[geo-discuss] copyright not applicable to geodata?

Sun Apr 1 19:26:58 UTC 2007

dear all,

I tried to sum up the highlights of the discussion that's been
hammering the osgeo/geodata and openstreetmap/legal-talk lists over
the last few days. Word is that Science Commons say "copyright based
licenses don't apply to geographic information (as fact collection)"
so there's no point applying a CC- or GPL- derivative license to it.

http://blog.okfn.org/2007/04/01/copyright-not-applicable-to-geodata/

As usual where data licensing is concerned I Am Frustrated, OSGeo has
a mandate to offer sane and helpful advice to those wishing to open
license geographic data, there is a chance to set a precedent with a
couple of different public bodies but advice such as the above seems
like a setback from the rough consensus there was a couple of years ago. 

I quite like the idea of a click-use contract if it is machine-negotiable, 
cf the project that John Sheridan has going with OPSI right now.
But this all sounds novel, I want to be able to point at solid prior art.

Argh!

jo
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