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Reconciliation between CC and ODCReconciliation between CC and ODCPosted Jan 23, 2011 20:27 UTC (Sun) by epa (subscriber, #39769)In reply to: Reconciliation between CC and ODC by nybble41 Parent article: OpenStreetMap's point of no return
If I understand you rightly you are saying that the copyright subsisting in maps (in countries such as the USA) is only in such creative element as the map contains. A consequence of that would be that it is not infringing copyright to make a copy of a map, provided you only copy the factual data and not any of the creative part. In other words you could buy a tourist map of New York City and trace over it to extract out purely factual information such as street layout, and make your own map provided you didn't copy the typography or colours or recommended restaurants or other creative element.
If that is the case, then I thoroughly agree that doing the same process using a computer and a computer-readable representation of the same map would not be any more copyrightable.
However I don't think it is the case, because maps are explicitly covered by copyright law, and I don't believe this coverage is hedged with anything like 'but only the creative part, not the factual part'.
I don't mean to imply that making a map of an area grants an absolute monopoly over the facts it contains. Anyone else can go out and independently survey the same area. But I don't think they can simply copy the map somebody else produced, even if they just copy the facts such as the position of objects or their names. If that were so, then all maps would be pretty close to being in the public domain, and projects such as OSM would be either unnecessary or trivially easy to complete by copying from existing maps.
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Reconciliation between CC and ODC Posted Jan 24, 2011 4:41 UTC (Mon) by an+h0ny (guest, #72530) [Link]
"A consequence of that would be that it is not infringing copyright to make a copy of a map, provided you only copy the factual data and not any of the creative part."
This is correct. "The protection that each map receives extends only to its original expression, and neither the facts nor the idea embodied in the maps is protected." (Mason v. Montgomery Data, Inc., http://www.coolcopyright.com/cases/fulltext/masonmontgome...)
Reconciliation between CC and ODC Posted Jan 24, 2011 4:59 UTC (Mon) by an+h0ny (guest, #72530) [Link]
By the way, I recommend you read Mason v. Montgomery Data, Inc. in its entirety. Yes, copyright does not restrict the copying of facts, but lines on a map, which represent facts, are not necessarily facts in themselves (and I see no reason that digitally encoded lines should be any different from printed ones).
Reconciliation between CC and ODC Posted Jan 26, 2011 0:46 UTC (Wed) by jrochkind (guest, #72573) [Link]
Nope, you probably can't _trace_ it, because the exact lines and curves are probably copyrightable.
But you can look at where the streets are, and redraw it yourself. Or use the street names to fill in blanks on the map you drew seperately. Etc.
In the U.S. This discussion has a lot of people mentioning "the statute" without saying what statute in what country! In the US at least, the actual bounds of copyright are (and have been for 100 years) defined more by case law than statute.
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