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Comment by sllabres | Hacker News Reader

Don't know if this holds water... E.g. a cartographic map: just a "diagram" of facts?

Why not ask if there is a license for this file?

Edit: And as I see in this thread there is gnu-units (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Units) probably there is something with a license.

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A map is not copyrightable. It is just a diagram of facts. Mapmakers protect themselves by inserting fake data which they can then use to claim copyright.

It looks like it's the other way around:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street#Legal_issues

>In Alexandria Drafting Co. v. Andrew H. Amsterdam dba Franklin Maps, the court ruled that "fictitious names may not be copyrighted" and "the existence, or non-existence, of a road is a non-copyrightable fact".

Maps are copyrightable (I think?), but the trap streets themselves aren't. They're only there to detect when someone is copying the map.

Heh, I actually learned about trap streets when talking to a cartographer who made the muni map of SF you find at all the bus stops (much like this one: http://www.mobilemaplets.com/thumbnails/261_thumbnail-1024.j...). He told me he added a small alleyway in the map named after his family that doesn't actually exist, and they catch people violating their copyright all the time with it.

The expression of facts is copyrightable, not the facts though. So importing it is water tight.

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