[Imports-us] [Talk-us] Importing data for Prince William County, VA

[Matthew Woehlke]

On 13/07/2020 11.30, Jonathan Brier wrote:
> Hi Matthew,
> 
> I like the idea, but which dataset specifically are you referring to? -
> https://gisdata-pwcgov.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/roads ?

To start with, I believe that's the one. I already downloaded a bunch of 
shapefiles and didn't necessarily pay attention to which page they came 
from, but the file names probably match the URL's.

For starters, I expect to be looking at Road_Edge-shp.zip, Roads-shp.zip 
and Sidewalks-shp.zip. (No, I am not going to add roads-as-areas; 
Road_Edge would be for reference to possibly help with alignment.)

> At face value the license is listed as - custom license.  It is not clear
> to me that it is public domain based on this description as it
> mainly describes  liability and "as is" for county government work. US
> Federal work is public domain, but states and county governments can vary
> on copyright in more restrictive or opaque terms. Making data "open data"
> doesn't mean they provide a clear license to its reuse which is unfortunate
> and often tough to get clarified in my experience. Could you share how you
> determined this to be public domain or US Government data?

As previously stated, via the site's POC (pwcmaps at pwcgov.org):

"Yes, the data is for public domain. There are no restrictions to 
attribution, redistribution, and/or alteration."

     -- Drew Wold, GISP
        GIS Analyst
        703.792.7921
        dwold at pwcgov.org

FYI, pwcgov.org is linked via 
https://www.virginia.gov/local-government/, so I am at least reasonably 
confident it is legitimately a government site.

>   "Custom License [snip]"

...or as Drew noted previously (not quoted), "not admissible in court". 
I have to assume OSM has a similar disclaimer (I sure hope it does!). 
I'm not sure that is even "enforceable" on Public Domain information 
TBH, but I don't believe importing into OSM violates that.

Put differently, that's a disclaimer of liability, not, as I read it, an 
actual license. (I suspect the use of the "license" there is an artifact 
of a page template and not an actual legal license.)

-- 
Matthew