative Commons comments on the situation: 
share-alike is not appropriate for databases. Basically option (c) is 
ruled out in my mind, as I agree with CC on this issue.

>  I think  
> they've done well and am grateful to them, and LWG in particular, for  
> the thankless hours they have put in.
True, they do a job that would have made me go crazy. Thanks to all in 
the LWG! But most mappers I talk to regarding ODbL only can say "I trust 
OSMF is doing a good job, so I assume ODbL is OK". People would probably 
go along with anything they propose. But we can't assume the resulting 
license is suitable just because they tried their best. (And I believe 
they are trying their best!)

> I suspect many people  
> would support you; nonetheless, past mailing lists suggest that, if  
> OSMF were to do so, it would almost certainly result in the implosion  
> of the Foundation.
>   
I don't see it as an either/or choice, OSMF can do both. I think SteveC 
mentioned that might be a possibility of hosting both in parallel (or 
did I imagine that)? Did that thought go anywhere? The bin I suspect... 
oh well.

Another possibility is to have a list of approved licenses that more or 
less interoperate (mainly BY type licenses) and put attribution in the 
metadata. Any rendering of the map would then be responsible of display 
of attribution based on the metadata tags. This idea probably won't work 
for SA licenses as they tend not to interoperate. That would be my 
preferred option. Or hosting that with a parallel ODbL database might work.

Thing is it is hard to get a PD organisation independent of OSMF because 
OSMF is meant to reflect the interests of the mappers. If a good chunk 
of mappers want PD, OSMF should respect that. (Admittedly we don't know 
how many mappers want PD, since OSMF didn't ask us.)

> I think your characterisation of ODbL as "bloated" and "confusing" is  
> grossly unfair. 
I was trying to support my point about ODbL being bloated based on this 
thread discussion so far. I would be interested in your (Richard's) and 
Grant's opinion (and anyone else's opinion) on my question regarding 
attribution and can it be stripped off a public domain produced work? My 
interpretation is attribution is not necessarily preserved in PD works, 
therefore that paragraph is bloat (and I would welcome any comments on 
that view).

The accusation of it being confusing is mainly a subjective view from my 
layman reading of the ODbL. I don't really understand contract law, so I 
am not particularly surprised. I am relatively comfortable reading the 
CC licenses (which are of course not appropriate to databases). But the 
difficulty of the full ODbL text being understood is an obstacle. 
Creative Commons also has this view of ODbL. This is only partly 
mitigated by the human readable summary.

Grant Slater wrote:
> Nice simple ODbL summary:
> http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/summary/
> (Created by Matt)
>
> / Grant
>   
Did you notice my point that the human readable summary seems to be at 
variance with my interpretation of paragraph 4.3? If the human readable 
summary differs from the legal meaning of the full license, that would 
be a problem. (See the second last paragraph of 
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/legal-talk/2010-April/003294.html 
) Does anyone in the LWG have a view on that issue?

Regards,

TimSC


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] viral attribution and ODbL

2010-04-20 Thread Grant Slater
2010/4/20 Iván Sánchez Ortega :
> The goal of copyleft licenses (and the CC suite of licenses) is to simplify
> all that... even if that means that the internal nuts and bolts have to deal
> with the inmensely complex laws.
>

Nice simple ODbL summary:
http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/summary/
(Created by Matt)

/ Grant

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] viral attribution and ODbL

2010-04-20 Thread Iván Sánchez Ortega
On Tuesday 20 April 2010 18:12:50 Richard Fairhurst wrote:
> TimSC wrote:
> > I am beginning to conclude the ODbL is a bloated, confusing mistake.
>
> I think your characterisation of ODbL as "bloated" and "confusing" is
> grossly unfair.

Well, the fact is that copyright law, the european database directive, and 
international intellectual property treaties are f***ing bloated and 
confusing.

The goal of copyleft licenses (and the CC suite of licenses) is to simplify 
all that... even if that means that the internal nuts and bolts have to deal 
with the inmensely complex laws.


Cheers,
-- 
--
Iván Sánchez Ortega 

Alcohol problems? eject /dev/stomach && apt-get remove vodka

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] viral attribution and ODbL

2010-04-20 Thread Richard Fairhurst
TimSC wrote:
> I am beginning to conclude the ODbL is a bloated, confusing mistake.  
> We would be better serviced in our project goals by a simpler  
> license i.e. a public domain-like license.

