"The proposed Bill will require all government or private agencies involved in surveying and mapping to register themselves with the SoP. Failing to do so will result in one-year imprisonment and a fine of up to one million rupees."
This is fucked up. The national security argument is completely futile. I think this law would really hurt OpenStreetMap, essentially making every mapper on the ground a criminal unless they register with a gov agency (yeah, right) and it completely hampers geo-based IT innovation like Faisal said. What can we do about this? On Nov 26, 2012, at 1:31 AM, Faisal Chohan <[email protected]> wrote: > On a general terms: > > 1. Laws are never implemented on powerful persons or entities in Pakistan. > Laws are for general public and implemented on them harshly. And when an > ordinary person gets into these cases there is no way out. It destroys all of > his/her life and career. > > Specific to the mapping. I am not a lawyer but this is my observation, > > 1. The local laws do not affect the people living out-side Pakistan, unless > they do not enter in Pakistan. e.g in one instance a case is registered > against facebook founder, but it does not mean anything for the facebook > founder. The only problem with the case is that the facebook founder cannot > enter in Pakistan without clearing from this case. > > This directly harms the Pakistani IT community and people. As Facebook will > never build a physical office in Pakistan due to this case. The powerful and > rich people will have their children studying in US and then get access to > the employment in companies like facebook but a general person will not. > > The only problem with international projects like openstreetmap is that most > of the implementations are carried out by local people. And once they cannot > be involved into these projects, there seems distant possibility of any > substantial projects initiated or completed. > > 2. We were doing on-ground mapping in Pakistan especially our TED prize > winner project "SaafPindi". After reading this news we have stopped on ground > mapping and are not updating open street map from Friday on-wards. We are > just pondering different options. > > Thanks, > > Faisal Chohan > > TED Senior Fellow | www.ted.com/fellows > Disaster and open data mapper | www.pakreport.org > Co-Founder | www.BrightSpyre.com > Co-Founder | www.cogilent.com > ------------------------------------------------------------ > Mobile: +1 415 692 7920 > Twitter: @faisalchohan > Skype: faisalchohan > Personal Blog: http://faisalchohan.blogspot.com > > > > > On Mon, Nov 26, 2012 at 7:38 AM, Kate Chapman <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi Mark, > > I think it depends. If we were going to start a project in Pakistan > physically on the ground it is a huge deal. Remote activations it > probably isn't a huge issue for us specifically, though I wonder about > people on the ground using the data. Would it be an issue if they were > not mapping, but just using unofficial map sources. > > There are some similar sounding laws in Indonesia, but the > implementation has been really different. For example 2 years ago a > law was passed that in summary says if you distribute inaccurate data > you will pay a big fine or do jail time. We are working closely with > Badan Informasi Geospasial (the NMA) on this however. The law is a lot > less scary in implementation in our case than when it first come out. > > Can't say that Pakistan will do the same, but it is one of those > things where I'm not sure what we can do other than wait and see. > > -Kate > > On Sun, Nov 25, 2012 at 10:43 PM, Mark Iliffe <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi All, > > > > I've just seen this through Twitter, it may be of relevance to those mapping > > in/near Pakistan. The short version is thus; it seems that Pakistan is > > legislating against mapping which ins't conducted by the national mapping > > agency. > > > > http://dawn.com/2012/11/21/pakistanis-lost-without-maps/ > > > > Best, > > > > Mark > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > HOT mailing list > > [email protected] > > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot > > > > _______________________________________________ > HOT mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot > > _______________________________________________ > HOT mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot Alex Barth http://twitter.com/lxbarth tel (+1) 202 250 3633 _______________________________________________ HOT mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/hot
