On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 7:16 AM, Jaak Laineste <jaak.laine...@gmail.com> wrote: > Map is a hand-written 2D picture of the world. It is definitely more a > kind of art than a digital photo in flickr, there is more subjectivity > and intelligence etc needed to make it. > > How can photos be copyrighted? Aren't photos just visual registrations > of facts? Also there are many artistic paintings, books, movies etc, > which try to be "purely factual", at least through the eyes of the > author? > > I don't really see how someone can even have the idea (or argument) > that map is just a database of facts. > > I'd suggest a simple technical test for "is X an art or fact". > 1. ask two persons to create the X. > 2. store it to a digital file, and make diff of the files. > > Only if you can get "no differences" then this was a pure fact. I am > sure that mapping (like e.g. photography) will fail the test, even > without trying it out.
Agreed. That's basically the merger doctrine. Of course, the problem with that here in the United States is Feist, and especially the lower court cases which attempted to follow Feist. I asked before why isn't OSM copyrightable when maps are copyrightable. And after some research I think I found the answer. Under a certain line of reasoning following Feist, maps *aren't* copyrightable, at least not to any significant extent. See ADC v. Franklin Maps. Which doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Maps are one of the original works for which copyright was designed. Not sure what's next. Maybe software. Eventually only abstract art will be copyrighted ;). _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
