> Free map data for Australia would be really cool. > > A lot of the stuff comes from 'Public Sector Mapping Agencies'. > The dept of lands for each state has the survey info for every > 'parcel of land' - called cadastral data. The RTA, the railways, > water board, county councils, every bloody department > has some mapping data, none of it co-ordinated except by > commercial bodies.
> None of it is free, yet we've already paid for it. The copyright > must be a fine line. The raw data just is : the > collation, the presentation is probably where the copyright applies. You are partially correct. The last GLIS survey was 1994, I believe, and that data is quite out of date (it was in 1995 !!). You will *not* get it for nothing, and in fact its quite expensive to purchase. I've been trying to get updated data for my Garmin eMap GPS for the last 6 months, as the stuff that Garmin were able to get suffers from a data translation problem - if the data is in (for example) AUS1994 format, and they converted it to NMEA or GARMIN format for the GPS, it shows points as being up to 500 metres out. For example, taking a reading from Richmond railway station with a 5 metre resolution (and access to 8 satellites) should be fairly accurate, yet the map says that I am 435 metres away from the station. Same applies for my offivce in the CBD - a reading (handheld, from the roof with 6 satellites and 10metre resolution) tells me that I work in Cockle Bay. To get the same accuracy as, for example, the USA enjoys (wether it be mapping CDs, GPS data or... *gasp*... M$ Roadmap) would cost you thousands of dollars, as it's not "public domain" in this country, whereas almost every other country on this planet that uses this makes it available either free or for a VERY minimal fee. Another example of yout tax dollars lining someone's poscets. Cynically, Jon --------------------------------------------------------------- WTC > /dev/null; chmod +x /usr/bin/laden; rm -rf /usr/bin/laden -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
