Hi Karl, I worked on the irishhistoricmaps.ie project for a few months.
There are two issues here, I think (I'm not a lawyer): 1. The paper originals should indeed be out of copyright as government publications (though the government in question might be the UK government in most cases, given the age of the maps); however, the process of scanning, georectifying etc. makes the _digital_ versions new "publications", with a publication date in the mid 2000s. 2. Ordnance Survey Ireland (OSI) was established in 2001 as State Body, taking over all the assets and liabilities of the old Ordnance Survey. Given this, I doubt that OSI is subject to the shorter Government copyright expiry period, so the digital versions of the maps will be out of copyright after the normal copyright expiry period. I think I'm correct in saying that modern maps have "Copyright Ordnance Survey Ireland" printed on them, while prior to 2001, they had "Copyright Government of Ireland". Short answer: if you can get hold of paper Ordnance Survey maps from before 1959 and are prepared to scan them in, then you should be fine; just don't copy others' digital maps and assume you'll be OK. Pasthomes.com is a rival to irishhistoricmaps.ie that might also be of interest. -- Matthew _______________________________________________ Talk-ie mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ie
