[OSM-legal-talk] Legal status of certain mapping activities
Dear list I am indirectly involved in the following situation: In the context of a research project a team wants to add a list of POIs (libraries) to the OSM database. The names of the libraries, their postal addresses, the address of the websites, and further details of the libraries are known from official sources. But not all of the buildings holding these libraries are mapped in OSM yet. In other cases the building is already present in the OSM database but not tagged any further (especially streets and house numbers are missing). The goal of the following questions is to remove ambiguity and speculation about what is legal/desired by the OSM community for the aforementioned project team. I am acting as an intermediary. Case 1: Is it legal/desired to look up the address of a particular POI on online maps like Bing map (https://www.bing.com/maps/), search.ch (http://map.search.ch), Google Maps (https://www.google.ch/maps/) or Swiss cantonal geoportals to determine in which building a POI is situated? The coordinates would not be copied digitally, instead the now identified building would be traced and added to the OSM database using sources such as Bing Aerial Imagery in JOSM/iD and the POI data would then be added. Case 2: Assuming the website of the POI is showing a picture of the POI itself. Is it legal/desired to look for the POI on aerial imagery and determine the correct building, e.g. by outline, surroundings, or roof-color? (Case 2a: Aerial imagery is from Bing; Case 2b: Aerial imagery is from another service mentioned above.) Case 3: If the building where the POI is situated is not present in the OSM database yet, but the person who wants to add the POI knows its exact position, is it legal/desirable that the POI is added anyway? Case 4: My understanding is that we in OSM take a very cautious approach when using sources other than (our own) surveys, local knowledge and sources with explicit permission. Assuming there is a website of a POI containing information we would like to map. Let's say: phone number, postal address, e-mail address, operator's name, a link to the operator's Facebook page and a hand-drawn map (alternatively: a copyrighted map with a marker) from which we can derive the POI's building (as in case 2). Wouldn't we need to ask every single POI/website operator for permission before mapping these things? If no, what's the difference to case 1? (This may seem as trolling but actually came up as rationale in a recent discussion.) Best regards Lukas -- Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter Master of Science FHO in Engineering Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft HTW Chur Institut für Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien Pulvermühlestrasse 57, CH-7004 Chur Tel. +41 (0)81 286 37 22 lukas.toggenbur...@htwchur.ch www.htwchur.ch ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Legal status of certain mapping activities
Lukas, IMHO a single fact is not copyrightable so if you take details about the POI from the web site run by the POI operator themselves, you should be fine. However if you take the same information from a collection (your difference between 4 and 1), then the maintainer of that collection could potentially claim database rights, *especially* if the collective of OSM editors uses that source in more that one case and therefore they could say that we "repeatedly extract" data. So I'd say 1 is a problem but 4 is not. > Case 2: > Assuming the website of the POI is showing a picture of the POI itself. Is it > legal/desired to look for the POI on aerial imagery and determine the correct > building, e.g. by outline, surroundings, or roof-color? (Case 2a: Aerial > imagery is from Bing; Case 2b: Aerial imagery is from another service > mentioned above.) To be safe I'd try and stick to Bing imagery altough it would probably be hard to prove you've looked at non-Bing. > If the building where the POI is situated is not present in the OSM database > yet, but the person who wants to add the POI knows its exact position, is it > legal/desirable that the POI is added anyway? Sure, buildings to hold the POI are not required. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Legal status of certain mapping activities
On 9/16/2015 6:03 AM, Toggenburger Lukas wrote: Case 1: Is it legal/desired to look up the address of a particular POI on online maps like Bing map (https://www.bing.com/maps/), search.ch (http://map.search.ch), Google Maps (https://www.google.ch/maps/) or Swiss cantonal geoportals to determine in which building a POI is situated? The coordinates would not be copied digitally, instead the now identified building would be traced and added to the OSM database using sources such as Bing Aerial Imagery in JOSM/iD and the POI data would then be added. Systematic extraction of locations from these sources could infringe database rights. In the case of Google, they explicitly prohibit this. Case 2: Assuming the website of the POI is showing a picture of the POI itself. Is it legal/desired to look for the POI on aerial imagery and determine the correct building, e.g. by outline, surroundings, or roof-color? (Case 2a: Aerial imagery is from Bing; Case 2b: Aerial imagery is from another service mentioned above.) Using aerial imagery without a suitable license isn't an option. Not sure on 2a Case 3: If the building where the POI is situated is not present in the OSM database yet, but the person who wants to add the POI knows its exact position, is it legal/desirable that the POI is added anyway? Yes, adding POIs is desirable. For example, I added the local library from my knowledge of where it is, acquired through living in the area. Case 4: My understanding is that we in OSM take a very cautious approach when using sources other than (our own) surveys, local knowledge and sources with explicit permission. Assuming there is a website of a POI containing information we would like to map. Let's say: phone number, postal address, e-mail address, operator's name, a link to the operator's Facebook page and a hand-drawn map (alternatively: a copyrighted map with a marker) A hand-drawn map is a copyrighted map, and would presumably also have a marker, so there is no difference here. from which we can derive the POI's building (as in case 2). Case 2 was talking about a photo, not a map. Wouldn't we need to ask every single POI/website operator for permission before mapping these things? If no, what's the difference to case 1? (This may seem as trolling but actually came up as rationale in a recent discussion.) The difference is in database rights. My view on the 4th case is that you should not use the map on the page, but only add information to a POI where you know the website you're looking at is the website of the POI, e.g. add contact information after doing a survey. You shouldn't use it as the sole source of information to add a POI. ___ legal-talk mailing list legal-talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/legal-talk
