[Talk-us] USA Rail: Calling all OSM railfans! (especially in California)

Richard Welty rwelty at averillpark.net
Tue Mar 31 21:10:05 UTC 2015


On 3/31/15 4:58 PM, Paul Norman wrote:
> On 3/31/2015 11:02 AM, stevea wrote:
>> Part of the reason I do this is because other places you might
>> "discover" these data (subdivision names) are maps published by the
>> rail corporations.  But, be careful.  For example, I have found that
>> when I go to Union Pacific's web site to get a page that displays
>> their network map, I get a "login screen" or a very high-zoom level
>> map which is clearly copyright protected, meaning OSM cannot enter
>> those data.  However, a map I found on BNSF's web site [1] is clearly
>> NOT copyright protected, so I believe I can use those data.  These
>> are usually very high-zoom level maps, meaning they are only useful
>> to "confirm" that an existing line (again, from TIGER) has a certain
>> name.  They are not sufficient/detailed enough to enter the rail data
>> from scratch.
> Without some kind of license giving permission, you cannot use other
> maps with OSM. The absence of a copyright notice has no impact on if
> something is protected by copyright* and I see nothing on the BNSF map
> to imply it is public domain.
>
> * With some exceptions, mainly around old works.
>
the specific break point for the US is March 1st 1989, when the US finally
joined the Berne Convention. before this, explicit copyright notices were
required in the US; afterwards US copyright law became much more
consistent with international norms and all works are under copyright
whether there is notice or not.

the Berne convention dates from 1886, but the original list of signatories
was fairly small. now, membership in the WTO requires that countries
adapt nearly all provisions of the convention.

richard

-- 
rwelty at averillpark.net
 Averill Park Networking - GIS & IT Consulting
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