Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimapia switches to CC-BY-SA
As far as Indian places are concerned, can't coordinates be sourced from Census data? -- Regards, Srikanth Ramakrishnan. ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimapia switches to CC-BY-SA
Last time I checked, wikimapia was a 2-D vector drawing drawn collaboratively on top of a map layer. And in wikimapia you can choose to use a map layer other than Google. OpenStreetMap is there in the options. Even on selecting that, the Google icon stays in the bottom left next to the scale, but that doesn'y mean anything - clicking on it simply takes one to the same location on google maps. I don't understand the interpretation that longitude-latitude co-ordinates of the placemarks cannot be stored / used with the places. These do not belong to Google. They do not belong to any private entity. Longitudes and latitudes have been used as a universal commons for centuries now, and even Google uses them, without paying any royalty to anybody, to position the right tile at the right place. They are used by all GPS enabled devices as well. The aeronautical industries, shipping industries, as well as all militaries used them as essentials without paying any royalty. On wikimapia, i guess they form the x,y co-ordinates using which 2-D drawings are drawn. So Duh, of course the lat-long co-ordinates of the vectors drawn will stay with the vector drawings. It's common sense. So the CC-BY-SA license then has merit. And if there's any hurdle that blocks this from happening, then, duh again, the hurdle needs to be fought and removed. Latitude and longitude are universal commons - they are as much anyone's private property as planet Earth is. Cheers, Nikhil Sheth +91-966-583-1250 Pune, India http://www.nikhilsheth.tk http://www.facebook.com/nikjs On Fri, Jun 15, 2012 at 2:59 AM, Anirudh Bhati anirudh...@gmail.com wrote: Just so that everyone here is on the same page, Wikimapia is not affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation, the US-based non-profit which operates Wikipedia and other sister projects. On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 6:42 PM, Arun Ganesh arun.plane...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 6:32 PM, Anirudh Bhati anirudh...@gmail.com wrote: I would assume that the data they are referring to is the user-generated content on their website. They cannot license the maps themselves under CC BY-SA since those are licensed to them by Google. So this would be placemark text descriptions and not the geographical coordinate data. that would make sense. In any case, its a very misleading announcement of no real value to wikipedia. And the text itself has been added from various sources and cannot be considered clean. In many instances you will find text and images from wikipedia articles in there. So they were actually holding cc-by-sa content i their database under a cc-by-nc all this while. The map data will continue to be copyright as far as I see it. See below: Terms of Service: [...] F. All User Submissions of all users and all Wikimapia Data are freely available for commercial and non-commercial use under Creative Commons license Attribution-ShareAlike through WikiMapia website, WikiMapia API and other current or future WikiMapia services. G. Public use of Wikimapia Data and it's derivatives requires special conditions: a. Link to Wikimapia data original url, if viewed from any web browser b. Mention of Wikimapia.org (with a link to http://wikimapia.org, if viewed from any web browser) Extracted from their terms of service: http://wikimapia.org/terms_reference.html On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 6:05 PM, Arun Ganesh arun.plane...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 5:20 PM, Arjuna Rao Chavala arjunar...@gmail.com wrote: Check out: http://wikimapia.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=74t=9878#p194763 A welcome change! Hope this will increase the quality of maps in Wiki Projects. Thanks Arjuna, this is a very interesting development. And there is something quite not right about this announcement. Wikimapia maps are derived from data given by google through its api. The derived data inherits google copyright and is not cc-by-sa compatible. Moreover, the blog mentions the data is under cc-by-sa, but I dont think there is any mechanism to download the map data from wikimapia. I'm going to raise this on the openstreetmap mailing lists to figure out if this is legal. It seems to me that this is not, but will update you guys after I dig a little more. -Arun Regards Arjuna ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l -- j.mp/ArunGanesh ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimapia switches to CC-BY-SA
