[Imports] [Talk-us-newyork] Draft proposal for import of New York State GIS SAM Address Points

[Kevin Kenny]

Oh, believe me, I know what the law says - and it's ambiguous.

New York is the home to the County of Suffolk v. First American (Experian,
TRW, etc... the defendant company kept changing hands) decision.  Or
rather, non-decision, in which the Second Circuit bucked the case back to
the lower court to decide whether the maps were works of art or whether
they were strictly factual works created in the ordinary course of
government business. (Whereupon the parties promptly settled.)  That leaves
open the idea that data provided from counties or private contractors to
the state might not be the state's property. In that case, the legislation
could not offer a grant of rights to that which the state does not own.

The opinions of the NYS Committee on Open Government have only advisory
weight, although it happens that the general policy about GIS data that
appears in several opinions on the Department of State's site - which you
link to - is currently being treated as binding by the executive agencies.
Some of the counties, notably some of the suburban ones Downstate, still
cling to fantasies that their GIS departments will be profit centers.  (One
of them, about 20 years back, had an absurd interpretation of 'open
records' - you needed to be able to call for the record you wanted to see
by box, folder and page number.  You were allowed to read the requested
page, but were not allowed to bring any recording device or writing
materials into the room. So you could _see_ any government record you chose
- and may that do you a lot of good. Or else you could pay the exorbitant
'record search' and 'copying' fees, or submit an FOIL demand and have it
stonewalled.)

The terms of use on data.ny.gov are not helpful.
https://data.ny.gov/api/views/77gx-ii52/files/ef0c1840-ad54-4240-92fd-6397c49fde46?filename=OPEN-NY_20Terms_20of_20Use.pdf
- when read carefullly, they don't actually offer any grant of rights at
all, other than whatever the FOIL may require, which is a question that the
Second Circuit did not reach.

On Sat, Jan 9, 2021 at 2:06 PM Skyler Hawthorne <osm at dead10ck.com> wrote:

> Jan 9, 2021 12:49:02 Kevin Kenny <kevin.b.kenny at gmail.com>:
>
> Aside to Richard Welty:  Did we ever hear back from NYSGIS with some sort
> of statement that use of their data is OK?  NYS Orthos Online got dropped
> from iD, if memory serves, because the team demanded more assurance than
> what we had.
>
>
> Yes, see:
> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/New_York/NYS_GIS_Clearinghouse#Legal
>
> And also the previous discussion in this mailing list before that I linked
> to.
>
> I have also been in regular contact with the GIS office regarding
> questions about the data, and they have been helping me learn about the
> data set, with the explicit purpose of importing the data into OSM. I'm
> happy to provide a copy of these emails if desired.
>

The 'for any lawful purpose' language was challenged here on the mailing
list, with someone arguing that copyright infringement is unlawful, so the
statement doesn't actually offer a grant of rights.  Was there a consensus
that the objection was ridiculous? (My opinion: it was.)

Can your NYSGIS contacts offer any guidance as to the legality of tracing
features off the imagery served up by orthos.dhses.ny.gov?  If I recall
correctly, the previous round of this kerfuffle caused the iD maintainers
to reject an update of the URL for NYS Orthos Online - and therefore iD
attempts to access the imagery at a nonfunctioning URL. The email that you
host specifically dealt with the E911 address points, and not the orthos,
so was not satisfactory to the maintainers.



On Sat, Jan 9, 2021 at 1:24 PM Brian May <bmay at mapwise.com> wrote:

> On 1/9/2021 12:48 PM, Kevin Kenny wrote:
> > Aside to Richard Welty:  Did we ever hear back from NYSGIS with some
> > sort of statement that use of their data is OK?  NYS Orthos Online got
> > dropped from iD, if memory serves, because the team demanded more
> > assurance than what we had.
>
> What do the NY state statutes regarding Public Records say? That is your
> guide. Many people responsible for disseminating public records in
> government either don't fully understand what state law says, don't
> care, come up with their own policy that contradicts the law, etc.
>
> Some states specifically target GIS data as "different" and apply
> special exemptions, etc. For example, the state of Georgia has pretty
> wide open public records law but they put in a provision that individual
> agencies may copyright GIS data and charge high fees. Pretty ridiculous,
> but its there. Most agencies don't do it, but some do. If New York is
> like Florida, with no specific exemption for GIS data, its basically
> public domain, no matter if the data is produced by a state agency or
> local government.
>
> I'm not a lawyer, but as I see it, at the end of the day, state law
> spells it all out and you can ignore claims made by people who don't
> understand the law.
>
> A little googling for: new york state public open records
>
> https://www.ny.gov/programs/open-foil-ny
>
> https://www.dos.ny.gov/coog/foil2.html
>
> We really need some pages on the wiki that explain the basics of Public
> Records laws state by state.
>
> Brian
>
>
>

-- 
73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin
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