[OSM-legal-talk] wikitude content

[Richard Fairhurst]

Gustav Foseid wrote:
> This is basically a mashup based on Google Maps. I was unaware that Google
> have claimed any rights over POIs added in such mashups (Google My Maps or
> other sites). Could you provide some more details?

Getting any information out of Google as to what they do claim, and what
they don't, appears to be impossible. The Ts & Cs are carefully phrased in
ambiguous lawyerese, and the various utterances of their public spokespeople
(Ed Parsons, Pamela Fox et al) in blogs and forums are inconclusive and
occasionally conflicting.

(Frankly - slight rant alert - I think it's really reprehensible that Google
doesn't pull its finger out and just apply one of its tame lawyers for a day
or two to settling this once and for all. We are now in the ridiculous
situation where Ed writes "Google is not in a position to allow people to
capture base data such as street networks", even with relation to satellite
imagery, yet Google appears to allow Wikimapia to blithely sail along
capturing exactly that into its own proprietarily-licensed dataset.

Google should remember that, as a wise man once said, with great power comes
great responsibility etc. Instead, they seem to prefer that everything
exists in a curious state of limbo where your dataset only exists as long as
Google permits it.)

But away from all this, OSM's standard position, for better or for worse, is
that deriving any data by reference to already-existing cartography is
potentially an infringement. So since we want to create a whiter-than-white
map, we don't use it.

cheers
Richard
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