On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 9:11 PM, Frederik Ramm <[email protected]> wrote: > (This is of course bordering on the philosophical since I believe that one > could say that we actively encourage the Chinese to break their laws; at > least we have numerous web pages suggesting you should take a GPS, map > roads, and upload traces to our server! Now... is that against the law where > you live? Would it be against the law if it were not China but a friendly > western nation?)
If I lived somewhere as repressive as China, I'd likely be going about OSM completely different. I pretty much make no attempt here to hide who I am and where I live. And I'm somewhat of a stickler about following the law. (Again, if I lived in China, I wouldn't be. If I lived in China, I'd be trying to find a way to get out, legally or illegally.) But as far as I know, and that's not all that far (so someone please correct me if I'm wrong), it's not against the law of Florida or the United States to advocate breaking a law in another country if there is not an analogous law in Florida or the United States. The difficulty is where to draw the line, as a project, between which users we are going to allow to contribute without breaking the law, and which users we aren't going to allow to contribute without breaking the law. I don't know the answer to that. I hope the project won't force me to break the law by contributing, though. If it did so, I'd have to choose to stop contributing. >> But beyond that, I don't know. If you can do it in a way that >> neutrally maps reality "surface=X, grade=X, etc." I guess I don't >> mind. > > Yes. It makes a huge difference if something is "not accessible" because > there is a sign that says you mustn't or if it is "not accessible" due to a > concrete wall ;-) If you want to put a way somewhere that it is possible, but illegal, to travel, I don't see a problem with it. I'm personally not going to map them, because I'm personally not interested in them. But as long as your tags describe reality, go for it (*). I might even join in if the way seems especially useful in emergency situations. A "police cars only" exit off a highway strikes me as a useful thing to map - with access=no (or whatever the tag is to indicate "police cars only"), of course. (*) Within reason, anyway. If you're violating people's privacy (not sure exactly how you'd do that), or mapping the location of top secret government bunkers, maybe I might have a problem. _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
