What if Ordnance Survey’s maps aren’t covered by copyright because they’re right?
A very intriguing story in today’s Technology Guardian, based on the analysis that you’ll find
New study casts doubt on Ordnance Survey’s copyright control points out that
According to a new study by government-funded intellectual property lawyers, some users at least have a legal right both to extract items of data and to pass them on to third parties. A study by Charlotte Waelde of the University of Edinburgh’s School of Law concludes that a geospatial database does not enjoy copyright protection, as Ordnance Survey claims, but rather is protected by the European Database Directive.
What does that mean?
Unlike copyright law, which can be used to block the reproduction of almost any part of a creative work – even John Cage’s 4′33″ of silence – the database directive allows users to copy information, provided that it is not a “substantial” part of a database. The use must also be lawful and “not conflict with the normal exploitation of the database or unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the maker”.
You can find Mike Smith’s original posting on this.
OS, as you might expect, OS sees it differently:
“We haven’t been able to consider the report in detail,” said spokesman Scott Sinclair, “but there is absolutely no doubt that intellectual property rights exist in MasterMap – it would be ludicrous to suggest otherwise. In all our topographic information, there is copyright as in artistic works. Therefore use of those works without licence is an infringement.”
Now, over to the lawyers…
- The following posts may be related...(the database guesses):
- South Africa: mapping is free (and so is other government information) (4 March 2007; score: 29.31%)
- Why aren't public servants' details public? (5 October 2006; score: 28.23%)
- Derek Clarke, head of South Africa's mapping agency, responds to our questions (8 March 2007; score: 21.8%)
- In the Guardian: Ordnance Survey's future awaits budget; Peoples' Map launches (2 April 2009; score: 20.56%)
- "There's no economic incentive to free data - until we produce one" (11 May 2006; score: 18.7%)
April 5th, 2007 at 8:14 am
You can find the report at
http://edina.ac.uk/projects/grade/
April 5th, 2007 at 8:19 am
Readers might also be interested in the news that it was announced yesterday (5 April 2007) that Canada has decided to make its own topographic mapping data available to all users free of charge over the Internet.
See http://www.news.gc.ca/cfmx/view/en/index.jsp?articleid=290039&
April 5th, 2007 at 8:37 am
To get a copy of this Report by Charlotte Wealde go to:
http://edina.ac.uk/projects/grade/gradeDigitalRightsIssues.pdf
April 5th, 2007 at 9:59 am
When Scott Sinclair says “there is absolutely no doubt that intellectual property rights exist in MasterMap”, the paper isn’t disputing that. Rather, it’s saying that the IP rights in question are database right, not copyright.
April 5th, 2007 at 10:10 am
[...] stevecla01 wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptA very intriguing story in today’s Technology Guardian, based on the analysis that you’ll find. New study casts doubt on Ordnance Survey’s copyright control points out that. According to a new study by government-funded intellectual … [...]
April 9th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
There’s an error of law in this story – I’m not saying that it does or does not have any bearing on the substantive issue, but it ought not to go uncorrected. It is in the paragraph quoted above after the words “What does that mean?”.
Under UK copyright law, any part of a copyright work can be freely copied as long as it is not a “substantial” part of the work. This is because of s.16(3) of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988, which provides that
“References in this Part to the doing of an act restricted by the copyright in a work are to the doing of it— (a) in relation to the work as a whole or any substantial part of it”. Thus copying of any insubstantial part is not an infringement of copyright, which is exactly the opposite of what is implied in the text.
April 11th, 2007 at 10:27 am
Thanks for that, James, you’re quite right and I should have looked at the 1988 act rather than relying on memory. The point I was trying to get over is that in practice the courts can and have ruled that very small parts of a copyright work, a few words of a song lyric for example, may count as substantial under the 1988 act; the opinion of the Edina study seems to be database rights are more generous to copiers.
As journalists, we get rudimentary training in copyright law but we’re advised to consult experts the moment anything gets tricky. Good advice, I think.
April 11th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
Except that supposedly the OS’s base date is Crown Copyright, not privately copyrighted content. Does anyone remember when OS attempted to copyright the TOID (Topical Identifier) which is the smallest instance of measurement in MasterMap? It was viewed worldwide with incredulity and some degree of hilarity, akin to attempting to copyright the inch or the centimeter.