Re: [OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] Progressing OSM to a new dataLicence regime
Robert (Jamie) Munro wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Gervase Markham wrote: | Robert (Jamie) Munro wrote: | It's been proposed by me several times in the past. I think it's | essential. I don't know of a similar major project that doesn't do some | kind of assignment. Wikipedia is the nearest, but Wikipedia is a | collection of articles that all stand on their own. I didn't make it clear that I want a non-exclusive, non-revokable license to the foundation, rather than assignment as such. This is important, for example, for the case of map data collected as a side product of collecting some commercial data. There's no question that you can still use your data for whatever you want. | Can you name some which do? ~ * MusicBrainz.org ~ * voxforge.org Then there's lots of code projects like Mozilla, apache, etc. and also semi-free projects like dmoz.org, peoples map etc. I think I can speak with some authority when I say that Mozilla does not require copyright assignment of any sort :-) Apache requires the type of rights sharing you mention. | But surely a license is a codification of what everyone agrees it | should be allowed for? In theory yes, but based on how long we've been discussing this issue, it can never be in practise. Surely the length of discussion is symptomatic of the fact that there is actually some disagreement about what everyone agrees it should be allowed for (your phrase)? | There are negative sides to a copyright assignment. A) We probably | wouldn't get one from e.g. AND or MASSGIS (although I'm speculating). We could handle large data donations specially. All contributors are equal, but some are more equal than others? How do we know that AND and MASSGIS will support our current proposed license change? I assume that the OSMF has sounded them out. They have told us, at least, that the removal of SA would cause a rethink, which implies that there has been communication. | B) | It would mean the scenario I mentioned to Frederik, where a commercial | company could sue a license violator, couldn't happen, because they | would no longer be the copyright holder. If they are suing over a part of the data they contributed, they would be joint copyright holders. They would be entitled to damages along with the foundation. Actually, under the scheme you propose above, they would not be joint copyright holders - copyright would remain with the original contributor. But yes, if we did what you propose, then the suing would still be possible. Gerv ___ legal-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] Progressing OSM to a new dataLicence regime
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Gervase Markham wrote: | Robert (Jamie) Munro wrote: | It's been proposed by me several times in the past. I think it's | essential. I don't know of a similar major project that doesn't do some | kind of assignment. Wikipedia is the nearest, but Wikipedia is a | collection of articles that all stand on their own. I didn't make it clear that I want a non-exclusive, non-revokable license to the foundation, rather than assignment as such. This is important, for example, for the case of map data collected as a side product of collecting some commercial data. There's no question that you can still use your data for whatever you want. | Can you name some which do? ~ * MusicBrainz.org ~ * voxforge.org Then there's lots of code projects like Mozilla, apache, etc. and also semi-free projects like dmoz.org, peoples map etc. | We need a situation where someone can say Yes when an enquiry comes | in, not hire a lawyer to look at license XYZ. Otherwise the data is | useless for many purposes that everyone would agree it should be allowed | for. | | But surely a license is a codification of what everyone agrees it | should be allowed for? In theory yes, but based on how long we've been discussing this issue, it can never be in practise. | For example, a while ago, ITN news needed a map of Baghdad. No one could | say for sure how much of the TV buletin they would have to release | CC-by-sa in order to allow them to do that. Looking back at that now, | probably only the final ITN styled bitmap image that is shown on the | screen, but the designers of ITN's style guidelines probably haven't | licensed ITN to release them. | | If the foundation owned the data, they could say to ITN just show a | logo and www.openstreetmap.org in the corner at some point, and | everyone would be happy. | | As I understand it, the new licence solves this problem. It might solve /that/ problem, but it will not solve all problems. | Another example: it would be great if an npemap type system could be | used with OSM maps to derive a free postcode database, but license | incompatibilities make that impossible. This is insane. | | (Define free.) You may think so. Other contributors may think it's | entirely reasonable for postcode data calculated using OSM to be BY-SA | rather than PD. In this case PD. FTP is PD, npemaps postcodes are PD. | Obviously if | that went to any kind of vote, the foundation would allow that, but they | don't currently have the power to allow it. | | It would certainly be interesting to look at whether the licence change | would have any effect on the postcode problem. | | Yes, maybe you can come up with a license that would unambiguously allow | the above two uses, but there will be cases where it will be in OSM's | interests to bend the