Re: [Talk-us] Clarke County, Mississippi, county road signs and OSM name tags

[Kevin Kenny]

On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 12:24 PM Jack Burke  wrote:
> While some counties just attach a number to a pole (e.g., many counties in 
> Georgia), there are some that put up signs saying "CR 123" (Jasper County, 
> Mississippi) for unnamed county roads.  However, Clarke County, Mississippi 
> signs (with shiny new green-signs-on-a-stick) county roads as "Clarke Co. 
> 123".  What are everyone's thoughts on how to name these roads in OSM for 
> Clarke County?  We can just leave the name field blank and use ref=CR 123, we 
> can do the ref tag and also include name=County Road 123, or we can do ref=CR 
> 123 and name=Clarke County 123.  Or even ref=CR 123, name=Clarke County 123, 
> alt_name=County Road 123.  Or swap the name= and alt_name= values.

On the way, name=* should have the name spelt out. It should usually
match the signage, so if the sign says, 'Clarke Co. 123', then the
name would ordinarily be 'Clarke County 123' or possibly 'Clarke
County Road 123' or 'Clarke County Route 123'.

Please put 'type=route route=road network=US:MS:Clarke ref=123' on a
route relation rather than on the way.  Mappers in a great many states
have adopted that convention, Not doing numbered routes with relations
causes those who render road shields on maps to tear their hair out,
because concurrencies become difficult to manage. Note the naming
there: 'US:MS:Clarke' to identify the county, and then the 'ref' is
the highway number, bare, without a 'CR' designator or any such.

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[Talk-us] Clarke County, Mississippi, county road signs and OSM name tags

[Jack Burke]

Asking for thoughts & opinions...

While some counties just attach a number to a pole (e.g., many counties in
Georgia), there are some that put up signs saying "CR 123" (Jasper County,
Mississippi) for unnamed county roads.  However, Clarke County, Mississippi
signs (with shiny new green-signs-on-a-stick) county roads as "Clarke Co.
123".  What are everyone's thoughts on how to name these roads in OSM for
Clarke County?  We can just leave the name field blank and use ref=CR 123,
we can do the ref tag and also include name=County Road 123, or we can do
ref=CR 123 and name=Clarke County 123.  Or even ref=CR 123, name=Clarke
County 123, alt_name=County Road 123.  Or swap the name= and alt_name=
values.

Keep in mind that a lot of county roads in OSM already have name=County
Road 123 from a bulk import many moons ago.

Clarke County, MS, example:
https://www.mapillary.com/map/im/l9YS7slPwIDc-3Qw8IQaqg

Jasper County, MS, example:
https://www.mapillary.com/map/im/_mZvHi1tX9ddTJKS5DLiFg

--jack
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Re: [Talk-us] Clarke County, Mississippi, county road signs and OSM name tags

[Kevin Kenny]

On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 2:35 PM Paul Johnson  wrote:
>
> Just ref=CR 123.  The name should not be redundant to the ref, so if it's 
> signed as Clark Co. 123 and that's it, then add noname=yes as well.  The name 
> is only the name, name is not ref.

I'm fine with an unnamed way having just a ref - I can go either way
on that one - but please don't do a ref without a network! (And please
put ref and network on a relation, so that people developing shield
rendering code stay sane.)

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Re: [Talk-us] Clarke County, Mississippi, county road signs and OSM name tags

[Kevin Kenny]

I realize that my last couple of messages were sent from the wrong
return address and didn't go to the list. Oops. Apologies to anyone
who's getting this twice.

On Tue, Aug 14, 2018, 11:24 Jack Burke  wrote:
>> While some counties just attach a number to a pole (e.g., many counties in 
>> Georgia), there are some that put up signs saying "CR 123" (Jasper County, 
>> Mississippi) for unnamed county roads.  However, Clarke County, Mississippi 
>> signs (with shiny new green-signs-on-a-stick) county roads as "Clarke Co. 
>> 123".  What are everyone's thoughts on how to name these roads in OSM for 
>> Clarke County?  We can just leave the name field blank and use ref=CR 123, 
>> we can do the ref tag and also include name=County Road 123, or we can do 
>> ref=CR 123 and name=Clarke County 123.  Or even ref=CR 123, name=Clarke 
>> County 123, alt_name=County Road 123.  Or swap the name= and alt_name= 
>> values.

On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 2:35 PM Paul Johnson  wrote:
> Just ref=CR 123.  The name should not be redundant to the ref, so if it's 
> signed as Clark Co. 123 and that's it, then add noname=yes as well.  The name 
> is only the name, name is not ref.

