[Foundation-l] Copyrighted maps and Derived works from copyrighted sources.

[jamesmikedupont at googlemail.com]

On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 11:40 AM, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> We are talking at cross purposes. What I am talking about are applications
> of geo data like these
>
>   -
>   http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2010/03/swedes-have-their-map-support.html
>   -
>   http://ultimategerardm.blogspot.com/2010/03/danes-have-their-map-support.html
>
> The data in both instances is extracted from Wikipedia articles. They
> provide the geo locations relating to Wikipedia articles. In one instance
> the data is projected on top of Google Maps and in the other on top of
> findfey.
>
> There is no vector data involved just projection on top of existing maps.

Projection on top of existing maps creates a new mashup, that is not the issue,
it creates liabilities only for the hosting of that map itself.
But where do these points come from? Is that not a collection of
points derived from some unknown source that might be in violation of
some contract or copyright? What about the EU database law? Is that
not a significant extract of the database?

We cannot include this data back into openstreetmap. I have also
worked on extractors to parse out the articles and produce OSM files,
and got blasted for doing so.
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/dev/2009-July/016231.html

There has been a discussion on this before:
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2009-May/036582.html

OSM policy states that we are not allowed to import Google derived points.

If you are mapping a new area that is only empty space, it is good to
start with data that is available, out of copyright maps, some of the
geonames data and if possible wikipedia articles. They can provide
locations to start with as reference locations.

My interest is improving the data in OSM directly and finding sources
that are usable to create the base layer.

Wikipedia is not yet a source of map data that can be used in
accordance with OSM policy, and there are good reasons why not.

mike