There are yet another side to all this

Heh. That's bisuness model of Geocentre Consulting: they check licenses of firms who offer maps and if they don't have proper licenses - they are going to them and demand to sign an agreement. Alternative is not pretty: high penalty or jail time. You may be true as far as actual jail time is concerned: it gives nothing to extorters so I can not recall any recent cases where it actually happened. But fines are fine :-) They can be used with great "otkat" technology to produce actual money.

So if you are talking about problems for pesonal use - it's probably Ok (too much hassle for too little gain), but shops who'll offer CDs with OSM... that's another story :-)