On Oct 12, 2004, at 12:14 PM, Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Stirling Newberry
<stirling.newberry(a)xigenics.net> wrote:
Collecting and creating spatial data is indeed
creative work,
Making a digital outline of a river or road from an aerial photo is
slavish,
not creative work. The only creativity possible is in making mistakes
but the
Supremes have ruled that that cannot be used to justify a copyright
defense.
The problem is that this concept has not be tested yet for GIS data.
-- mav
Translating from one medium to another is defined as creativity. Just
as making a translation is copyrightable (though derrivative of the
original work). However, taking a PD aerial photograph and taking a
program to reduce it down to a line and releasing it under GFDL puts
the material in the intellectual commons. The change is that in 1980
you had to hire a person to do the work, and companies successfully
argued that if they could not make enough to pay that person, it would
not be done.
We shouldn't be trying to rationalize skirting current law. We should
be working very hard to make sure that everything that is available
under current law is accessible and usuable. This is my last online
comment on the IP issues of mapping, if someone has a comment,
objection or question about IP issues involved here, email me privately
and I'll be happy to discuss it - I just don't want to be taking up
community bandwidth on the issue.