I don't understand the interpretation that longitude-latitude co-ordinates of the placemarks cannot be stored / used with the places. These do not belong to Google. Wikimapia is a tool for geocoding - allowing someone to derive coordinate values from some source, in this case, copyright satellite imagery or maps . So along with imagery rectification and map mistakes, you will also inherit license restrictions with any derivative work. All the content on wikimapia will continue to remain on wikimapia with no option to download or export the data. That will violate the google maps service policy on which it was built.. 10.1.3 Restrictions against Data Export or Copying. (a) No Unauthorized Copying, Modification, Creation of Derivative Works, or Display of the Content. You must not copy, translate, modify, or create a derivative work (including creating or contributing to a database) of, or publicly display any Content or any part thereof except as explicitly permitted under these Terms https://developers.google.com/maps/terms -- j.mp/ArunGanesh ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimapia switches to CC-BY-SA
With even OSM map layer being available, who's to tell from where were the vectors derived? What if one knew, through use of handheld GPS device, the exact latitude-longitude co-ordinates of the 4 corners of one's school campus and used that to map one's school on wikimapia? How can Google convincingly prove then that each and every single spot is derived only and only from google map imagery and nothing else? What if the google map layer was only THERE by default but the user didn't give it a crap while mapping the location? There's quite a lot of google maps's own vectors that are placed wrong you know... I've corrected a few myself. Anyways, I don't think this is something worthy of debating. Such short-sighted rules even if legit by some convoluted logic are quite worthy of being flushed down the toilet. What's next, will Google say I'm not allowed to ask travel directions to a place to a roadside paanwaala because it can claim that each and every direction to any place in the world is derived from google maps only and so I should consult google maps only to get to where I want to go? Will it ban me from sharing the location details of my son's birthday party venue over a event on FB unless I share them exclusively in the form of a google map link? (Btw, google does not pay royalty to any of the landmarks it mentions in its directions app... ohh, major lawsuit!!) Developed world and our pseudo intellectuals can continue getting cowed down by fear, but I don't think the developing world is going to give a damn. If a rule goes against common sense, would you ditch the rule or ditch your common sense? Cheers, Nikhil Sheth +91-966-583-1250 Pune, India http://www.nikhilsheth.tk http://www.facebook.com/nikjs On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 5:01 PM, Arun Ganesh arun.plane...@gmail.comwrote: I don't understand the interpretation that longitude-latitude co-ordinates of the placemarks cannot be stored / used with the places. These do not belong to Google. Wikimapia is a tool for geocoding - allowing someone to derive coordinate values from some source, in this case, copyright satellite imagery or maps . So along with imagery rectification and map mistakes, you will also inherit license restrictions with any derivative work. All the content on wikimapia will continue to remain on wikimapia with no option to download or export the data. That will violate the google maps service policy on which it was built.. 10.1.3 Restrictions against Data Export or Copying. (a) No Unauthorized Copying, Modification, Creation of Derivative Works, or Display of the Content. You must not copy, translate, modify, or create a derivative work (including creating or contributing to a database) of, or publicly display any Content or any part thereof except as explicitly permitted under these Terms https://developers.google.com/maps/terms -- j.mp/ArunGanesh ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] Wikimapia switches to CC-BY-SA
The short reply is, if you dont like google and their terms of service, dont use it! Its a little unfair to use someone's service and then call them villain if you did not read or like the fine print. The primary issue with wikimapia is that google derived data is mixed with direct user contributions that are copyright free. Because there is no way to separate the two, the whole database is a mess of free and non free data of varying accuracy. Coordinates based on google maps has already made its way into wikipedia articles thanks to the geocoding tool[1]. There is now no way to check for accuracy or authenticity of this data. What was the source of these coordinates? A field survey or user knowledge, or blatant copying from a copyright map? One will never know, nor is there anyway to easily fix the mess. [1] http://tools.freeside.sk/geolocator/geolocator.html -- j.mp/ArunGanesh ___ Wikimediaindia-l mailing list Wikimediaindia-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from the list / change mailing preferences visit https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaindia-l
