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

[WJhonson at aol.com]

In a message dated 4/1/2010 12:24:31 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 
jamesmikedupont at googlemail.com writes:


> As I said, the selection of these coordinates is a work, and if you
> dont have any image available you cannot do so.
> What is the contract between you and google to use this data? Are you
> sure that you are allowed to just take the points and relicense them
> under the CC-SA?
> 
> The sat images are not 100% facts, they are just one point of view.
> and just using one single source of information is not  a good idea.
> Even one point may not be a problem, but if you select all the
> interesting points then you run into issues of collections and
> databases.
> 
> I think the argument "points are facts" is too simple, we need to
> understand where these points come from.
> 
> mike >

_-----------------------------

Mike your argument rambles about.
Citing a fact is not creating nor denying a copyright claim at all, and I 
do not need anyone's permission to cite their work.  Zero.
And whatever license they think they have with me is not applicable to me 
citing their work as a source for something.
Citing is not copying.

The images *might* be copyright, and I say might because I don't know from 
where they got them.
If their own source to an image is a U.S. government satellite image or 
some other PD-released image, then they cannot copyright it.

The location points in the image, are not the image.  The points 
themselves, the lat/long points of some object like a bridge or whatever you're doing, 
are not copyrightable items.  Copyright implies an artistic creation of 
something, not a slavish compilation of facts no matter in what form.

So please address one issue at a time.
You do not need to know where a point comes from, in order to use it free 
of copyright restrictions.  You might *want* to know in order to *cite* your 
source, but you can do that without the need to care about copyright 
restrictions anyway.

We constantly cite copyrighted sources in Wikipedia.  We do not ask for 
permission to do so.  We do not *copy* those sources, we cite them.
Large difference there.

W.J.