[josm-dev] Filter Google from Imagery?

[Dirk Stöcker]

On Fri, 28 Jan 2011, Frederik Ramm wrote:

> Right. And by disallowing Google tiles, we make sure that the wrong users - 
> those who want to trace from Google - don't use JOSM ;)

Well, I have been following this discussion now for some time and I think 
I also should show the opinion of the current maintainer (me).

Most of the discussions are much too OSM focused. Although JOSM is a OSM 
editor it is no longer an OSM-only tool. Preventing usage of valid image 
sources with the strict enforcement you request is nothing which I like or 
would implement without force.

I have nothing against additional warnings (also possible related to a 
time delay to enforce reading texts) for cases where we know they have 
been misused. But I'm strctly against encrippling the software.

Frederik, you always say that we should map and don't care for local 
restrictions of the freedom. We had similiar topics when mapping in 
Chinese area as well as mapping of speed cameras came up. We always 
decided, that we wont start reducing our possibilities only because there 
may be problems. Same with Google:

1) It is not sure, that producers of images of the earth even have the 
right to prevent usage for creating data based on the map when they 
provide free access to the images. This point of view is producer centric 
and in now way establish law enforcement.

2) Actually Google already helped the OSM community a lot. That they don't 
provide us the possibility to use their data does not necessarily mean the 
don't want to do. Maybe they simply can't?

3) As already stated there are legitimate use cases.

4) We state with each request who we are. If Google really wants to 
prevent usage of JOSM, they simply can block our User-Agent. We don't come 
silent and for a very long time now. You say that Google may say "You did 
know it could happen, but you did nothing". Well we can say they same: 
"You did know it did happen, you could simply prevent it, but you did not do".
Contrary to Google WE have no statistics if Google is misused or not.

So please:
1) Warnings yes, enforcement no
2) Possibly we need to implement a better statistics database. For example
    together with the warning we can tell user, that josm recods usage and
    reports this anonymized to our server. We can use these statisics to
    find out if there is a real problem or not.
3) I like the idea to base warnings on the API URL. Non OSM-Users can use
    different URLs.

Ciao
-- 
http://www.dstoecker.eu/ (PGP key available)