Reconciliation between CC and ODC [LWN.net]

Reconciliation between CC and ODC

Posted Jan 23, 2011 20:19 UTC (Sun) by epa (subscriber, #39769)
In reply to: Reconciliation between CC and ODC by dlang
Parent article: OpenStreetMap's point of no return

a phone book includes addresses, which is map data, according to you, this is as good as bing a map.

I don't think a list of addresses is really anything like a map. A map is a schematic representation of certain chosen features of the real world (whether physical features, or conceptual ones like political boundaries), transformed into an abstract geometric space (most commonly a 2-d plane) using a fixed projection.

A phone book doesn't really contain any map information, nor can you extract map information from it. So I don't think it is a map, and that is why it does not fall under the copyrightability of maps.

I didn't mean to imply that any collection of facts about the real world or about addresses or location of objects is automatically considered a map.

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Reconciliation between CC and ODC

Posted Jan 24, 2011 1:17 UTC (Mon) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]

a map as you define it 'a schematic representation of certain chosen features of the real world (whether physical features, or conceptual ones like political boundaries), transformed into an abstract geometric space (most commonly a 2-d plane) using a fixed projection.' is copyrightable, nobody is disputing that

however, what is in doubt is if a list of the 'chosen features of the real world' without the 'schematic representation' or the step of being 'transformed into an abstract geometric space' is copyrightable

the OSM database isn't the representation, it's the list of features of the real world. in other words, a list of facts

Reconciliation between CC and ODC

Posted Jan 24, 2011 11:28 UTC (Mon) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link]

Have a look at the OSM data, perhaps as an XML download. You will see that it has a schematic representation, in this case a series of abstract 'tags' which are used to represent concepts such as a road, a building or access rights. It also uses an abstract geometric space, in this case a two-dimensional plane, where points on the earth's surface are mapped onto the plane using the WGS84 coordinate system.

Reconciliation between CC and ODC

Posted Jan 24, 2011 15:13 UTC (Mon) by an+h0ny (guest, #72530) [Link]

"however, what is in doubt is if a list of the 'chosen features of the real world' without the 'schematic representation' or the step of being 'transformed into an abstract geometric space' is copyrightable"

While I believe epa answered this question (OSM *does* have these things), I also have to beg to differ that a list of chosen features of the real world is not copyrightable.

Copyrightability requires creative arrangement *or* selection (*or* both). A selection of facts about the world which are useful for creating a map would, in itself, be copyrightable in the US, because it takes human creativity to decide which facts are useful and which are not.

Now, that said, go back to epa's answer and take a look some time at OSM. Or just take a look at the database schema (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Database_schema). The basic building blocks of the OSM database are not "facts", they're "nodes" (points), "ways" (lines), and "relations" (which, among other things, can represent polygons). Go to http://www.openstreetmap.org/ and edit things a bit. The software (Potlatch) does not ask for a list of facts, it provides a canvas on which you can draw things.