On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 7:18 PM, Dan Karran <[email protected]> wrote: > 2009/9/10 David Muir Sharnoff <[email protected]>: >> Has anyone set a letter to Google's legal department asking for >> clarification or permission? > > I haven't asked their legal department, but Ed Parsons said in an > email yesterday (not sure if my post[1] about it got through to the > list?) that it's ok to check our facts, but anything more than that > (extracting/mass extracting of data) is not likely to be compliant > with their license agreement. As I see it, if their license agreement > prevents us doing it, then it's already ruled out, and it's not a > question of what copyright or database law says at that point. > > If we want to be able to extract data as well then I'm pretty sure > we'd need a license to do so. > > [1] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2009-September/041758.html
Here's my completely uneducated legal opinion (:P). Ed's reasoning hinges on the following Terms of Service extract, possibly originally from: http://maps.google.com/help/terms_maps.html " [ you must not ] use the Products in a manner that gives you or any other person access to mass downloads or bulk feeds of any Content, including but not limited to numerical latitude or longitude coordinates, imagery, and visible map data" This says that we can't use Google Products to build the OSM database (which, in turn, would allow mass downloads/bulk feeds via the OSM API) if what has been entered into the OSM database with the help of Google Products consists of: 1. numerical latitude or longitude coordinates 2. imagery 3. visible map data For 1: as long as Google Products are not used to geolocate features (i.e. Google Products are not used to determine the latitude/longitude of OSM nodes/ways) *this doesn't apply* For 2: as long as the imagery itself isn't stored in OSM, *this doesn't apply* For 3: what qualifies as "visible map data"? If I look at a particular intersection and see a stop sign in Street View, does that constitute "visible map data"? I think not. If not, then *this doesn't apply*. I.e. It would then be OK to record the existence of the stop sign in OSM, as long as the geolocation is already known (e.g. from my own GPS trace, or existing OSM ways). Thoughts? _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
