On 21 December 2010 10:59, Nick Hocking <nick.hock...@gmail.com> wrote:
Also I believe that the following actions also entail little or no > "independent intellectual effort". > > 1) walking/riding/driving around with a gps turned on and collecting GPS > traces. > 2) Tracing roads from either GPS traces or any imagery. > 3) Copying down street names from a street sign and then adding then to a > traced road. > 4) Noting and publishing the location of POIs. > 5) etc... > > Therefore, does this also mean that any contributions to the OSM project > attract no copyright and can be freely used to derive information from, > without any attribution, if so desired? > > I really hope the answers to these two questions are yes, since it appeals > to what I consider "freedom of information". > > My reading of the case is that it would have no bearing on deciding whether copyright subsists in each individual's manual contributions to OSM. The rules to determine that aren't really addressed, and Australia has typically has had a very low threshold for whether copyright subsists in a work. My opinion is copyright likely would still subsist in each contribution that was any greater than the purely trivial, and that the legal landscape to determine this hasn't really altered. However, if copyright doesn't subsist in each individual contribution, then this case will have a real bearing on whether copyright subsists in the entire OSM database. I would say that if copyright doesn't subsist in the individual contributions, then the automated process that we have to compile the database from the contributions doesn't meet the requirements to have a new copyrightable work, and therefore copyright would not subsist in the OSM db in Australia. Ian.
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