[talk-au] When is a road a cycle route?

[Steve Bennett]

On Thu, Dec 6, 2012 at 11:58 AM, Ben Kelley <ben.kelley at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think this one is an edge case. I know the sign Ian means, and in my
> judgement it does not indicate a route.


Oh, can you elaborate?


> I think the more common case (that is currently not well defined) is where
> some other map indicates a route, but there is nothing on the ground to
> show it. If we map it in OSM, are we copying the map, or mapping a known
> fact (but one that is only known from the other map)?
>
> Apart from copyright (which is significant here) part of the problem is
> government bodies (local and state) mapping "optimistically" in that they
> plan to mark out a route in some way, but didn't actually do it. In general
> I would say that "map only" routes are not routes in the OSM sense.
> Possibly they are suggestions.
>
> I think we should not map such routes in OSM due to the copyright issue
> alone, but at what point does the existence of the map imply the existence
> of the route?
>

If we're worried about copyright, I would be very curious to know why it's
ok to copy information from street signs, but not from other sources.
Ultimately, a bicycle route is a creative work (in a way that a street name
isn't): it wouldn't be hard to demonstrate creativity in the selection of
streets, bike paths etc that go into a route. So if we think that it's not
ok to contain such routes in OSM (IIRC the French OSM reached that
conclusion) then it doesn't matter whether they come from surveying street
signs and markings, or from maps.

Has anyone actually contacted any councils about this? I find it hard to
believe they would intentionally consider their routes copyright and have a
problem with their being copied in OSM, but they may never have considered
the issue.

Steve
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