[Talk-us] USGS has no problem using information from copyrighted maps

[Dale Puch]

For reference,
http://www.fgdc.gov/library/factsheets/documents/datashare.pdf
There are exceptions, but from what I have seen this policy seems to be the
basis of the government opening up GIS data.

Dale

On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 3:02 PM, Dale Puch <dale.puch at gmail.com> wrote:

> It will probably take some digging to find out the full story, and it will
> probably differ from state to state.  But it seems that around 1995-2005
> time range federal, state and local governments started to share GIS data.
> As they did this they also changed their copyright and access policies due
> to the sharing.
>
> To make matters worse, very few clearly state any copyright or
> restrictions, even though there is a specific field in the meta-data.
>
> While I do not know for sure, my guess is that the original map was indeed
> copyrighted, but at a later date the map, or data was shared with other
> agencies and the result was no longer copyrighted.
>
> It would be really nice to have the copyright/usability status of various
> data sets published by the various agencies.
>
> Dale
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 7:18 AM, Nathan Edgars II <neroute2 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> First, I'm not trying to start an argument or even a civilized
>> discussion about our policies in this matter. I just found this
>> interesting.
>>
>> http://geonames.usgs.gov/pls/gnispublic/f?p=gnispq:3:::NO::P3_FID:1196597
>> is "Rosslyn Station", a former railway station in Pennsylvania. The
>> source cited for the feature is a map created by the Pennsylvania
>> Department of Transportation:
>>
>> ftp://ftp.dot.state.pa.us/public/pdf/BPR_PDF_FILES/Maps/Type_10_GHS_Historical_Scans/Allegheny_1976_Sheet_1.pdf
>> This map, from which USGS got the name and location, is labeled
>> "Copyright 1977 Commonwealth of Pennsylvania". (Yes, our GNIS import
>> includes this feature.) The USGS doesn't seem to consider this
>> information copyrightable:
>> http://www.usgs.gov/usgs-manual/1100/1100-6.html prescribes a notice
>> to appear "when copyrighted materials are used in an information
>> product", which I don't see with the GNIS, and
>> http://geonames.usgs.gov/domestic/metadata.htm#getacopy.0 says that
>> there are no access or use constraints.
>>
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>


-- 
Dale Puch
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