rules, and we must provide a mechanism that allows | this. | | There are negative sides to a copyright assignment. A) We probably | wouldn't get one from e.g. AND or MASSGIS (although I'm speculating). We could handle large data donations specially. If there were 3 or 4 organisations we had to ask (and normally only 1 per geographic area) before we could use the data for an unforseen purpose, that's a lot easier than having to contact potentially thousands of contributors each time. How do we know that AND and MASSGIS will support our current proposed license change? | B) | It would mean the scenario I mentioned to Frederik, where a commercial | company could sue a license violator, couldn't happen, because they | would no longer be the copyright holder. If they are suing over a part of the data they contributed, they would be joint copyright holders. They would be entitled to damages along with the foundation. They could also help the foundation with legal costs or something. I'm not sure of the law, but maybe they could sue on the grounds that they lost money due to a third parties illegal actions, even if the actions weren't against them directly. Robert (Jamie) Munro -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFHrKdgz+aYVHdncI0RAo0xAKCbFFDPXTYpo+JfCC5sYvgtrYMS1ACg/TcX 4mU1f4iqyC17p7lImTkkGW0= =qK4y -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ legal-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] Progressing OSM to a new dataLicence regime
Robert (Jamie) Munro wrote: It's been proposed by me several times in the past. I think it's essential. I don't know of a similar major project that doesn't do some kind of assignment. Wikipedia is the nearest, but Wikipedia is a collection of articles that all stand on their own. Can you name some which do? We need a situation where someone can say Yes when an enquiry comes in, not hire a lawyer to look at license XYZ. Otherwise the data is useless for many purposes that everyone would agree it should be allowed for. But surely a license is a codification of what everyone agrees it should be allowed for? For example, a while ago, ITN news needed a map of Baghdad. No one could say for sure how much of the TV buletin they would have to release CC-by-sa in order to allow them to do that. Looking back at that now, probably only the final ITN styled bitmap image that is shown on the screen, but the designers of ITN's style guidelines probably haven't licensed ITN to release them. If the foundation owned the data, they could say to ITN just show a logo and www.openstreetmap.org in the corner at some point, and everyone would be happy. As I understand it, the new licence solves this problem. Another example: it would be great if an npemap type system could be used with OSM maps to derive a free postcode database, but license incompatibilities make that impossible. This is insane. (Define free.) You may think so. Other contributors may think it's entirely reasonable for postcode data calculated using OSM to be BY-SA rather than PD. Obviously if that went to any kind of vote, the foundation would allow that, but they don't currently have the power to allow it. It would certainly be interesting to look at whether the licence change would have any effect on the postcode problem. Yes, maybe you can come up with a license that would unambiguously allow the above two uses, but there will be cases where it will be in OSM's interests to bend the rules, and we must provide a mechanism that allows this. There are negative sides to a copyright assignment. A) We probably wouldn't get one from e.g. AND or MASSGIS (although I'm speculating). B) It would mean the scenario I mentioned to Frederik, where a commercial company could sue a license violator, couldn't happen, because they would no longer be the copyright holder. Gerv ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] Progressing OSM to a new dataLicence regime
My apologies but the DBL text seems to be mis-formatted -- probably as a result of my last wordpress update. It should be fixed now, but just in case the downloads offer the canonical version. Thanks! ~Jordan Mr. Jordan S Hatcher, JD, LLM jordan at opencontentlawyer dot com OC Blog: http://opencontentlawyer.com IP/IT Blog: http://twitchgamer.net Open Data Commons http://opendatacommons.org Usage of Creative Commons by cultural heritage organisations http://www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation/studies/cc2007 ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] Progressing OSM to a new dataLicence regime
Jordan S Hatcher wrote: I'd like to note that, just to clarify, factual data is generally not copyrightable, and so there would be nothing to assign. Why is it that we are assuming (and I'm not just saying this to Jordan) that the individual nodes and ways in OSM are factual data? I don't think that's true, at least not for everything. When I trace a road, there is a creative process going on. I decide where to place nodes to best represent the road without using too many, and so on. There's certainly a creative element. Multiply that by millions of roads... Something like a list of road names or perhaps a GPX track would be factual data, sure. But not all data in OSM is like that. -- Copyright probably protects copying (and other restricted acts) the entire database and (to varying degrees only parts of the database) but doesn't say much of anything about taking all the data and creating a new database -- Database rights in Europe protect extracting and re-utlising