[OSM-legal-talk] Aerial photography, cock fighting and vodka bottles

[Russ Nelson]

On Jun 7, 2009, at 7:47 PM, Matt Amos wrote:
> we'll look at this at the next LWG meeting and, if possible, get
> Clark's opinion.

Excellent.  And in the meantime, we should tell the JOSM folks that  
it's okay to include the Terraservice URLs in their default WMS  
configuration.

According to this URL, the images that you access via TerraService are  
in the public domain:
     http://terraserver-usa.com/about.aspx?n=AboutTerraServiceOverview

This is not news, of course.  We've known all along that they were  
just republished USGS data.  I had earlier found a web page on the  
Terraservice website which has a generic Microsoft "everything you see  
is copyrighted".  Regardless of that, with this explicit  
acknowledgement of the public-domain nature of the images, it seems  
safe enough to use them.

JOSM should use these names (which respect Microsoft's desire to be  
acknowledged) with these URLs:

Terraservice DOQ	http://terraservice.net/ogcmap.ashx?version=1.1.1&request=GetMap&Layers=DOQ&Styles=&SRS=EPSG:4326&format=image/jpeg&
Terraservice  Topo	http://terraservice.net/ogcmap.ashx?version=1.1.1&request=GetMap&Layers=DRG&Styles=&SRS=EPSG:4326&format=image/jpeg&
Terraservice Urban	http://terraservice.net/ogcmap.ashx?version=1.1.1&request=GetMap&Layers=urbanarea&Styles=&SRS=EPSG:4326&format=image/jpeg&

--
Russ Nelson - http://community.cloudmade.com/blog - http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:RussNelson
russ at cloudmade.com - Twitter: Russ_OSM - http://openstreetmap.org/user/RussNelson