[Talk-ca] importing geobase data for the Canadian boarder

[James Ewen]

On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 9:33 PM, Ben Konrath <ben at bagu.org> wrote:

> Great! Do you have a record of this communication so that we can
> archive it in a public place?

from	Culham, Doug <Doug.Culham at nrcan-rncan.gc.ca>
to	James Ewen <jewen at shaw.ca>
cc	"Johnson, Bob" <Bob.Johnson at nrcan-rncan.gc.ca>
date	Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 1:11 PM
subject	RE: IBC International Boundary monument locations.

James
I am of the opinion that you can make use of the of the IBC coordinate
data without violating any copyright of the federal government. I would
however caution you that the coordinate information is not uniform as
datums may vary according to the time when the information about the
individual monuments was collected. We are in the process of
reorganizing the coordinate information databases of the Commission but
this information is not yet available.

Doug Culham O.L.S., C.L.S.
Canada Centre for Cadastral Management
Earth Sciences Sector
613-995-2604
dculham at nrcan.gc.ca


-----Original Message-----
From: ve6srv at gmail.com [mailto:ve6srv at gmail.com] On Behalf Of James Ewen
Sent: March 31, 2009 2:44 PM
To: Culham, Doug
Subject: IBC International Boundary monument locations.

Doug,

I am working on a mapping project, that is creating a freely available
map database of the world called Open Street Map Project. The result of
this project will be a royalty free, non-protected map under the
creative commons-share alike license.

One of the issues with creating this type of map is using only freely
available data. The IBC website has a list of monument locations, and it
also has a copyright posted on the website. What I need to know is if
there are copyright limitations on the use of the monument location
information, and if so what the copyright is on the data.

We have data for the border provided by GeoBase, which I believe uses
the IBC monument locations as the US/Canada border. I would probably
only need to reference the IBC list to confirm the border, but if the
GeoBase data differs, the IBC data would take precedence. Due to the
licensing requirements though, I need to know if I can make use of the
IBC data as a quality control check without violating a copyright.

James Ewen

www.openstreetmap.org


> And is this communication enough to
> satisfy OSMs requirements to use the IBC data in OSM?

I'm no lawyer, and I don't know if Doug can legally represent the IBC...

> What about creating a way with all of the IBC monument locations to
> define the border rather than using the geobase data. It's seems to me
> that the IBC is the authoritative source for the Canada-US border.

Yes, that could be done, but if GeoBase nodes already define the
border using these coordinates, then we are done.

If you simply compare OSM data against a copyright database, and find
them congruent, would this be an infringement on the copyright work?

> I agree that the international boundary should be the base for the
> provincial / state / county boundaries. I am willing to do the work
> here if you don't mind me taking it off your hands. Or we could work
> together.  Let me know what you think.

There's nothing better than sitting back and watching someone else do
all the heavy work! 8)

I haven't had the time to get after it, so if the work gets done
before I can get to it, I'm not going to complain. I figure that no
one has a claim on any OSM data, since it is a collaborative work.
Whoever gets there first gets to work first.

James
VE6SRV