[Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Beware Pokemon users

[Bill Ricker]

On Fri, Dec 30, 2016 at 4:29 PM, Simon Poole <simon at poole.ch> wrote:

> The ODbL is very clear on what "Publicly" is:
>
> “Publicly” – means to Persons other than You or under Your control by
> either more than 50% ownership or by the power to direct their
> activities (such as contracting with an independent consultant).
> No need to speculate on that point.
>

​Plenty of edge cases remain ... e.g. if a personal work for only family,
is it "public"?  I don't own my mother or adult child 50%+ ... and my
ability to direct their activities has proven limited.
​


> On the other hand, if they were using OSM data to trigger to spawning in a
> specific locations it would still be rather open if that is actually a use
> that is substantial.


​If it's a critical function of the derived work, it's at least arguably
"substantial". ​
PoGo without Pokemon spawning would be no fun at all.


> Up to now I haven't seen any evidence that couldn't be explained in
> numerous other ways that they are really using OSM data.


​Agreed. Hence "Hypothetical" and other hedge words.

I joined this tread to discuss whether a Trap Close would be detectable, to
see if the question is answerable. ​(Is the Poke-rookery named for the
feature it is based upon?)

​Since the # edits with Pokemon in the comment has dropped off sharply,
people aren't being rewarded for doing it; so (at least) one of the
​following is true -
(a) word has gotten out not to put Pokemon in the comment as we'll revert
bogus updates easier that way;
(b) the game has already been fixed to prevent cheating
    *  (which may mean delayed data hypothesis is intentionally true )
(c) video's theory isn't true at all
       (the announcement was either hoax or jumping to conclusions based on
coincidence)
(d) delayed data hypothesis is approximately true *but not* by Niantic's
direct intent
     * co-causal: changes to reality induces convergent data changes. Maybe
Google base maps get _some_ approved changes from _their_ (so-called)
"community" eventually, but not coincident with ours (E.g., they got Sarah
Long bridge closure before OSM since it was routing-urgent (i marked it
impassable when it became routing urgent to me!), but we'll often get those
footpaths and local pocket parks first since we our "approval process" is
Admiral Grace M Hopper Approved.)
     * indirect pipeline: or someone (internally or externally to Google)
is filtering our subsets of our changesets into GM/GE inputs and relying
upon (a) not "substantial" use &/or (b) not being noticed &/or (c) not
caring

I think you and I are in general agreement that there is so far little to
no evidence that anything much is happening, so we're just quibbling over
hypothetical potential severity if it were (which would of course depend on
exact particulars and require lawyers) and wondering aloud how/whether we
could ever notice or prove it if so.

Without specific evidence, on the Interwebs, the Bayesian Prior (default
conclusion) should always be high confidence that
 (c) "Someone is Wrong on the Internet" [1]
and low confidence otherwise;
with that as a Prior, the low&early peak and rapidly decreasing popularity
of "Pokemon" change-set comments in last week increases the other
alternatives somewhat (and the powerset elements likewise as they are NOT
fully mutually exclusive) but doesn't actually degrade (c)'s likelihood
much. I

​[1]  http://m.xkcd.com/386/​

-- 
Bill Ricker
bill.n1vux at gmail.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/n1vux
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