I'll just hop onto this post and point out that "The Register" has already openly requested this. No idea if anything's being done about it though.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/30/google_streetview_open_street_map/ On 5 Aug 2008, at 10:13, Sjors Provoost wrote: > Hi everyone (legal and dev), > > Now that the Google Street view imagery is growing pretty rapidly, I > wonder if we could ask Google for permission to use the imagery to > improve the OpenStreetMap data. I know they do not allow us to use > their areal images, but part of the reason for that is that Google > doesn't really own those. As far as I know, Google does own all the > StreetView pictures. > > Things they could be useful for (for the dev people to talk about): > * fetch street names from the signs > * find mail boxes > * estimate road quality > * get the exact width of the road (since we 'know' the camera > settings) > * get the exact coordinates of features: if we know where the camera > is, what direction it is looking at and typical size of a feature, we > know exactly where it is. Gets even better with triangulation. > > In fact, you can pretty much semi automatically construct a very > accurate map with these images if you only have the coordinates, > orientation and camera settings. > > Now there could be different levels of access and different ways to > approach it if unlimited usage is out of the question (for the legal > people to talk about). > > * we could use images with no map overlay and only the coordinate of > the camera. > * we could fetch (semi) random images. We would use the existing > openstreetmap data to figure out where the picture was taken. > * other restrictions? > > That would guarantee that we are not using their map data. > > > Now I am guessing that I am not the only one who thinks you can > reconstruct a very detailed map from these images, so Google might > already be doing this. If so, they may not like it if we do it first > or better. On the other hand, they might like a bit of competition to > keep 'm sharp and speed things up. So it never hurts to ask. > > Sjors > > _______________________________________________ > dev mailing list > dev@openstreetmap.org > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/dev _______________________________________________ dev mailing list dev@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/dev
