On 02/09/2015, Russ Nelson <nel...@crynwr.com> wrote: > Too bad for that guy that he didn't check OpenStreetMap first, because > there was an abandoned railroad mapped in his back yard.
Lots of former railway land is now privately owned, sometimes even before the rails get removed. So the fact that there was an abandoned (dismantled ?) railroad in his backyard didn't, on its own, mean that he didn't own the place. In many countries (not sure about the USA), there's also a legal concept of "if you build on a piece of land and nobody complains for X years (with X being quite high), then that piece of land defacto belongs to you". This leads to people sometimes building on land with a unclear ownership status, chancing it and hoping for the best. _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
