On Nov 27, 2:10 am, "pamela (Google Employee)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > We hope that the licensing and intentions are more clear now.
I'm really pleased that Google has moved on this one, although it's a pity it took longer than it did with Chrome, given that the issues are similar. But I don't think it's moved far enough in respect of Ordnance Survey-derived data. I see that Bill's asked The Big Question while I've been writing this, but here's my two-penn'orth anyway... 11.1 still says "By submitting, posting or displaying Your Content in the Service, you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute Your Content through the Service and as search results through Google Services." And it goes on to refer through a series of links about how to use robots.txt to have Our Content removed from search results. But my concern is not about search results: it's about geographic data which I can't license to Google to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute "for the purpose of enabling Google to operate the Service, [and] to promote the Service (including through public presentations)." Because I don't use GGeoXml or static maps, Google doesn't need that licence to operate the service in respect of My Content; my data goes nowhere near Google's servers. I can display it on a website, and Google's API provides a means to do so, but Google isn't getting the data and doesn't need to be licensed for it. And (as required by 11.3) I **can't** give Google a blanket licence to use My Content in promoting the service because I have no control over what form that "promotion" takes. While the blog post attempts to explain the Terms and what is meant and how they are intended to operate, they need to stand on their own. One can't rely on a blog post gloss, unless it's incorporated into the Terms. And the blog doesn't explain why Google needs the licence it claims in order to "operate the Service". One way around this would be to allow developers to restrict Google's licence under 11.1 by including something like &licence=no in the key string, which would of necessity make GGeoXml, static maps and the mld server unavailable. Leaving it out, the default position, means that Google is licensed to do whatever it thinks is desirable and necessary with the data. Or: Google can simply get (buy!) a licence from Ordnance Survey to allow them to use OS-derived data in any way they believe desirable and necessary. Andrew --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google Maps API" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Maps-API?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