I could go either way with what you put as the name on a way. In
localities where "County Road 1400W" is a typical street name, and the
county roads have blade signs or none at all, it makes sense to give
it as the name. (Although what you put in the name should match
whatever is on the signage).

But please, do road routes as relations.  That is, for Clarke County
Road 123, please create a relation:

type=route
route=road
network=US:MS:Clarke
ref=123

with the ways of County Road 123 being members of the relation.

Not having numbered routes as relations makes people who do shield
rendering code tear their hair out, because concurrencies are really
problematic any other way.

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Re: [Talk-us] State Open Data

[Brian May]

On 8/12/2018 4:26 PM, Kevin Kenny wrote:

On Sun, Aug 12, 2018 at 1:05 PM OSM Volunteer stevea
 wrote:

I'm not an attorney, though were I to attempt to sharpen focus on these two replies, I'd say that in 
California, it's more like this:  data produced by state agencies (by our state government personnel "on 
the clock") publishing them as "produced by the state of California" cannot have onerous 
copyright terms/restrictions put upon them.  They simply "belong to the public."  (This is 
especially true of GIS data, as in the County of Santa Clara and Orange County/Sierra Club cases).

So when you say "copyright...owned by the government," that is effectively equivalent to "copyright owned by the People of the state" 
because of California's Open Data laws and stare decisis (law determined by court precedence/findings).  Whether "public domain" is the correct legal 
term I'm not sure, but if there is a distinction between the legality of California-produced data and "the data are in the public domain" it is 
either very subtle or completely non-existent; I consider California-produced data "somewhere around, if not actually PD" and "fully 
ODbL-compatible" for OSM purposes.  So, (and I hope this dispels any confusion and answers your question, Pine), "created by the government" 
means they can't put "onerous copyright" on it, meaning it is effectively owned by the People for any purpose for which We see fit.

TL:DR: The closest answer to Clifford Snow's original question for New
York is http://gis.ny.gov/gisdata/inventories/details.cfm?DSID=932
which is virtually certain (the law, as always is muddy) to be
ODBL-compatible (and in fact, there is a colourable case that it is in
the Public Domain.) The digital raster quads available from
https://gis.ny.gov/gisdata/quads/ (these are State, not USGS!) are
also a potential data source for tracing, and again, aren't deeply
mired in the legal swamp.

Of course, as people like Frederik Ramm are quick to point out, no
imported data are truly safe! (In the US system, a deep-pocketed
plaintiff can simply bankrupt the defendant before the conclusion of a
civil suit, and the law is particularly murky in the
copyright-friendly Second Circuit, which comprises New York, Vermont
and Connecticut.)



I already sent Clifford Snow a reply in private email, but this
deserves to be elaborated more in public, given how the conversation
has turned.

I am not a lawyer either, but as a scholar I have had to learn some of
this stuff.

I live in the Second Circuit, and the situation with respect to State
and local government works is complicated here. The confusion stems
from a decision rendered by the Second Circuit in the case of _Suffolk
County v First American Real Estate Solutions_ (261 F. 3d 179 (2001):
https://openjurist.org/261/f3d/179/county-v-first). First American was
a real estate multiple listing service that had acquired Suffolk
County's tax maps under New York's Freedom of Information Law, and was
republishing them without license to its participating realtors.
Suffolk County, motivated by the desire for cost recovery for the
maintenance of the tax rolls, sued for copyright infringement. First
American moved to dismiss, on the grounds that the Freedom of
Information Law extinguished any copyright interest that Suffolk
County might have had in the product. The district court initially
denied the motion. On petition to reconsider, the district court
agreed with First American that the Freedom of Information Law
requires that Suffolk County may not use whatever copyright subsists
in the tax maps to restrict their republication.

The Second Circuit held that the Freedom of Information Law is fully
satisfied as long as the public has the right to inspect the
copyrighted records, and that FOIL does not extinguish the possibility
of a copyright claim. Since it was ruling on a motion to dismiss,
there was no ruling on the facts of the case, so the judicial opinion
did not reach the argument of whether the maps had sufficient
originality to survive a claim under the _Feist v Rural_ (499 U.S. 340
(1991) - 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_Publications,_Inc.,_v._Rural_Telephone_Service_Co.)
standard. Suffolk's initial argument appears to have been crafted to
follow the 'sweat of the brow' standard. Nevertheless, the Second
Circuit accepted that the originality claim was sufficiently pleaded.
Nevertheless, the opinion recognized that 'items such as street
location and landmarks were "physical facts"-and thus not protected
elements" (_Suffolk_ at 24) and that in an earier case it had 'thus
focused on "the overall manner in which [the plaintiff] selected,
coordinated, and arranged the expressive elements in its map,
including color, to depict the map's factual content."' No deference
was accorded to a contrary advisory opinion from the New York State
Committee on Open Government.

