[Talk-us] Portland data

[Alan Millar]

> In the US at least, I didn't think works paid for by the government could
> have a restrictive copyright claim placed on them.

In the US we have several levels of governments.  Works created by the
nation-wide federal government cannot be copyrighted.  However, that does
not apply to state, county, or city governments.  They can copyright their
works.

Portland includes this statement:

----------------------------------
Copyright

The City of Portland asserts ownership of its spatial data and all its
portions. All title, ownership, and intellectual property rights which may
exist or be created with the geospatial data shall remain with the City of
Portland.
The arrangement of facts of the geographic data, the organizational
structure of the GIS databases, the coding of the GIS databases, the
format of the GIS databases and the graphic design of its maps are the
property of the City of Portland, as registered and protected by US
copyright statutes and treaties.
Recipients are restricted from displaying City spatial data on the public
Internet without express written consent from the City.
----------------------------------

This can be found at

http://www.portlandonline.com/omf/index.cfm?c=28144

in the data licensing documents.

> Maybe this is data that a
> company put together and then is licensing to the city?

That is true in many situations.  Portland mentions this in their data
description, and says that data from commercial companies used by the City
isn't even available from the City.  The data that is available from the
City is still copyrighted and restricted, as mentioned above.

They have provisions for non-profit and educational use of the city GIS
data at no cost, or low cost, but it does not include the right to
redistribute the data.

Too bad :-(

- Alan