substantial amounts of the data apart from the database (so sucking out all the data and creating a new database). -- Outside of Europe, you are likely to rely on contract and other law (possibly unfair competition claims). Contract claims are one-to- one (in personam) and not one-against-everyone (in rem). This means that it is harder to enforce your claims against people who received the (uncopyrightable) data from someone who breached the contract. So if a disaffected insider in a mapping company anonymously sends OSM in the US a copy of their database and we used it on a US-hosted copy of OSM, they couldn't come after us on these grounds? Could they come after us on any grounds? In the protocol, FAQ, and other venues, Science Commons argues: -- People think that copyright protects actions with databases that it doesn't (such as getting all the data out and creating a new database) -- What copyright does and doesn't protect in a database is really tricky, even for IP experts, and so making the public try to parse all the minute legal questions is overly burdensome and expensive both in money (lawyer fees), time (spent wondering about the rights), and lost opportunity (not using the database because of all the hassle) Which is why we are using the FIL, right? The economic impact of the “sui generis” right on database production is unproven. Introduced to stimulate the production of databases in Europe, the new instrument has had no proven impact on the production of databases. *** Is “sui generis” protection therefore necessary for a thriving database industry? The empirical evidence, at this stage, casts doubts on this necessity. So what protection is available in Europe for these database vendors? If the answer is none, then why are more copies of proprietary databases not floating around the web? There has been some discussion of commercial data providers on this list. I'm no expert in their practices, but they rely on: -- IP rights such as copyright and database rights -- contracts that prohibit re-distribution So far, that's the same as our proposal, then? (Our contract doesn't prohibit redistribution, but it does prohibit other behaviours. Is there law to suggest that a non-redistribution clause has more legal force than other types of clause?) **-- marketing, branding, trade marks (and so on) that identify them as a quality source of information We can certainly do that :-) I think it's important to point out that commercial companies protecting their data do not allow their users to share it, and so most of their protection is based around this. By allowing others to share the work freely, you lose many of these avenues of protection (like technical protection measures, for example). This seems like equivocation on the word protection. Your first use means restricting copying, and so your first clause is a tautology. The last use means something wider. OSM is looking for protection in the sense of legally-enforceable restrictions. Commercial mapping companies make no redistribution one of their restrictions, but we don't. However, I don't see why that should reduce the force of the legal mechanisms they and we can use to enforce our restrictions. Gerv ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] Progressing OSM to a new dataLicence regime
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Gervase Markham wrote: | Robert (Jamie) Munro wrote: | Long term, we can avoid the ambiguity by making it clear that all data | belongs to OSM, whoever that is (probably the foundation), then we can | let the foundation change the license whenever they need to. | | This would be a copyright assignment, which would be a large change in | the relationship between the participants and the project. As far as I | understand it, it hasn't even been proposed. It's been proposed by me several times in the past. I think it's essential. I don't know of a similar major project that doesn't do some kind of assignment. Wikipedia is the nearest, but Wikipedia is a collection of articles that all stand on their own. We need a situation where someone can say Yes when an enquiry comes in, not hire a lawyer to look at license XYZ. Otherwise the data is useless for many purposes that everyone would agree it should be allowed for. For example, a while ago, ITN news needed a map of Baghdad. No one could say for sure how much of the TV buletin they would have to release CC-by-sa in order to allow them to do that. Looking back at that now, probably only the final ITN styled bitmap image that is shown on the screen, but the designers of ITN's style guidelines probably haven't licensed ITN to release them. If the foundation owned the data, they could say to ITN just show a logo and www.openstreetmap.org in the corner at some point, and everyone would be happy. Another example: it would be great if an npemap type system could be used with OSM maps to derive a free postcode database, but license incompatibilities make that impossible. This is insane. Obviously if that went to any kind of vote, the foundation would allow that, but they don't currently have the power to allow it. Yes, maybe you can come up with a license that would unambiguously allow the above two uses, but there will be cases where it will be in OSM's interests to bend the rules, and we must provide a mechanism that allows this. Robert (Jamie) Munro -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFHqlXaz+aYVHdncI0RAruLAKDFMC5/F21mdMJbU/mc5Q8WdeSygwCfQG3n JRVeGK62lCSlh9J8oSfnPIw= =sIHk -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] Progressing OSM to a new dataLicence regime
