[Talk-ec] Removal of suspected copyrighted data

[Frederik Ramm]

Dear contributors in Ecuador,

    I am writing to you on behalf of OSM's Data Working Group. We deal 
with copyright violations.

Earlier this month we have been made aware of striking similarities 
between OSM data in a number of cities (Ambato, Santo Domingo, 
Esmeraldas, Riobamba) and commercial data from a map provider called 
Location World.

We have analysed these similarities and concluded that someone has 
uploaded copyrighted data from that source, on a large scale (roughly 
10,000 ways and 50,000 nodes) to OSM in September 2010.

The uploader has not responded to our attempts at contacting him.

As I'm sure you know, we have to take these matters seriously. OSM can 
only thrive if stick to truly free data; we cannot import data from 
copyrighted sources.

Therefore we are removing all the infringing content. Sadly, in some 
places others have edited the data after it had been uploaded; these 
edits are now also lost.

The changesets in which the removal is executed are:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/changeset/7036124
http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/changeset/7034729

I am sorry to have to bring you this message; we're all mappers here at 
the DWG and it hurts us as much as it hurts you to see data vanish from 
the map. But we have to stick to what's legal. I hope that this does not 
prove to be too much of a setback for the industrious OSM community in 
Ecuador.

Keep up the good work!

Best wishes
Frederik Ramm
for the Data Working Group (data at osmfoundation.org)

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"