[Publicwhip-playing] Re: [geo-discuss] Re: [Openstreetmap] Coders needed for similar project & UK FOI act request update.

[Roger Longhorn]

Rufus Pollock wrote:

> I think Roger is absolutely right formally on this. However should the 
> FOI request succeed surely that would imply that all British Citizens 
> are entitled to access to this data. If that were the case while 
> re-use would be prohibited why would redistribution to other (UK) 
> individuals be illegal -- it would simply be a quicker method of 
> getting the data than endless FOI requests by different citizens.
>
"Re-distribution" of copyrighted material _IS _re-use/exploitation and 
hence violates copyright unless such use falls under allowed 'fair use' 
legislation which is imprecise and determined mainly by case law which 
differs from country to country.

RAL

>
> Roger Longhorn wrote:
>
>> James is quite correct. FoI is about access, NOT exploitation. 
>> Copyright is copyright, regardless of how you gain access to the 
>> material. In countries like the USA where much (not all) federal data 
>> and information is automatically, legally put into the public domain 
>> (a legal dimension of data, nothing to do with whether or not it is 
>> made publicly available), then anyone can do anything that they want 
>> to/with it. Assuming that you can find it - hence the FoI Act in the 
>> USA, which prevents the US government from hiding such public domain 
>> info from view - you cannot exploit what you cannot see/find!
>>
>> In most of Europe - not just the UK - and in Cnada, Australia and 
>> many other countries in the world, government data is copyrighted by 
>> the government or the department or agency who created it. Don't 
>> forget, unless something is *put *in the public domain explicitly 
>> either by law (as in USA for federal data - only federal, not state 
>> or local gov data) or by declaration (you can surrender your 
>> copyright officially, declaring that something for which you hold 
>> copyeright is now in the public domain), then cpyright in the 
>> material still exists. And in databases, copyright now exists due 
>> implementation of the EU's Database Protection Directive across all 
>> EU Member States (25).
>>
>> Simply gaining access to information or a dataset by way of your 
>> country's FoI Act does NOT confer any rights to re-use of that data. 
>> Those of you who have been assuming that FoI in the UK will answer 
>> your data problems had better take some professional legal acvice 
>> very soon, at least before you decide to launch any new product or 
>> service, even for free, without the express permission of the 
>> data/information owner (copyrght holder). The fines for copyright 
>> infringement are quite horrendous. And similar fines apply for 
>> 'vicarious copyright infringement' which covers cases where you 
>> publish or exploit someone else's material, thinking that it was 
>> copyright-free, when in fact it was not - even if you did not realise 
>> this!
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Roger Longhorn
>> ral at alum.mit.edu
>> (recent gradutate of the WIPO Academy course in Copyright and Related 
>> Rights, July, 2005).
>>
>> James Cronin wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Jo,
>>>
>>>  
>>>
>>>> On Thu, Nov 10, 2005 at 12:59:23PM -0800, Jo Walsh wrote:
>>>>  
>>>>
>>>>> hello clive, list,
>>>>> On Wed, Nov 09, 2005 at 05:05:26PM +0000, Clive Galway wrote:
>>>>>    
>>>>>
>>>>>> On a side note, as a result of this project, I am currently 
>>>>>> trying to push through a Freedom of Information Act request on 
>>>>>> the British Government to get them to release UK political 
>>>>>> boundary data (eg counties etc) into the public domain on the 
>>>>>> grounds that political boundaries of our country are the property 
>>>>>> of the populace and not Ordnance Survey as they are saying.
>>>>>> The original request was denied, it is currently on appeal and I 
>>>>>> am in talks with the ombudsman's office ( The governing body one 
>>>>>> appeals to if they feel the request / appeal has been unlawfully 
>>>>>> denied ) who seem to be quite outraged that this information is 
>>>>>> not free and they think I am in with a half-decent chance.
>>>>>>       
>>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I'm sorry, this is probably something I don't fully understand, but
>>> I don't see why information being released to you under FOI necessarily
>>> places it free of copyright and hence into the public domain?
>>>
>>> I'm not a lawyer but I've had a go at reading around this and can't
>>> see that you'd be granted any additional rights to use data released
>>> in this way over and above any that you had already just because it was
>>> disclosed to you under FOI?
>>>
>>> Surely it's the rights that you want (or rather the right to further
>>> distribute without inhibition) not the actual data itself. So I can't
>>> see why this FOI request is relevant to what you want to achieve.
>>>
>>> The boundary data isn't secret. FOI was meant to prevent stuff from
>>> unnecessarily being secret rather than forcing everything to be free?
>>>
>>> Please someone explain how I've got this wrong.
>>>
>>> J.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>  
>>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> geo-discuss mailing list
>> geo-discuss at lists.okfn.org
>> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/geo-discuss
>
>
>