The appellate decision remanded the matter to the district court for
further proceedings; the 

Re: [Talk-us] State Open Data

[OSM Volunteer stevea]

Thank you very much for these additional clarifications, Brian.  It may take 
years, it may take several court cases, it may take fifty state legislatures 
and courts and federal appeals and circuits to assert this, it may take 
Attorneys General educating county clerks who try to assert copyright 
(improperly, even illegally), it may even take DECADES of effort in open 
data/open source projects like OSM and we, the good People and Citizen Mappers 
who believe in this stuff and continue to knock on doors, send emails and make 
phone calls to our elected folks.  But the bottom line is that slowly, surely, 
we here in the fifty states of the USA enjoy fairly free-and-open geographic 
data from which we are able to make excellent maps.  (OK, ask around, check 
your state and/or county to be sure).  Harmoniously, together, sharing the best 
knowledge/data we have, coupled with the power of government resources wisely 
spent and our volunteer spirit working for the highest good of awesome 
geography, OSM continues to rock the mapping world.  Yeah!

Keep up the great work, everybody.  I know I am seriously dedicated to this 
project long term.

SteveA
California


> On Aug 14, 2018, at 1:30 PM, Brian May  wrote:
> This may have been stated already, but just wanted to make it clear - State 
> laws on public records filter down through all regional and local governments 
> operating within the state. So if state law doesn't explicitly give a county 
> permission to copyright data, and the county tries to assert copyright, the 
> county is violating state law. If you can get a hold of the data, you can 
> ignore whatever the county says. If you can't get the data and must get it 
> from the agency through formal channels, you need to send a letter and 
> explain the situation. If they don't respond favorably, try the state 
> Attorney General's office. In Florida, the Attorney General weighed in on 
> this issue in the mid-2000s because counties weren't getting the message 
> after a court case clarified the that public records could not be copyrighted 
> or sold at exorbitant prices in Florida for "cost recovery". At that time the 
> Attorney General's office had an open records advocate that would help 
> educate, communicate, and mediate with local governments about public records 
> laws.

>> On Sun, Aug 12, 2018 at 1:05 PM OSM Volunteer stevea 
>>  wrote:
>>> I'm not an attorney, though were I to attempt to sharpen focus on these two 
>>> replies, I'd say that in California, it's more like this:  data produced by 
>>> state agencies (by our state government personnel "on the clock") 
>>> publishing them as "produced by the state of California" cannot have 
>>> onerous copyright terms/restrictions put upon them.  They simply "belong to 
>>> the public."  (This is especially true of GIS data, as in the County of 
>>> Santa Clara and Orange County/Sierra Club cases).
>>> 
>>> So when you say "copyright...owned by the government," that is effectively 
>>> equivalent to "copyright owned by the People of the state" because of 
>>> California's Open Data laws and stare decisis (law determined by court 
>>> precedence/findings).  Whether "public domain" is the correct legal term 
>>> I'm not sure, but if there is a distinction between the legality of 
>>> California-produced data and "the data are in the public domain" it is 
>>> either very subtle or completely non-existent; I consider 
>>> California-produced data "somewhere around, if not actually PD" and "fully 
>>> ODbL-compatible" for OSM purposes.  So, (and I hope this dispels any 
>>> confusion and answers your question, Pine), "created by the government" 
>>> means they can't put "onerous copyright" on it, meaning it is effectively 
>>> owned by the People for any purpose for which We see fit.



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Re: [Talk-us] Clarke County, Mississippi, county road signs and OSM name tags

[Paul Johnson]

Just ref=CR 123.  The name should not be redundant to the ref, so if it's
signed as Clark Co. 123 and that's it, then add noname=yes as well.  The
name is only the name, name is not ref.

On Tue, Aug 14, 2018, 11:24 Jack Burke  wrote:

> Asking for thoughts & opinions...
>
> While some counties just attach a number to a pole (e.g., many counties in
> Georgia), there are some that put up signs saying "CR 123" (Jasper County,
> Mississippi) for unnamed county roads.  However, Clarke County, Mississippi
> signs (with shiny new green-signs-on-a-stick) county roads as "Clarke Co.
> 123".  What are everyone's thoughts on how to name these roads in OSM for
> Clarke County?  We can just leave the name field blank and use ref=CR 123,
> we can do the ref tag and also include name=County Road 123, or we can do
> ref=CR 123 and name=Clarke County 123.  Or even ref=CR 123, name=Clarke
> County 123, alt_name=County Road 123.  Or swap the name= and alt_name=
> values.
>
> Keep in mind that a lot of county roads in OSM already have name=County
> Road 123 from a bulk import many moons ago.
>
> Clarke County, MS, example:
> https://www.mapillary.com/map/im/l9YS7slPwIDc-3Qw8IQaqg
>
> Jasper County, MS, example:
> https://www.mapillary.com/map/im/_mZvHi1tX9ddTJKS5DLiFg
>
> --jack
>
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Re: [Talk-us] Clarke County, Mississippi, county road signs and OSM name tags

