Just an observation : These maps look just like if not identical to the russian topographical maps. mike
On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 12:26 AM, Matija Nalis <mnalis-n...@voyager.hr> wrote: > On Sun, 3 Oct 2010 09:41:00 +0100, Francis Davey <fjm...@gmail.com> wrote: >> On 2 October 2010 23:29, <ed...@billiau.net> wrote: >>> The argument is really >>> 'Is the Serbian government the legal successor of the Yugoslav government >>> in Serbian territories?' >> >> If (say) Serbia were to use OSMF or an OSM user in London, the local >> court would have to decide whether - as a matter of UK copyright law - >> Serbia were entitled to a copyright in the maps/data/whatever and if >> so whether it could be enforced. The Berne Convention requires that we >> afford the same protection to foreign copyrights as we do our own, so >> a court in England might well decide that Serbia could enforce these >> copyrights. Ditto pretty much any court in any country that was a >> signatory to the Convention. >> >> Of course there are massive caveats here: there might be no copyright >> in the data; > > Well, ex-Yugoslavia (as well as todays Serbia) were/are both Berne > convention signatories. The maps in question are from 1970s it seems, > and copyright in YU was 70 years AFAIR at the time the YU falled. > > So all singnatories to Berne convention should be still protecting that > works. Now, if I understand you correctly, you propose 2 scenarions: > > a) if it is likely that Serbia is successor to Yugoslavia, that the > maps in question are still protected (unless Serbia relinquieshed > copyright on them, which AFAIK it didn't), or > > b) if the Serbia is not successor to Yugoslavia (at least in the matter of > aforementioned copyright on maps), than that maps may be out of > copyright. > > While I agree with (a), the (b) does not seem right to me. IMHO, if Serbia > is not accepted as successor to Yugoslavia (and the matter was not resolved > by succession), then the copyright owner is "missing" - and should behave > like any other case of missing or unknown copyright owner (for example, if > author without successors died; or if the work was under pseudonym and never > reveled). > > And that behaviour is, to the best of my knowledge, that the copyright work > remains protected with "all rights reserved" (only practical difference > being that potential users now have 0% chance of buying rights from owner > anymore, as she's gone). (At least it looks so in Croatian copyright law > which is mostly the same as the ex-Yugoslav/Serbian one. Are you perhaps > arguing that under UK law if the copyright owner is not known or is not > proactively suing copyright breakers, one can legaly copy copyrighted works, > and is not in vioalation until he receives and ignores "cease and desist" > letter ?) > >> no-one might bother to sue anyway (I've no idea how >> aggressively Serbia would try to enforce rights it believed it had). > > Uh, that one ("are the chances we won't be caught breaking law low enough > today?") should not be the way to handle this (or similar) issues, IMHO. > > Unauthorized copying of copyrighted works is illegal. The possibly high > chances that copyright owners might not notice or might not be bothered > to sue ATM does not make it legal. > > > -- > Opinions above are GNU-copylefted. > > > _______________________________________________ > legal-talk mailing list > legal-t...@openstreetmap.org > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk > -- James Michael DuPont Member of Free Libre Open Source Software Kosova and Albania flossk.org flossal.org _______________________________________________ legal-talk mailing list legal-t...@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk