Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

I am okay with public information being free to use commercially, with a huge disclaimer though.

Wherever copyright is applicable, the public should retain it, that's what public domain is for. Any derived works, commercial or otherwise should also be in the public domain.

If you fight for "public access" so that you can make your own stuff locked behind a copyright, then you are the hypocrite here.

an interesting example where this has been problematic is OpenStreetMap. They can't ingest a lot of government data b/c their project requires a relicense with their attribution-requirement (where all users are forced to have an ugly OSM bumper sticker on their maps)

There's nothing to "retain" once copyright is over (aside from moral rights, which are forever... which I guess becomes questionable after the death of the author ? But moral rights are not transferrable anyway).

Instead for calling to basically blow up the whole legal framework around derivative works, maybe we should focus on bringing copyright terms back to more sane durations (like the original 14 years, renewable once) ?

I like the idea of having copyrights renewable indefinitely, but with the holders having to pay exponentially larger sums.

That seems to benefit large corporations at the expense of smaller artists. Either you focus on making money or some large corporation will swoop in the second you can't and exploit your work for their own profit.

FWIW attribution does not have to be big nor on the map, it is just less work to use the default than putting it elsewhere.

What you call an ugly bumper sticker is credit where it is due, but also an important recruitment mechanism for new mappers, which improves the map. The /copyright page is our biggest landing page on the website, even above the base / page. Attribution is also a requirement of many proprietary map providers.

> ugly OSM bumper sticker on their maps

Displaying attribution for free worldwide geodata sounds quite good for me.

Wait, what? If the government source is public domain, OSM (or anyone else) can take it and derive from it and can then impose whatever license OSM wants, including an attribution requirement. Did you mean the other way around?

Actually OSM's license is so weak on the attribution it requires, that OSM does not ingest CC-BY data, because OSM believes their further distribution would not satisfy CC-BY's attribution requirement.

https://osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Licence_Compatibility

Presumably, once the copyright is allowed to expire, it can't be sold and then reinstated.

I'm okay with large corporations pouring their money at the government to keep copyrights for useless things alive, even if it means we can't legally copy useless things for a bit longer.

Wouldn't they then buy it just before expiration ?

Exactly, if the clock is ticking for them to bid on it, to buy it off the small business, it gives the small business power, and should also make it easier for the small business to get decent loans/investments.

Btw, if I'm not mistaken, I first read about this proposal in the book "Radical Markets: Uprooting Capitalism and Democracy for a Just Society" by Eric A. Posner and Eric Glen Weyl

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691177502/ra...

yes, I've misclicked the hidden link many times as well

The credit is due to the volunteers or governments that created the data, and not the project that collates it (their names are not displayed). The logic behind wikipedia doesn't translate to OSM b/c OSM is providing data to be reused

If this requirement wasn't there in the first place then OSM maps would have been the default go-to map and a household name like wikipedia. You wouldn't need to force an ad in every map to self-promote.

> Attribution is also a requirement of many proprietary map providers

the project had the opportunity to do something truly different and unique and chose not to... what a missed opportunity.

"Exponentially" larger is a very large number. They wouldn't be able to afford it either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_and_chessboard_problem

I'm genuinely curious why this is a sore spot for you, since I've never heard this perspective. It seems like you see the key difference as being that the OSM attribution is commonly clickable, whereas the Google Maps one is not (similar font/placement). (Actually Google Maps does have "Terms" clickable. Random example of website embedding it: https://www.belcourt.org/directions-and-map/ or see https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/embed/get-s...)

Meanwhile OSM says that you may "fade/collapse the attribution ... automatically on map interaction" among other possibilities (https://osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Attribution_Guideline...). It being licensed the way it is, you can use Leaflet.js or whatever else instead of the copy they host, if you really don't like their iframe...

> Presumably, once the copyright is allowed to expire, it can't be sold and then reinstated.

Derivative works have their own copyrights. The original book is free for grabs but each movie franchise has it's own copyrights. Likely far more valuable and ones the original artist will never see a cent from.

I don't use Google maps, so I'm honestly not really sure what their terms are

I guess in the big picture it just rubs me the wrong way a bit. I just find it mildly absurd that if I take a screenshot of OSMand on my phone and send it to a friend, that I've broken the law. It'd like to live in a world where that's not the case.

It's like if Project Gutenburg mandated everyone had to include a cover page with their name on every book they distribute. It doesn't make it unusable or horrible, but it's just a general feeling "ah, so close but they missed the mark".

It could have been a truly open repository of data and instead it's just so slightly not that (and in a way that's so minor that no one will ever bother to re-make a truly no-strings-attached version :) )

The parent comment was talking about wanting a system where "Any derived works, commercial or otherwise should also be in the public domain" so I was talking to that.

I assume when you say "government" you mean the US government. But in other countries it often doesn't work that way. You can't redistribute government maps with more restrictions. I went to a talk about this from an OSM developer here in Taiwan. OSM tries to lobby for the maps to be redistributed under different terms so they can ingest them

> if I take a screenshot of OSMand on my phone and send it to a friend, that I've broken the law

I'm not sure what exactly you're misunderstanding but this is not how the law works.

doesn't that just favor the 0.1% who can afford it and fk over the 99.9%? I don't see why we don't just put a hard limit on it, they had many years to make a profit.