[Paul Johnson]

I'm referring to when ref tagging on a way, which yes, is dinosaur tagging
obsoleted the moment route relations became a thing.  On a relation, I
could go either way on the relation being named, network would be
US:MS:Clarke and the ref would be 123 in this example.

On Tue, Aug 14, 2018, 14:08 Kevin Kenny  wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 2:35 PM Paul Johnson  wrote:
> >
> > Just ref=CR 123.  The name should not be redundant to the ref, so if
> it's signed as Clark Co. 123 and that's it, then add noname=yes as well.
> The name is only the name, name is not ref.
>
> I'm fine with an unnamed way having just a ref - I can go either way
> on that one - but please don't do a ref without a network! (And please
> put ref and network on a relation, so that people developing shield
> rendering code stay sane.)
>
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Re: [Talk-us] Clarke County, Mississippi, county road signs and OSM name tags

[Paul Johnson]

On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 2:19 PM, Kevin Kenny 
wrote:

> I realize that my last couple of messages were sent from the wrong
> return address and didn't go to the list. Oops. Apologies to anyone
> who's getting this twice.
>
> On Tue, Aug 14, 2018, 11:24 Jack Burke  wrote:
> >> While some counties just attach a number to a pole (e.g., many counties
> in Georgia), there are some that put up signs saying "CR 123" (Jasper
> County, Mississippi) for unnamed county roads.  However, Clarke County,
> Mississippi signs (with shiny new green-signs-on-a-stick) county roads as
> "Clarke Co. 123".  What are everyone's thoughts on how to name these roads
> in OSM for Clarke County?  We can just leave the name field blank and use
> ref=CR 123, we can do the ref tag and also include name=County Road 123, or
> we can do ref=CR 123 and name=Clarke County 123.  Or even ref=CR 123,
> name=Clarke County 123, alt_name=County Road 123.  Or swap the name= and
> alt_name= values.
>
> On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 2:35 PM Paul Johnson  wrote:
> > Just ref=CR 123.  The name should not be redundant to the ref, so if
> it's signed as Clark Co. 123 and that's it, then add noname=yes as well.
> The name is only the name, name is not ref.
>
> I could go either way with what you put as the name on a way. In
> localities where "County Road 1400W" is a typical street name, and the
> county roads have blade signs or none at all, it makes sense to give
> it as the name. (Although what you put in the name should match
> whatever is on the signage).
>

Yeah, even then I'd be more inclined to go with ref=CR 1400W, noname=yes on
the way itself.


> But please, do road routes as relations.  That is, for Clarke County
> Road 123, please create a relation:
>
> type=route
> route=road
> network=US:MS:Clarke
> ref=123
>
> with the ways of County Road 123 being members of the relation.
>

I'm trying to remember to do this for county roads, though this is not the
easiest thing to remember since basically every section line road in
Oklahoma (and pretty much every state due north of Oklahoma) is probably a
county road.
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Re: [Talk-us] State Open Data

[Kevin Kenny]

On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 4:31 PM Brian May  wrote:
> This may have been stated already, but just wanted to make it clear -
> State laws on public records filter down through all regional and local
> governments operating within the state. So if state law doesn't
> explicitly give a county permission to copyright data, and the county
> tries to assert copyright, the county is violating state law. If you can
> get a hold of the data, you can ignore whatever the county says. If you
> can't get the data and must get it from the agency through formal
> channels, you need to send a letter and explain the situation. If they
> don't respond favorably, try the state Attorney General's office. In
> Florida, the Attorney General weighed in on this issue in the mid-2000s
> because counties weren't getting the message after a court case
> clarified the that public records could not be copyrighted or sold at
> exorbitant prices in Florida for "cost recovery". At that time the
> Attorney General's office had an open records advocate that would help
> educate, communicate, and mediate with local governments about public
> records laws.

You oversimplify.