Public domain is unequivocally simpler. For many of us it is also "the  
right thing" to do - see the wiki userbox for details. I, and many  
others, have always wanted OSM to be PD.

But in five years, we have never been able to obtain clear agreement  
for this. There is a significant number (probably a "large minority")  
of contributors who will not consent to any licence without  
share-alike. Their beliefs are heartfelt and therefore sometimes very  
vocal.

So the main choices are:

a) Persist with CC-BY-SA. Most people with an awareness of data  
copyright law, including CC themselves, believe this is unsuitable.

b) Given that project-wide consensus for PD is unlikely to be reached,  
fork the project and create a PD OSM, starting with PD datasets and  
contributions from PD-supporting users. This may be possible, and  
there's nothing to stop you or I from doing it, but no-one has  
seriously attempted it.

c) Move to another sharealike licence which is more suitable for data.

OSMF has chosen to follow c) and has managed it, thus far, with a  
surprising amount of consensus given our fractious community. I think  
they've done well and am grateful to them, and LWG in particular, for  
the thankless hours they have put in. If you would like to promote b)  
yourself you are very welcome to do so, and I suspect many people  
would support you; nonetheless, past mailing lists suggest that, if  
OSMF were to do so, it would almost certainly result in the implosion  
of the Foundation.

I think your characterisation of ODbL as "bloated" and "confusing" is  
grossly unfair. It has been drafted by people with significant  
knowledge and experience in this area of law. It is complex. Database  
IP law is complex. You have come to the conclusion that a PD  
declaration is easier, and I agree with you, but to criticise the  
licence itself for that is unjust.

cheers
Richard


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[OSM-legal-talk] viral attribution and ODbL

2010-04-20 Thread TimSC
Frederik Ramm wrote:
> TimSC wrote:
> >/ What is the point in paragraph 4.3, if it can be easily side stepped? 
> /
> We have a well working culture of attribution in science, where you 
> usually quote the source you took something from, but not the source 
> behind the source behind the source.
>   
Yes, this works well in science and is enforced through professional 
standards (not legal standards). This prevents the attribution chain 
exploding. For example, Newton (or Leibniz) is not cited every time 
calculus is used!

> >/ And would the large data set import rights holders be happy if they 
> />/ found out? 
> /
> In the light of this, yes, it can be said that the attribution 
> requirement for produced works should be dropped altogether; I think it 
> has remained in the license as a symbol. Symbols can be powerful even if 
> legally meaningless. "Look, we want you to attribute us, but we freely 
> chose not to burden you with tons of license code in order to force you to."
>   
I oppose this principle of putting in symbols or totems in the license, 
particularly in this case when it is misleading to the legal meaning. 
The license, under our interpretation, allows public domain produced 
works. Paragraph 4.3 hints that the opposite is true. This is confusing 
and doesn't promote legal certainty. I suggest a better place for 
requesting an optional "courtesy" attribution would be an a license 
preamble. I also note that, with this interpretation, the human readable 
summary is also wrong. "For any use or redistribution of the database, 
or works produced from it, you must make clear to others the license of 
the database and keep intact any notices on the original database." This 
is not true down the chain?! A case of wishful thinking I expect.

I am beginning to conclude the ODbL is a bloated, confusing mistake. We 
would be better serviced in our project goals by a simpler license i.e. 
a public domain-like license. In case public domain is impossible use to 
large GIS imports, a local database should be hosted separately under 
their particular license. I admit, integrating them together for large 
scale maps would be technically problematic. I think technical problems 
are preferable to legal problems which are almost inevitable with any 
share-alike license.

TimSC

PS. 
http://www.sciencecommons.org/projects/publishing/open-access-data-protocol/


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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] viral attribution and ODbL

2010-04-20 Thread Frederik Ramm
Hi,

M?rtin Koppenhoefer wrote:
>> do we really want to require the 38th party down the line to still
>> attribute OSM no matter how diluted the OSM content has become?
> 
> yes. Why should it have become diluted? 

The very nature of a produced work is to dilute OSM content because 
otherwise it would be a derived database!

> If you give this up, you do
> almost the same then releasing PD, and that's indeed what you are best
> known to advocate for.

We *do* want to allow releasing produced works under PD. Note that we 
are talking produced works here, not the data istself!

Bye
Frederik

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] viral attribution and ODbL

2010-04-19 Thread M∡rtin Koppenhoefer
2010/4/19 Frederik Ramm :
> do we really want to require the 38th party down the line to still
> attribute OSM no matter how diluted the OSM content has become?


yes. Why should it have become diluted? If you give this up, you do
almost the same then releasing PD, and that's indeed what you are best
known to advocate for.


> We have a well working culture of attribution in science, where you
> usually quote the source you took something from, but not the source
> behind the source behind the source.


yes, but usually you try to quote the first and if you could find the
places where he copied you would probably cite them and not him.


cheers,
Martin

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] viral attribution and ODbL

2010-04-19 Thread Frederik Ramm
Hi,

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 19:43, Frederik Ramm  wrote:
>> I am not bothered about individual contributions because everyone who
>> contributes *knows* what OSM is like and that he cannot expect to get
>> personal attribution. If someone however has released something under
>> CC-BY-SA without knowing OSM, they have reason to expect that wherever
>> their work is used, they are given credit, and OSM doesn't do that.
> 
> Whether someone "knows" OSM or not doesn't change how their
> contributions should be treated. Both works (in your example) were
> submitted under the same terms and should be treated exactly the same.

I think there is a difference, certainly morally but even legally. If 
you submit, under CC-BY-SA, data to an online map which clearly does not 
give the names of all contributors, and later claim that the map was 
violating your terms, that is something different from publishing your 
data on a web page under CC-BY-SA and then complaining that someone took 
it, put it in a web map, and didn't provide attribution.

I agree with your "*should* be treated the same" but I think the evil is 
lesser in one case than in the other.

Bye
Frederik

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

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] viral attribution and ODbL

2010-04-19 Thread Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 19:43, Frederik Ramm  wrote:
> I am not bothered about individual contributions because everyone who
> contributes *knows* what OSM is like and that he cannot expect to get
> personal attribution. If someone however has released something under
> CC-BY-SA without knowing OSM, they have reason to expect that wherever
> their work is used, they are given credit, and OSM doesn't do that.

Whether someone "knows" OSM or not doesn't change how their
contributions should be treated. Both works (in your example) were
submitted under the same terms and should be treated exactly the same.

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] viral attribution and ODbL

2010-04-19 Thread Frederik Ramm
Hi,

TimSC wrote:
> 1) Create a produced work under ODbL term 4.3 with proper attribution
> 2) Release produced work as public domain with proper attribution
> 3) Strip off legal notices and attribution (which I think is allowed, 
> almost by definition, for public domain works)
> 4) Republish as public domain or any other license, without attribution

This is allowed.

> My question: where is the term that copyright notices must be preserved 
> done the chain of derived works?

There is no such term for produced works. To achieve an attribution 
chain, we would have to have something that says "you may only release 
produced works under a license that enforces an attribution chain". Im 
glad we don't because I consider attribution chains to be evil.

> Second issue, which is probably the flip side of the same coin: people 
> might be inclined to use works that use some sort of attribution license 
> and incorperate them into OSM (this almost certainly has already 
> happened, OS opendata, etc). The attribution must be included in any 
> derived works.

We cannot import such data, even today, because we cannot make sure that 
the attribution is included in all derived works. So if you know of any 
such imports having taken place, they should be investigated and 
probably removed.

We do have a wiki page where we provide general attribution along the 
lines of "parts of OSM include data from X, Y, Z; thank you for that". 
But there is no rule, now or under ODbL, that requires people somehow 
incorporate that into their works.

Bye
Frederik

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

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Re: [OSM-legal-talk] viral attribution and ODbL

2010-04-19 Thread Richard Fairhurst
TimSC wrote:

> The worst case scenario is the contributor terms cannot accept any  
> data with an attribution condition. Hopefully that is not the case!  
> Is that interpretation any way valid, interesting, cross eyed? If  
> the answer is already out there, just link to it. Thanks!


http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-gb/2010-April/ 
005707.html is my take on it. The api06 link isn't working because  
IIRC LWG got itself a bit tangled about things.

cheers
Richard

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