[NUUG kart] Fwd: [Osmf-talk] Future of DWG work, copyright, vandalism

[Guttorm Flatabø]

Fredrik Ramm har skrive ein e-post om hærverk osb. til osmf-talk som delvis
tek føre seg problemstillinga som me har vore borti med hærverk av
t-bane-ruter i Oslo. Tenkte det kunne vere relevant for dykk å vite om.
Bilal har no døypt seg om til Hitler, og tek føre seg London.

Noko eg tenkte på som eg ikkje trur me har prøvd i hans tilfelle, er å ev.
ta kontakt med nettleverandøren hans. Dette er truleg berre aktuelt dersom
det er ein skule eller arbeidsplass, men det kunne like fullt vere nyttig.

--
Guttorm

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org>
Date: Thu, Jun 7, 2012 at 12:13 PM
Subject: [Osmf-talk] Future of DWG work, copyright, vandalism
To: osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org


Dear OSMF members,

  I would like to hear your opinion about two aspects of DWG work and how
we would like to handle that kind of work in the future.

DWG's daily work falls largely in three categories:

1. Vandalism

Usually starts with someone complaining about someone else breaking things.
Sometimes involves blocking the "vandal", often it is later found out that
it was a misunderstanding and not true vandalism, but we do occasionally
have people who continue with a new account as soon as we block them.

2. Copyright

Usually starts with someone complaining about someone else uploading data
in violation of a third-party license (e.g. tracing from Google imagery);
often requires just a little email and reverting data.

3. Dispute

Users complaining about each other's work - e.g. whether the name tag of
something should by in cyrillic or not, whether something is a track or a
footway, whatever. Sometimes results in edit wars or even one party
starting to vandalize stuff.

Most of these issues can be solved with a little patience and talking to
people - for now. There are two issues where I am unsure how to handle them.

A. Suspected Copyright Violations

Only yesterday I received a long-ish message of one user who noted that
someone else was mapping nature reserves, the boundaries of which did not
seem to be available anywhere. So the user sent a message to the other guy
asking for the source, and the other guy said something about copying data
from a sign somewhere, and upon further inquiry got caught up in
contradictions.

So the situation is: There's some data in OSM which is not *clearly* from a
non-allowed source; the original contributor refuses to specify the source
(or cites a source that we cannot verify); someone thinks that this might
be a copyright violation.

We simply do not have the manpower to actually research cases like that. We
need a simple policy that allows us, or ideally the community, to deal with
such cases.

Such a policy could for example be one of

* "Data for which no credible source is given in the changeset or on
request by the contributing mapper is subject to deletion. The mapper must
demonstrate, on request, that his source is legal. If the mapper chooses
not to tell us his source then we must assume it is not legal." (In many
cases the "credible source" could be "survey" but the boundary of a
protection area might not always be surveyable.)

* "We only assume a copyright violation when we actually see that the
mapper has contributed something that looks identical to a known unsuitable
source, or where the rights owner contacts us; if someone suspects someone
else of copyright infringement, we ask the suspect whether they can confirm
that their sources are legal and if they say yes, then that's sufficiently
diligent."

* "We only act if someone - rights owner or other mappers - presents us
with incontrovertible proof that data has come from an unsuitable source."

This is a balancing act which has to satisfy three goals: First, it must
not be too much work for us; second, it must prove to the outside world
that OSM takes copyright seriously and does not ignore problems; third, it
must not place too much burden on the mappers.

Essentially, what I'm after is some sort of general procedure (maybe even
flowchart) of dealing with (suspected) copyright violations.

B. Continuing Vandalism

As I said initially, most vandals aren't really vandals, and most real
vandals go a way after you block them once or send them a message. If that
doesn't help, I usually send them a second message explaining how the law
in their respective criminalizes computer vandalism, and this (plus the
implied "we know which country you're from") often helps. But not always;
there are people who just go on. There was an user in Norway who created
fantasy bus routes all the time; we blocked him and told him that what he
was doing was illegal in Norway, but he continued. He has now signed up
using the account name "Adolf Hitler" and continues his funny little game
in London (http://www.openstreetmap.org/**browse/changeset/11789344<http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/changeset/11789344>).
It's not a big deal, he only does it once a month and it is reverted easily
enough, but if he were more resourceful and invested more time, he could
create more harm. We don't currently have a problem with people like that
but I foresee that they will become more of a problem in the future, that's
why I am thinking about it.

There are three things we can do:

* technical measures - try to profile the vandal and disallow signups or
edits that match the pattern.

* policy measures - stop giving full edit privileges to every new user;
instead, make it so that new users have some limits such as so-and-so many
edits per day, or only make edits within a certain range of your home
location, or you have to be "vouched for" by at least two other mappers
before you can edit for real, whatever. One would have to find a policy
that takes the fun out of vandalism while not being a turn-off for real
mappers.

* legal measures - pay lawyers to go to court and request the real address
of the IP number that vandalizes our data, then send nasty letters to
people and demand money. (I imagine that most vandals must be kids who
would be in for trouble with their parents once they start getting recorded
letters.) If the movie industry can do it, so can we, provided that
vandalizing our data is indeed illegal. This might require "hardening" the
process first, i.e. getting legal advice for updating our CT to include
wording that makes it clear(er) that edits not founded in reality are
considered vandalism, and it might also require lawyer-approved notices to
be sent out by DWG (instead of my usual informal "hey, stop that, we don't
like it").

I'm not very fond of either of the latter two - policy measures always have
a ring of "you have to prove to us that you are a good guy before we let
you contribute", and legal measures are probably expensive (would you want
your OSMF donations to be used to pay for legal advice at £200/hr?) and can
appear draconian ("Great-Grandmother, 85, bankrupted by OpenStreetMap for
letting child use computer...").

But I fear that the New Testament approach to vandalism ("If someone
vandalizes Oslo, let him vandalize London as well...") won't do either. I
would prefer that we make our minds up about all this *before* we have to
use it.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"

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