On Wed, Sep 2, 2020 at 2:48 PM Joseph Eisenberg <joseph.eisenb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> But if we are talking about legal parcel boundaries or legal protected > area boundaries, or administrative limits, then it's not at all possible > for OpenStreetMap users to resolve these conflicts in our database alone. > > What needs to happen is bringing this information back to the local > government and asking them to correct the data and provide an > authoritative, public-domain source for everyone to use. > > It's no good if OpenStreetMap has a more "accurate" boundary line which > follows a physical feature like a ridgeline, if the legal definition is > different. Determining this might require lawyers getting involved. > > Now certainly OpenStreetMap data, which can include features like > ridgelines, waterways, roads and paths, which are often used to determine > historic land ownership boundaries, can be useful in determining if > existing databases are accurate and precise. But unless those outside > databases are corrected, our data will be inaccurate as well, when it comes > to legal issues like boundaries. > You are labouring under a misconception that there is some authoritative database somewhere in the halls of government. There simply is not. In the US legal system, the verbal description of a property in a deed takes absolute precedence over any map, and the witness marks in the field *are* the boundary. Recovering and refreshing the marks is a big part of what a land surveyor does. If there is a dispute over a boundary, the courts can resolve it. In the cases we're talking about, the courts will not weigh in because there is no case or controversy before them. In no case is _any_ government GIS system in most states[1] of the US an authoritative reference for a property line, and there is nothing resembling a Torrens title system. Even in the ten or so states that maintain a registry of land plans as well as titles, the verbal description generally takes priority over the map. The registries are more about identifying parcels, and tracking who owns them (and holds easements, liens, deeds of trust, and the like) than they are about specifying the metes and bounds of the parcels. One reason that my uncle's feud with his neighbour could go on so long was that the formal description of the property was something like 'SW/4 of NW/4 of Section XX, Lot YY, Great Lot ZZ, Division 1 of the Minisink Patent of 1704. Searching that sort of title is like writing _Roots_! Fortunately, when my brother and the neighbour decided to bury the hatchet, a forester with a metal detector was able to recover not only corner monuments, but the remains of a barbed-wire fence - so there was an obvious place to strike the line. Even for public land, there's no single authoritative source. In New York, for instance, there was a legal dispute about land ownership between private landholders and the state that went back to the 1860s that required a statewide constitutional referendum in 2013 to authorize the settlement. https://www.wamc.org/post/new-york-settles-adirondack-land-dispute . (Yes, the place is named 'Township 40'.) When this sort of title dispute can languish for 150 years, how could there be an authoritative reference? There are cases where I've left inconsistent boundaries in OSM intentionally. In at least one of those places, I successfully recovered monuments at both of the inconsistent corners. That one's beyond my pay grade and will be an issue for the courts if there's ever a dispute. (Unlikely, both sides of the line are protected forest land, belonging to different authorities.) In typically American-capitalist fashion, in lieu of state registration, we have a privatized system of title insurance <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_insurance>. [Notes] [1] There's limited Torrens title in Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Washington. Several of these states are in the process of abolishing it. In New York, Torrens title was abolished in 2000, and there have been no new land title registrations since. Even before then, it was optional, complex and expensive. (I bought my house in 1993 and got a warranty deed, not a certificate of registered title.) There are still some landowners still have a Certificate of Title rather than a deed. There are only a handful of Torrens properties in most counties. It is most common in Suffolk County, and there are several in Kings and Rockland counties. It's now considered rather a blemish; many title insurers won't accept a certificate of title and need to do an extended search to protect against claims of fraud against the certified title. It's a mess. Illinois has abolished its Torrens system entirely, but again, there are issues surrounding legacy title, so the registry must remain accessible. Torrens title has been unpopular because it is vulnerable to fraudulent deeds and has been abused <https://features.propublica.org/black-land-loss/heirs-property-rights-why-black-families-lose-land-south/> to deprive marginalized people of their property. The only way it could work well here is if a new court-supervised bureaucracy would spring up to administer it. Most people who understand the system believe that private title insurance and registries of deeds come at less total social cost. (Of course, most people who understand the system have a vested interest in preserving it, but our previous experiments with Torrens did not go well.) -- 73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin
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