Open Geodata in Europe - Inspire directive

[Andy Waddington]

On Tuesday 2006-05-16 09:57, Ed Stevenhagen wrote:
> The result of not protecting individual copyrights ...

This dispute seems to be the result of wanting to overprotect your work.
Had you published the work under a creative commons license, or something
similar, there would have far less to fight over. Copyright would still
exist, of course, and such a licence would oblige (to the extent that was
possible without spending money on lawyers) your offender to publish his
book under a similar licence. Or, of course, you could take it as read that
he had done so and use his work freely. Any protest on his part would be
refuted by noting that he had used your work which had been published under
an explicit licence. You would need to be a bit careful about using work
he had stolen from third parties...

IP ownership is fine, provided it is used, as it is in the open-source
community, as part of a gift culture. Your reputation is enhanced by what
you contribute, and decreased by what you (attempt to) withhold.

Andy