Dan Munson wrote:
> Is there any real proof MapInfo plans this? Also there are BIG
> issues.
Of course not, it's just a rumor in an online trade magazine that
tends be more right than wrong and always way ahead of everyone
else on the GIS news front... But a free data viewer is a nice
idea, and makes sense. MapInfo has also just finished a 100% java
release of MapXtreme, so the talent is there to do it. But just
because it's a good idea doesn't mean it's going to happen.
> First of all, if you're buying data from MapInfo, their license
> agreement is
> extremely strict!
I think a viewer's great value would be for people to use it with
their own data and public domain sources. Vendors could use to
demo their data too. There's no shortage of free data out there
either. The best value-added stuff is generally commercial and
licesned, of course, but the free stuff isn't useless. Far from
it. When people make their first maps analyzing a market with
1995 Census data (free from the Census bureau or ESRI's web
page), they will get the idea, and those data vendors savvy
enough to know these people will quickly want more and better
data will have already posted free data sets on their web pages
in hopes that they will get the call when somebody wants
market-focused data instead of generic census block groups.
> You would be breaking the license agreement if:
>
> 1. You shared any data or DERIVATIVE works with anyone. (You
> license data
> by the number of users - the viewer may be free, but the data
> can not be
> distributed free!)
Ever since the Feist decision (Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural
Tel. Serv. Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991)), this has been in doubt when
it comes to map data. (not a lot of doubt, but there may still be
some surprises waiting for map data vendors) In this case, the US
supreme court actually went out of their way to point out that
even if you spent a lot of money gathering data, if the
representaion of that effort was essentially a compilation of
facts (and map data, satellite imagery, etc. might be argued that
way), you might not have any copyright protection for that
effort. Congress has tried for several years to get something
passed to protect data vendors who build data from what might
possibly be seen as a "collections of facts", but they haven't
succeeded yet.
Depending on how courts see this when it comes to map data
issues, there may be some interesting times coming! But I'm not
going to sweat it. I don't plan to test that decision by giving
away any data that has a license claim on it, because 1.) I don't
need trouble, and 2.) I don't need it. I could fairly quickly put
together a generic world wide data set from free sources and give
it to people I wanted to support.
In any case, I'd be very surprised if MapInfo produced a free
data viewer and didn't let you use it with ANY of their data.
(People could just download data from ESRI anyway.)
- Bill Thoen
----------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this list, send e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put
"unsubscribe MAPINFO-L" in the message body, or contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
