On Jan 4, 2007, at 21:44, Jeremy Irish wrote:
Don't they have a separate Google web site for China? The
Google.com site doesn't censor the data - China merely blocks
access to Google.com but allows the Chinese version to work within
the mainland. I don't know if Google Earth is blocked in China but
it's certainly possible.
From experience with geocachers traveling to other countries it
can be a problem with carrying and marking locations at the
physical location - not necessarily when it comes to satellite
imagery. You can get arrested in many countries for marking
coordinates around sensitive locations. You will get harrassed by
police here and arrested if you mark coordinates around military
bases, for example.
Anyone see the Federal Cave Protection act? I'm not very good at
interpreting the law but it seems like there is information
censorship in the US as well.
http://www.karst.org/fedlaw.htm
The difference is that in this Cave Protection Act, the act of
searching for, and publishing the location of caves by non-government
people is not illegal. It's only illegal for the government to tell
you where the caves are. There might be other laws that prevent you
from prowling around looking for the caves, but if you had
information, you could publish it.
My understanding of the Chinese situation is that it covers data
collection and publishing by non-Chinese. It would seem to prohibit
activities such as Green Maps unless done by Chinese with permits.
There are already several Chinese Green Maps here - http://
www.greenmap.com/grmaps/asia.html
There seems to have been a similar law as the ones mentioned in
Mike's original post, dating back to 2002. This makes for some
interesting reading - http://english.gov.cn/laws/2005-10/09/
content_75314.htm
It starts out quite benignly, and even goes so far as to say
surveying and mapping are essential activities and well done tasks
are to be rewarded. It even basically says that taxpayer funded data
should be made available gratis. Then it gets a bit darker when you
get to the penalties for various wrongdoings (one of which is to use
a non-Chinese coordinate system).
Allan
Jeremy
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:geowanking-
[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of David Price
Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2007 6:15 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Geowanking] China policy on Mapping Data
Bill Kearney wrote:
Quick, everyone go grab snapshots of google earth's pictures of all
their nuclear, military and other "secure" locations. Don't forget
water reservoirs, oil refineries and transportation centers.
I think that raises an interesting question: even if other
countries wouldn't enforce the law, will Google remove the data
from Google Earth in order to keep playing nice with the Chinese
government? They already censor search results, so I would think
that censoring geographic data would be a natural extension of
that. I have no idea what they'll do, but I'd be willing to bet
that they won't tell anybody about the changes if they do happen.
regards,
-dp-
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Allan Doyle
+1.781.433.2695
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