[Imports] Microsoft Buildings Import Inquiry

[Kevin Kenny]

On Thu, Feb 14, 2019 at 3:18 PM john whelan <jwhelan0112 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Scenario one depends on the licensing of the tax data even if it is on paper.
>
> Remember we live in different countries with different rules.
>
> Have fun but scenario two looks even more doubtful.

Uhm.  I must have edited things down too much when I tried to trim
excess verbiage. I was dealing with data from sources that are
effectively in the Public Domain by local law.  (Example from one
jurisdiction I had in mind: 23-502(d) in
https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doitt/initiatives/open-data-law.page)

The situation where I live is complicated, since there's a Second
Circuit ruling that tax maps are not exempt from copyright by virtue
of being edicts of government. The court remanded the case to a lower
court for trial on the issue of whether the tax maps merit copyright
by actually being creative works, or whether they are bald statements
of the facts without any spark of creativity. By this time, the
original defendant in the copyright case was bankrupt, and so the
issue was never reached.

A fair number of counties have explicitly disclaimed copyright
interest in their tax maps, and as part of the E911 initiative,
eventually all counties were persuaded to put address point data in
the public domain.

In addition, the parcels in the tax maps that pertain to lands owned
by New York State have been aggregated and released to the public
domain, since the state contends that it has the right to map its own
lands and grant the public access to the maps.