I won't go through the complex history again - but:

New York's open records law is silent about a county's using copyright
to restrict the distribution of records that it is required to supply
free of charge. The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held
that the state law's silence on the matter means that counties may
assert copyright on their work product, and explicitly refused to
accord deference to an advisory opinion from the state to the
contrary. Since Federal law governs on matters of copyright, it is now
settled that counties own their copyrights. The legislature could
amend the Freedom of Information Law to require that counties offer a
general public license or even  abrogate their copyrights, but it has
not done so.

This leads to the bizarre legal outcome where you can demand a copy of
any of Suffolk County's tax maps for your own use (if you can find the
plat number) but you may not copy the map yourself without violating
the county's copyright. (To the extent that the copyright is valid in
the first place. The court did not reach the facts of the case to
determine whether the works in question met the Feist standard.)

I am given to understand that there is a circuit split on the matter,
and in fact that the Second is the only Circuit to craft such a
loophole to open government laws. Recall that the Second is the
circuit where, for a time, it was held that West Publishing held
copyright on the page numbers in their court reporters, and that those
who wished to cite them in briefs owed West a license fee for using
the numbers. Fortunately, that fell when Bender v West was reheard en
banc.

The State government, and the New York City government, fortunately
for us, engage in no such nonsense. New York City's open government
law was drafted after Suffolk v First American and has explicit
language forbidding such games.

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Re: [Talk-us] Clarke County, Mississippi, county road signs and OSM name tags

[Paul Johnson]

On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 5:46 PM, Mike N  wrote:

> On 8/14/2018 6:33 PM, Paul Johnson wrote:
>
>> Yeah, even then I'd be more inclined to go with ref=CR 1400W, noname=yes
>> on the way itself.
>>
>
> How should we handle addressing for noname roads?  What should addr:street
> contain for addresses along that road?   Until now, I've been assigning
> names as I enter an address and need a match for addr:street.
>

What does E911 call it?  That's almost certainly going to be what the
postal service is going to call it.

For example, this Walmart  has
an address on South State Highway 51, though OK 51 through there is Doctor
William R. Bright Bypass.  Also handles concurrent highways with no name, a
situation common enough it'd be easier to name states where this doesn't
happen.  For example, this cinema
 is
on a road with no name and four routes concurrent, but a "North Highway 64"
address.  And the theoretical edge case where where State Street has no ref
at all, and the powers that be decided that it's now Rear Admiral and Mrs.
Edward Richard Warhero, Medal of Honor Street officially, but E911/the
postal service just decided to keep State Street as the street name for the
addresses.  In any case, the signs are going to say one thing, and the
addresses say something else entirely, that may or may not actually
correspond with something that can be inferred without historic context
(e.g. old_name=*).  Closest (but bad, since 911 and the postal service
don't recognize the old names) examples I can think of would be in
Portland, Oregon during the transition when Union Avenue was renamed Martin
Luther King, Junior Boulevard, and when 39th Avenue was renamed César
Estrada Chávez Boulevard, except in those case, the old signs stayed up for
years to decades alongside the new signs, and locals never adopted the new
name even after the signs were long gone.

Messy would be "how do you deal with situations where the exact same thing
has a Rural Free Delivery-era legacy Postal Service address, and an E911
street address" now... so far the RFD address would be addr:housename,
since addr:housenumber definitely conflicts...
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Re: [Talk-us] State Open Data

[OSM Volunteer stevea]

Again, one of the most important things that might be said (in talk-us) about 
"State Open Data" is that there are at least fifty different sets of rules.  
"Check your state laws and county practices" remains excellent advice.  Yes, it 
can be complex, but if in a state like California, we're in pretty good shape.  
In New York, it's different.  Et cetera (48 different other ways).

Documenting state-by-state "rules" and legal state-data copyright 
practices-as-they-apply-to-our-ODbL could turn into a WikiProject.  (And then 
traffic in this mailing list might diminish yet more).  Yet, it's a rapidly 
moving topic and notice how everyone is so careful to say "I'm not a lawyer, 
but..." and gets the bright idea that OSM's seriously-busy Legal Working Group 
might spend time double-checking things, which simply is not practical.  So I 
don't see how a wiki could realistically keep up in real-time, even with a team 
of well-paid top lawyers, unless they fall from the sky like rain and I don't 
see that in tomorrow morning's forecast.

I don't know a good solution to this except to keep open good dialog, even if 
it means we repeat ourselves.  This isn't like a hard math problem that got 
solved a few centuries ago, like orbital mechanics.  It is a very 
up-to-the-minute legal edge that we walk here, out on the hairy precipice of 
"do I or don't I enter these data?"  "Is this a good idea or could it 
jeopardize the project?"

We can be both bold and careful, but it isn't easy.  Ask.  Dialog.  Read.  
Discuss.  It is getting better.

SteveA
California
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