On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 11:56 AM, Ben Last <ben.l...@nearmap.com> wrote: > Indeed; the entire subject is shrouded in what I'd call "complexity", and > what lawyers would call "my retirement beach house fund" :) I look at it > this way; imagine an eager Nearmap user buys a house in some newly developed > area (such as Clarkson in WA, where the OSM streets frequently have no > names) and sees that her street needs naming. Enthusiastically, she clicks > on the Edit button on our site, ready to help out. What we don't want to do > is present her with some long complex explanation of copyright and how it > might or might not apply to her, the country she lives in and the source of > her knowledge. Instead, our thinking is that we present a simple "don't > copy from existing maps" message and leave it at that.
Yes. I certainly think it's valid (and desirable) for a project like this to shield users from the complexities of laws, by creating a simpler policy that is guaranteed to be within the law. Wikipedia did this by coming up with a specific set of "fair use" cases they supported (whereas the law allows you to be as creative as you want, since fair use is a legal defence, not an actual right). I guess I'm questioning whether there's any need for that here, but only half-heartedly. I have a couple of lawyer friends who I really should set to work on this topic some day :) (Before anyone asks, I almost always abide by the current policy of not copying names from other sources. Occasionally I effectively copy one, because I looked up a map in order to visit a place, and therefore I "know" the name of it.) I sure hope there are no councils around that claim copyright over the set of all their street signs... > Hmm... I'll ask that question internally :) But it would be valid within > Australian only, That was another question I meant to ask. Does one map in accordance with the legal jurisdiction that the OSM servers are within, the jurisdiction where the mapper is, or the jurisdiction of the area being mapped? Steve _______________________________________________ Talk-au mailing list Talk-au@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au
