[GSDI Legal Socioecon] Fwd: LINZ Data upload for OpenStreetMap will go dark on April 1

Tue Jan 25 12:20:43 EST 2011

Something similar with OSM data seems to happen in the US with federal agencies who are required to use public domain principles and regulations. Perhaps somebody else can shed more light on the details?

Best,
Francis

On 25 Jan 2011, at 04:52, Roger Longhorn wrote:

> Some food for thought on the impact of licensing and open source/creative commons licenses.
> 
> Kind regards
> 
> Roger
> 
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: 	[Aust-NZ] Fwd: LINZ Data upload for OpenStreetMap will go dark on April 1
> Date: 	Sun, 23 Jan 2011 16:11:20 -0800 (PST)
> From: 	Hamish <hamish_b at yahoo.com>
> To: 	geodata at lists.osgeo.org, aust-nz at lists.osgeo.org
> 
> 
> [cc from the NZOpenGIS mailing list for informational porpoises, as this is a world-wide issue]
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> well we're going to have to deal with this at some stage. Under
> current rules the LINZ Data Upload account is going to be locked out
> of OpenStreetMap starting April 1st. (we don't own the Crown's copyright
> and can't accept the licensing agreement or [effectively] reassign
> copyright to the OSM Foundation on the Crown's behalf) And so some time
> after April 1st all of our hard work would then be deleted from the main
> database.
> 
> we are not alone, Australia is in the same boat:
> http://lwn.net/Articles/422498/
> 
> and this thread is required reading:
> 
> http://lwn.net/Articles/422493/
> 
> it is worth it I think to read that in-full. Especially as it contains
> a series of posts by Mike of the Creative Commons ("mlinksva")
> clarifying their position and concerns, and well, they are/have
> lawyers who know what they're talking about. [public domain for OSM is
> not their recommendation after all]
> 
> To be honest I find it all highly demotivating. Reading through Mike's
> comments does give me a bit of hope, though, I would suggest we all
> make a few final CC-by-SA .osm planet file dumps as backup by mid-late
> March, before any of our hard work gets deleted or non-license
> compatible data gets added to it. I assume the extract servers will be
> overloaded March 31st.
> 
> 
> this has all been endlessly debated before, but we can't ignore it
> anymore. fwiw my 3c:
> 
> (putting my bias clearly on display :-), but hopefully my reasoning as well)
> <opinion>
> 
> - OSM map data is not a "fact", it's an abstraction of facts by its
> very definition, with a lot of human choices about what to include,
> how to call things, how many nodes to put into that corner, etc. but
> even if it were like an exact photograph instead of a painting, a
> photo of reality still has valid copyright. see above LWN thread for
> better comments on that by "epa", Mike, and myself.
> 
> - I've read the ODbL from end to end (a while back, may have been a
> final draft), and my impression at that time was that it was a big
> complicated pile of poo. the lawyers for EvilCorp would have a field day
> with all its loopholes and contradictions.
> 
> - the new contributor terms are ugly too. (yo' momma)
> 
> - effectively the data is going from a GPL-like strong copyleft to a
> LGPL-like weak copyleft. (I say that from a reading of the new
> license/CT; not from what has been said about it). While not my
> preference that isn't a deal breaker for me, as long as it's clearly
> understood&  out in the open. (but it's not, this has been sold to the
> community as a way to strengthen the copyleft)
> 
> - I don't know enough about Contract versus Copyright law to comment
> fully, but the "breaks open" vs. "breaks closed" and Privity of
> Contract arguments by landley in the above LWN thread gives me much
> concern.
> 
> - how do they enforce a click-through agreement for the Xapi wget
> interface and still have it be useful?
> 
> - EULAs are the legal equivalent of a junk bond. like it or not, copyright
> law is the strongest of the (c)/contract/trademark/patent family of IP
> laws, so the best we've got to work with.
> 
> - just because you've done all the hard work to load the gun and find
> a target, if you find it is pointed at your hunting partner's head you
> don't actually have to pull the trigger, even if it does mean you've
> got to go to the effort of finding another target, or not firing at
> all. (emotive enough for you? ;-)  but seriously, fait accompli
> rhetoric isn't worth much.
> 
> and finally..
> there's a region by region ranking of how many users have accepted the
> new terms:
> 
> http://www.odbl.de
> 
> I'm proud to say NZ/Aust ranks second (only Albania beats us) in not
> saying yes to it. but I think the methodology on that site is highly
> highly flawed, as they only look at who made the *last* revision,
> ignoring the "derived" part of derived work. So the non-version-1
> numbers there are actually useless and highly misleading. Even if they
> follow the history tree back fully to weed out what are map features
> derived from non-agreeing sources, when Ways are split in osm, only
> half the Way retains the history, the other half becomes something
> new. And that's a one-way street. The new half appears to the system
> to be an original work while it is actually not. So even if they
> followed the modification tree fully for that analysis, they'd still
> missing many many CC-by-SA-only contributions. A deeper algorithm
> might be able to sort it out, in theory, perhaps, but I'm not holding
> my breath for that.
> </opinion>
> 
> best,
> Hamish
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