On 6 Feb 2008, at 12:19, Gervase Markham wrote: I think it's important to point out that commercial companies protecting their data do not allow their users to share it, and so most of their protection is based around this. By allowing others to share the work freely, you lose many of these avenues of protection (like technical protection measures, for example). This seems like equivocation on the word protection. Your first use means restricting copying, and so your first clause is a tautology. The last use means something wider. OSM is looking for protection in the sense of legally-enforceable restrictions. Commercial mapping companies make no redistribution one of their restrictions, but we don't. However, I don't see why that should reduce the force of the legal mechanisms they and we can use to enforce our restrictions. Thanks for the comment. You pointed out my use of the word protection [1], which may have been unclear on what I was referring. Protection could be by legal tools or by using other methods (such as the ones I mentioned). My point is that there are other tools beyond contract (legal and otherwise) based around not allowing further re-distribution. -- one cannot rely on passwords and other controls to restrict access to data (protecting it with a physical lock) and give anyone the password, as it defeats the purpose of having a password in the first place. A copyleft data licence can't use passwords to protect its data. This is a non-legal protection not available for open data. -- take trade secret for example. You cannot give everyone information and then claim it is a secret. A commercial company could have data protected by contract that they prohibit further distribution and obligate the user to secrecy for the data. This is a legal protection not available for open data. You also wrote: OSM is looking for protection in the sense of legally-enforceable restrictions. I would think that OSM would be looking at all ways of protecting their content in the way they choose best -- be it legal, technical, or otherwise. Thanks! ~Jordan Mr. Jordan S Hatcher, JD, LLM jordan at opencontentlawyer dot com OC Blog: http://opencontentlawyer.com IP/IT Blog: http://twitchgamer.net Open Data Commons http://opendatacommons.org Usage of Creative Commons by cultural heritage organisations http://www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation/studies/cc2007 [1] protection |prəˈtek sh ən| noun the action of protecting someone or something, or the state of being protected ___ legal-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] Progressing OSM to a new dataLicence regime
At 09:35 AM 2/5/2008, Rob Myers wrote: Robert (Jamie) Munro wrote: I'm still think that the foundation owns everyone's data already. When you sign up, it says: By creating an account, you agree that all work uploaded to openstreetmap.org and all data created by use of any tools which connect to openstreetmap.org is to be licensed under this Creative Commons license (by-sa). I read that as anything I give to OSM, they will license back to me (and everyone else) under CC-by-sa. It can't possibly mean that I am licensing it to them under CC-by-sa, because they don't even remotely comply with the 'by' part of that license. It is marginally possible to read the terms to mean that, but it is a less likely reading than the expected one, that you are licencing the data to OSM under BY-SA. It might be worth modifying the TsCs to avoid any potential ambiguity. - Rob. And also OSM and OSMF are two very different things. OSM does not exist as a formal legal entity and openstreetmap.org is just a web site name, so I don't see how either can be a Licensor with a big L unless there is some appropriate common law in jurisdictions that support that form of law. The OSM Foundation is a formal legal entity but has nothing to do with the current license, it does not assert rights and no one has assigned any rights to it. In fact, as the license currently stands, http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/OpenStreetMap_License, there is no explicit definition of who the licensor is at all. Certainly something that will addressed by any new license! Mike Stockholm ___ legal-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] Progressing OSM to a new dataLicence regime
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Rob Myers wrote: | Robert (Jamie) Munro wrote: | | I'm still think that the foundation owns everyone's data already. When | you sign up, it says: | By creating an account, you agree that all work uploaded to | openstreetmap.org and all data created by use of any tools which connect | to openstreetmap.org is to be licensed under this Creative Commons | license (by-sa). | | I read that as anything I give to OSM, they will license back to me (and | everyone else) under CC-by-sa. It can't possibly mean that I am | licensing it to them under CC-by-sa, because they don't even remotely | comply with the 'by' part of that license. | | It is marginally possible to read the terms to mean that, but it is a | less likely reading than the expected one, that you are licencing the | data to OSM under BY-SA. | | It might be worth modifying the TsCs to avoid any potential ambiguity. My point was that we may be able to exploit the ambiguity, otherwise we might have to throw away half the data when we change license. Long term, we can avoid the ambiguity by making it clear that all data belongs to OSM, whoever that is (probably the foundation), then we can let the foundation change the license whenever they need to. Robert (Jamie) Munro -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFHqLhvz+aYVHdncI0RAo5wAJ4rbaX+IwkRtgqelK/wSbvToimpbwCgzStM UzlMVxhyE06BgF+U91M4UXs= =jxj0 -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ legal-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] Progressing OSM to a new dataLicence regime
