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Comment by MrThoughtful | Hacker News Reader

It looks like Felt uses Mapbox under the hood. Which might also require attribution.

So if a journalist makes a screenshot of a website that uses Felt, they would have to have a text like ...

"Image courtesy of SomeSite with an image courtesy of Felt with an image courtesy of Mapbox with an image courtesy of OpenStreetMap?"

.... under the image?

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OSM’s attribution is non-negotiable. It’s part of the Open Database Licence and also the Contributor Terms under which individual mappers agree that the OSM Foundation can sublicense their work. There is no legal way around it save for contacting each individual mapper for permission… which is clearly impractical.

By contrast, Mapbox ask for a credit as part of a commercial agreement, which by definition can be negotiated away. I guarantee if you call up Mapbox and offer them enough money, they’ll flex on their logo requirement. There is simply no legal way to do that with OSM.

Of course, you can simply have a lot of money, and the OSMF would go bankrupt before you in any legal challenge.

> Of course, you can simply have a lot of money

Instructions unclear, I'm broke.

Is that really the way it is? No way for law to prevail, the one with more money always wins? What about individuals (!) winning cases against huge corporations, which comes up in the news periodically?

It comes up in the news precisely because it's such an unusual occurrence. Lawfare by attrition is an extremely common tactic. Having more resources than your opponent can massively tilt the scales in your favor.

The most money winning (and using lawsuits to stifle criticism) is very much a part of how society works these days (and arguably always has). See, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ...

Money might not buy happiness but it buys an awful lot of power.

SLAPPs are bad, but Google any company + settled or lost lawsuits. For example, here're some I could find on McDonalds:

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/16/mcdonalds-settles-discrimina...

https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/operations/mcdonald...

https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/former-mcdonalds-workers...

The oldest of these is from end of last year.

Edit: tone down phrasing

Did you watch the "Bananas!" documentary, and its documentary aftermath documentary "Big boys gone bananas!" ?

It's real good, and a good example of big corporations sometimes backing off, however unwillingly.

OSMF is a British foundation, so this American assumption doesn't necessarily apply.

I’m fairly certain it would still be extremely impractical for them to sue everyone that violates their license.

There’s also little benefit to them, which makes it even more pointless.

Mapbox is known to discard the necessary attribution to OSM. The guidelines for OSM are clear: https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright

Here's a bit more information: https://github.com/matkoniecz/illegal-use-of-OpenStreetMap/b...

When I open the link at the top on my desktop, I see "© Mapbox © OpenStreetMap Improve this map" in the lower-right corner.

As the github link says,

> It has no real attribution when opened on a mobile or when browser window is resized to a smaller one.

It's a while since I've used Mapbox but they were very strict and diligent about including OSM attribution back when I was building apps with it (2018). Have they really changed that drastically?

I mean... yes. There's plenty of bad unattributed journalism out there that don't do this of course, but... attribution has been a standard of good journalism for many years before the internet existed. This is not some new obscure requirement.

That is of course more about journalistic standards and good practice. In terms of the law, IANAL but I don't think attribution is strictly required for Fair Use usage (e.g. reportage). Only for functional usage (e.g. providing maps to be used as maps).

Agree, but an interesting point being made here is that as we continue to add more layers of separately-attributable infrastructure the attributions get quite unwieldy.

I don't have a conclusion from this, and if you're going to use something that requires attribution you should attribute. Maybe we just need better ways of giving that attribution. It's certainly easier in an interactive medium, with hyperlinks and collapsable sections than on paper.

Well, even in hypotheticals, I'm not sure how many cases are likely to go beyond 3 layers. And that's just for journalism.

For practical functional applications, 3 layers seems high, and potentially a sign of over-engineering.

To get a little more technical about our hypothetical:

- I've used Mapbox in the past, and they included (at the time) a succint dual-attribution overlay for themselves and OSM as part of their APIs. It was well-designed and baked in (nothing for me to do).

- If I were to then take my own application and offer it as a service for others to embed:

1. There's a strong likelihood I'm offering a commercial service so attribution may not be required for my layer (provided service-charges covering white-labelling)

2. If I am requiring attribution, it might make sense for me to invest in direct OSM usage & cut out the Mapbox middleman.

3. If not, it certainly seems like my added layer would be the absolute extreme (and baking in a well-made 3-component attribution would be challenging but not insurmountable).

Well, they don't need to word it quite as ridiculously, and it depends whether SomeSite and Felt require attribution.

From the Felt Terms of Service:

>Other than Your Content (as defined below), all Content displayed on the site or accessible through the Services, including text, images, maps, software or source code, are the property of Felt and/or third parties and are protected by United States and international intellectual property laws. Logos and product names appearing on or in connection with the Services are proprietary to Felt or our licensors. You may not remove any proprietary notices or product identification labels from the Services.

Small print about small print.

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