[OSM-legal-talk] Vote for Google to liberate their aerial imagery - *please help*

Richard Fairhurst richard at systemeD.net
Fri Sep 11 14:49:46 BST 2009


Google has a really enlightened guy called the "Data Liberation  
Front". His role is to make it easy for people to get their data out  
of Google - rather than it being locked in.

Usually, people are locked in by the lack of an export feature, or an  
obscure file format. In mapping, people are locked in by licences.

In Google Maps' case, you can create your own work by tracing over  
aerial imagery. But you can't use this work elsewhere, because of the  
licences and terms of use. (The phrase "derived work" usually crops up  
around now.)

Google could fix this by saying that tracing from their imagery is ok  
- just like Yahoo have done. As some of you will know, I've looked  
into the legalities of this and don't believe there's anything in law  
stopping them from doing so. It's entirely their decision.

- - - - - - -

So:

* Please "vote up" this suggestion for Google's Data Liberation Front:

   http://moderator.appspot.com/#8/e=43649

* Please encourage your friends to do so, too!
   Blog, use Twitter, post to national mailing lists, etc. etc.

cheers
Richard





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