Le 4 févr. 08 à 19:22, Tom Chance a écrit : This sounds like a nightmare: I could lose weeks of work because someone who fails to reply played with Potlatch once for a few minutes and then vanished. You have a better idea? :-) No, but it's a bit scary without having any good idea of the number of people who won't respond. Here are two possibly rubbish ideas: I'm just a french law student, not an accomplished jurist yet, but could'nt you use the concept of silence equals consent. When publishing the next license, just include a clause saying that as long as users do not explicitly refuse to comply, their silence is being considered as acceptance of the new terms and their data is distributed under these terms. Adding a deadline of one year would allow OSM to definitively lock the data under the new license to prevent a zombi coming back ten years from now to claim a refusal. The question this poses though, is wether or not the current legal terms allow OSM to undergo such a procedure on behalf of users and their accounts. Regards, Axel. ___ legal-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] Progressing OSM to a new dataLicence regime
Hello, On Mon, 4 Feb 2008 13:47:44 +, SteveC [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 4 Feb 2008, at 13:46, David Earl wrote: how do we avoid the situation where e.g. someone who disagrees the new license has run a bot over all of Cambridge to tweak things (as has indeed happened to many of the ways) or who has 'tidied up' bits of my mapping so all my surveying is now labelled with their name. Does all of my mapping of Cambridge get deleted because someone has later modified my work in a trivial way? (Conversely, can I just select a big area, and add a new tag to transfer the data to my name and cause someone who doesn't agree the new license to be retained?) It would have to be a clean chain of all editors agreeing, and the last timewise editor to disagree is the edit (and those thereafter) that would be thrown away. This sounds like a nightmare: I could lose weeks of work because someone who fails to reply played with Potlatch once for a few minutes and then vanished. You have a better idea? :-) No, but it's a bit scary without having any good idea of the number of people who won't respond. Here are two possibly rubbish ideas: - Do a special render of the planet indicating the density of users, e.g. deep red means lots of different people have been editing an area. This would at least give people an idea of how complex their data is; - Do a trial email shot asking every user to confirm that they will consider the issue, or some such thing, to get an idea of the response rate; What is the suggested time between the email and the delete steps, by the by? You obviously need a deadline but I'd need a good pub trip to calm me down if I found out all my data is wiped, I start fixing it and then a week or two later the key person finally responds so wasting all my effort ;-) Kind regards, Tom ___ legal-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] [OSM-talk] Progressing OSM to a new dataLicence regime
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Axel Marquette wrote: | Le 4 févr. 08 à 19:22, Tom Chance a écrit : | | This sounds like a nightmare: I could lose weeks of work because | someone who fails to reply played with Potlatch once for a few | minutes and then vanished. | You have a better idea? :-) | No, but it's a bit scary without having any good idea of the number of | people who won't respond. Here are two possibly rubbish ideas: | | I'm just a french law student, not an accomplished jurist yet, but | could'nt you use the concept of silence equals consent. When | publishing the next license, just include a clause saying that as | long as users do not explicitly refuse to comply, their silence is | being considered as acceptance of the new terms and their data is | distributed under these terms. Adding a deadline of one year would | allow OSM to definitively lock the data under the new license to | prevent a zombi coming back ten years from now to claim a refusal. | The question this poses though, is wether or not the current legal | terms allow OSM to undergo such a procedure on behalf of users and | their accounts. I'm still think that the foundation owns everyone's data already. When you sign up, it says: By creating an account, you agree that all work uploaded to openstreetmap.org and all data created by use of any tools which connect to openstreetmap.org is to be licensed under this Creative Commons license (by-sa). I read that as anything I give to OSM, they will license back to me (and everyone else) under CC-by-sa. It can't possibly mean that I am licensing it to them under CC-by-sa, because they don't even remotely comply with the 'by' part of that license. Robert (Jamie) Munro -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFHp61uz+aYVHdncI0RAnynAJ9bwN2u+izJnwdai+041C3nZJY5qwCeKWL0 mUd2/isZMcvKkNQSiznG+mw= =3NHV -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ legal-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/legal-talk
