[OSM-legal-talk] Mass import of TeleAtlas data

Mon Feb 9 23:45:20 GMT 2009

An update on this. We just had a part admin part technical meeting to take
this specific matter further and will be communicating directly with the
relevant parties shortly. 

Mikel will be posting a more general email about the process of
investigating and dealing with data abuse/vandalism etc as there are a
number of aspects that need community input.

Cheers

Andy

>-----Original Message-----
>From: legal-talk-bounces at openstreetmap.org [mailto:legal-talk-
>bounces at openstreetmap.org] On Behalf Of Albertas Agejevas
>Sent: 07 February 2009 2:23 PM
>To: legal-talk at openstreetmap.org
>Subject: Re: [OSM-legal-talk] Mass import of TeleAtlas data
>
>Dear all,
>
>On Thu, Aug 21, 2008 at 03:18:14PM +0300, Albertas Agejevas wrote:
>> I hope this is the right place for these matters.
>>
>> I have found evidence that user Pranas seems to have uploaded lots of
>> Google Maps/TeleAtlas data into OSM.
>
>So, almost 6 months have passed since my alert about the obvious
>data transfer from TeleAtlas to OSM.  Since then we have exchanged a
>dozen of emails with Andy Robinson.  However, nothing appears to have
>been done in terms of removing even the most obviously copied data out
>of the database.  As far as I know, the original offender has
>responded to Andy's requests, but failed to provide GPS tracks for
>most areas he has mapped.  Andy informed me that after the Pranas
>account has been suspended, around 50 accounts were registed in a
>short amount of time.  Copies of TeleAtlas data continued to appear in
>OSM, with 2 - 3 users working on each town, more in larger towns.  Now
>most Lithuanian towns and cities have been copied.
>
>When I contacted him, the user who started the upload did not claim he
>has a permission to upload the data, later to Andy he ostencibly
>claimed that he has the tracks he made with the friend.  None of the
>later sock puppet accounts ever responded to my messages.
>
>In my original email, I provided a planned network of streets that is
>not yet there on the ground, although has made it to the TeleAtlas
>data already, and got copied into OSM:
>
>http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&ie=UTF8&ll=56.00042,21.08855&spn=0.017158,0
>.040641&t=h&z=15
>http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=56.00042&lon=21.08855&zoom=15&layers=B00F
>TF
>
>I have verified with people who go there often that these streets are
>not there yet.  The area looks the same as captured on the Google
>satellite imagery.  There are some more houses along the existing
>streets, but the new streets have not yet been built.
>
>There's one more very obviously copied place in Kanunas:
>
>http://www.maps.lt/map/query.aspx?action=showobject&objID=simple%24x5b21322
>1f85f6bfa
>http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=54.923282,23.942063&spn=0.004452,0.01041
>8&t=h&z=17
>http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=54.923&lon=23.9422&zoom=17&layers=B000FTF
>
>The satellite photos and GIS-Centras (state mapping company) data
>demonstrate that a part of the park has been converted to residential
>housing at least several years ago, However user gediminast1 mapped
>paths that match those in Google Maps data and going right through
>houses built in the area!
>
>Here are some of the user names that have been used to upload the
>suspect data:
>
>  kazlauskas gediminast1 janina1 musi_ke fonasgraoz darinabod lazzymoon
>  btnb4683 povilas lordesvona vejuvejas gorygary johtmoris
>
>When I last checked, none of these had anything on their user page,
>and have uploaded no traces.  Grep for them in the Lithuania excerpt
>(http://download.geofabrik.de/osm/europe/lithuania.osm.bz2): each of
>them has been used just for two-three times to upload several tens or
>hundereds of ways.
>
>I am bringing this up in the public forum again as our correspondence
>with the OSMF secretary Andy Robinson appears to have no results.  On
>7 October 2008 Andy informed me that OSMF was going to ask these
>50-ish suspect users to provide proof that they are legitimate
>contributors and delete their data if no satisfactory response had
>been received in 7 days.  However, as you can see from my examples
>above, 4 months past the copied data is still in the database.
>
>I'm afraid that this can damage the whole project, or at the very
>least the Lithuanian dataset I'm working on.  If you are not, read
>this:
>
>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_Sweet_Symphony#Song_credits
>  http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Copyright_Easter_Eggs#OS_vs_AA
>
>Best regards,
>Albertas
>
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