On Oct 12, 2004, at 12:14 PM, Daniel Mayer wrote:
--- Stirling Newberry stirling.newberry@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.