[Imports] Importing New York state green spaces

[Kevin Kenny]

On 05/10/2016 09:28 AM, Clifford Snow wrote:
>
> On Tue, May 10, 2016 at 1:13 AM, dan witt <dan at pgpromail.com 
> <mailto:dan at pgpromail.com>> wrote:
>
>     There are currently gaps in the park data (e.g. Tallman, High Tor,
>     Hook, and Storm King parks are all missing) and boundaries for at
>     least Harriman /Bear Mountain state parks don't match official
>     records. I am hoping that I can build consensus on importing state
>     and federal lands from New York state county level tax parcels. 
>     I've looked at a few counties so far at it appears that there
>     aren't restrictions on how the data can be used, though obviously
>     each county needs to be evaluated and permission sought if nessecary.
>
>
> Dan,
> Adding missing parks and updating boundaries of existing parks would 
> be welcomed. If you haven't reviewed the import guidelines [1], that 
> should be step 1. Making sure the data is appropriately licensed for 
> import into OSM should be your next step. This list can help you make 
> that determination. When you create the import wiki page, make sure to 
> include link to the license. Finally, I would recommend posting this 
> on talk-us to get buy in from the US community.
>
> From there you'll needed to decide how to convert the data into a form 
> suitable for importing. For shapefiles ogr2osm.py is a good place to 
> start.
>
> [1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Import/Guidelines
>

We do need to be very careful here. Suffolk County, at least, considers 
its tax rolls as subject to copyright - and the Court of Appeals for the 
Second Circuit agrees. (The case reached the courts because a realtors' 
Multiple Listing Service imported the tax parcels, and the county sued 
for copyright infringement.) The Second Circuit stands alone in making 
that determination, which flies in the face of principles of open 
government, but until and unless the decision is revisited, it's good 
law. It won't be overturned based on the original case, which is now moot.

Importing from http://nypad.org/Download/GDBv1.1 would be attractive, 
but the license terms are unacceptable. We can't promise to update at 
least once a year in perpetuity, or assume liability if OSM users 
trespass, or restrict the display of data to the resolution specified in 
the metadata.

It used to be that NYSGIS had a shapefile for public non-DEC recreation 
lands in New York, but they withdrew it at the demand of
the contractor who produced it.

http://gis.ny.gov/gisdata/metadata/nysgis.NYS-Tax-Parcels-State-Owned.pdf is 
a possibility, but coverage is very incomplete. Only seven counties, 
plus New York City, participate in the program.

http://gis.ny.gov/gisdata/inventories/details.cfm?DSID=430 is not 
released publicly. I have a copy that a contact of mine demanded under 
the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL). I'm not going to presume that it 
can be licensed for OSM.

In general, the government functionaries in New York are terrified of 
losing control of the data. The thinking tends to be, "what if someone 
gets in trouble based on obsolete or inaccurate or inappropriately-used 
data and I'm held responsible because I allowed them to use it?" A 
far-fetched scenario, but it's the way low-level government officials think.



-- 
73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin